Unidentified protesters poured purple paint over the bust of the well-known “Alma Mater” (1903) statue on Columbia College’s Manhattan campus on the primary day of courses, Tuesday, September 3. The obvious protest motion comes after the group named Columbia College Apartheid Divest (CUAD) referred to as on college students to “shut it down,” noting that “Gazan college students don’t have any universities left to which they’ll return.”
Whereas photographs of the paint-soaked bronze have been reposted by College students for Justice for Palestine, which was lately completely banned by Meta, and CUAD on X, neither group claimed accountability. The motion could have been the work of an autonomous group, a time period CUAD and SJP additionally used to explain the people who organized the occupation of Hamilton Corridor earlier this yr and coordinated a screaming protest exterior the residence of then-President Minouche Shafik earlier than her resignation.
“This act underscored the scholar physique’s refusal to overlook the acts of the identical administration at the moment welcoming us with naive but predictable pomp and circumstance,” Anand Chitnis, a present Columbia senior and vp of campus life for the faculty’s scholar council, instructed Hyperallergic.
“From what I can inform, we, the scholars, refuse to evolve to the administration’s surface-level amnesia of the previous semester,” Chitnis continued.
Images supplied to Hyperallergic present upkeep employees utilizing an influence washer to take away the paint from the “Alma Mater” statue. By the top of the day, the official Columbia Instagram account shared a photograph of scholars posing in entrance of a clear statue on its Tales.
Designed by artist Daniel Chester French, who additionally sculpted the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, “Alma Mater” is a vital campus image. College students usually pose in entrance of the sculpture to commemorate the beginning of courses and once more on the finish of the yr in commencement regalia.
After Hamas’s October 7 assault and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, nonetheless, the statue took on a brand new significance. In its central location on campus, “Alma Mater” was the positioning of a number of historic moments throughout April’s scholar protests main as much as the raid of Hamilton Corridor by a whole bunch of New York Police Division officers.
The sculpture was steps away from the place college students booed Speaker of the Home of Representatives Mike Johnson throughout his speech calling for the arrest of scholars perpetuating “hatred and antisemitism.” Organizers additionally used the positioning as a communication hub, holding press conferences at its toes.
For Anand, it was not essentially the most distracting second of the primary day of courses.
“The closed gates have been extra disruptive than any protest, inflicting crowds of scholars and workers making an attempt to get to class to be trapped in infinite strains,” Anand mentioned.
After the spring protests, the college carried out a color-coded entry system that tells college students, school, and non-affiliates once they can enter or are restricted from campus. The brand new coverage is much like its pandemic-era contact tracing system that restricted college students’ motion by campus primarily based on their designated colour.
“I lengthy for the time when protests have been a proud a part of the college neighborhood and have been a method to tangible change,” Anand mentioned.
