'Incredibly Emotional Time': EIC Of The Columbia Daily Spectator Describes How Students Are Feeling

6 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," Isabella Ramírez, Editor-in-Chief and President of the Columbia Daily Spectator, discussed the ongoing protests on her campus and how students are feeling.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00 As you know very well, you're a Columbia junior.

00:03 Columbia University has garnered national attention over their on-campus protests

00:09 and protests right off the campus.

00:11 Can you tell us from your perspective, being on campus, what are you seeing?

00:15 Yeah, absolutely.

00:18 The past few days have of course been an incredibly emotional time for the Columbia community.

00:23 What truly has transpired is of course,

00:27 really beginning with the congressional hearing of Shafiq before Congress,

00:32 where that same morning that Shafiq was slated to show up in DC,

00:40 and actually myself and members of my team were there in DC,

00:44 student protesters had organized to set up an encampment at literally four in the morning,

00:52 so in the middle of the night/the morning.

00:55 And I think what really has spurred out of that,

01:00 out of the sort of clashing and intermix and interplay of these very public things

01:09 that are happening on our campus, which all eyes were on Shafiq in DC,

01:13 but then those eyes were very quickly diverted to what was happening right here in New York City,

01:18 right here on her campus while she was away, and then of course as she came back.

01:23 I think this has been really the culmination of since October 7th,

01:30 a lot of tension on campus, of course, a lot of protests,

01:33 a lot of back and forth between the university, the students, the faculty,

01:37 and then also among those groups, right?

01:39 Students who disagree with each other, faculty, etc.

01:44 But I think what we've truly seen in this phenomena right now

01:48 is a pent-up frustration from many, many groups, right?

01:53 It didn't necessarily, there are some senses in which this came out of nowhere,

01:58 or at least it was a surprise and it was intended to be so, right?

02:01 Such a large showing of protests, but in some senses it's not a surprise.

02:07 And so how I kind of look at those two things is actually very much before the start

02:14 of the encampment, there was actually like a drop in protest activity.

02:20 It was still active, but not as much as we saw in the very beginning stages

02:25 of university, of what our campus really looked like, and part of that had to do

02:29 with the crackdown on disciplinary action and policies that the university was taking

02:33 on some of these protests.

02:36 But this has been kind of like a resurgence, especially for sort

02:40 of the pro-Palestinian students on our campus in terms of coming together

02:44 and organizing this very massive, massive showing, which has then kind of inspired

02:50 and invited these outside protests to come outside of our gates and sort of join

02:55 in this really big now global arguably movement across universities in solidarity sort

03:01 of with what's happening on campus.

03:03 But of course, at the same time, there are these underlying tensions

03:07 that were crucial to the point of the hearing, right?

03:10 What is Columbia doing to address antisemitism?

03:12 How is Columbia juggling this act of how do we preserve free speech on our campus

03:17 and free expression along with the academic expression of faculty,

03:21 which is a very big topic in the congressional hearing, along with the safety concerns

03:25 that are arising out of Jewish students and faculty who are on our campus

03:29 who are navigating this space in sometimes very different ways, but for some of them are,

03:36 you know, afraid of certain sides of this campus or afraid

03:39 of navigating outdoor protests and have felt a sense of urgency from the university or wanted

03:47 to compel the university to feel more urgent about this issue.

03:52 And so really what this is a culmination of is months and months of building

03:59 and building tensions, obviously this political power

04:03 that had entered this arena for Columbia, right?

04:06 Putting Congress, putting Columbia on the map, like very purposely singling us out as they did

04:12 with Harvard, Penn, and MIT, of course brought this all sort of into one really big mix

04:18 that it became or it has become not just about the one experiences of, you know,

04:25 this university in New York City, this Ivy League institution, but also a microcosm

04:32 of what is happening at American universities across the nation,

04:36 but also what is happening at large in terms of our political conversations regarding anti-Semitism,

04:42 free speech, the right to protest, and all of these sort of intermixing things.

04:47 So I really do see this as it has been building over time and in a lot

04:52 of senses we could have seen where it was building to.

04:55 Of course, maybe we couldn't have anticipated the sheer scale, but it was clear that there was going

05:03 to be some flashpoint and that it was coming our way.

05:06 And I think the congressional heroing certainly propelled that way faster,

05:11 maybe on a timeline that was very quick, but also just the nature

05:14 of the fact that the semester is ending.

05:16 This is the last time to really, you know, force students to try to confront these issues.

05:23 And as we've seen, they're doing it in an incredibly public and expansive manner.

'Incredibly Emotional Time': EIC Of The Columbia Daily Spectator Describes How Students Are Feeling

Category

Transcript

Recommended