Columbia University community ‘shattered’ after police raid

The university president, Minouche Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she had ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest.

“It definitely feels like things are scattered,” said Anna Oakes, a graduate journalism student at Columbia University who covered the removal of protesters from Hamilton Hall on Tuesday evening.

Mr Parkinson said Columbia had given students money to spend at nearby restaurants because they had to limit staff who would normally operate the university’s cafeterias.

He and others said that the university administration had lost their trust by bringing police on to campus, and that they shouted “shame” in unison when Dr Shafik’s name was mentioned.

Meghnad Bose, a 31-year-old journalism graduate student at Columbia University, witnessed the NYPD raid on Tuesday night and said police acted “rough and aggressive” with the protesters.

While 109 people at Columbia University were arrested when police stormed the school to quash the pro-Palestinian protest, police said at a Wednesday press conference that they arrested another 173 people at a similar sit-in at the City College of New York later in the evening.

A 19-year-old physics student named Kevin – he declined to give his last name – said it was “difficult to be proud of being a Columbia student” after the police raid, which had left him deeply frustrated.