Live television images showed tonight how the agents – an undetermined number – were accessing the place from a type of trailer connected to one of the windows of the property.
Earlier, students broke into and occupied a building on the university’s main campus waving a Palestinian flag, and there are even reports that they renamed Hamilton Hall Hind’s Hall in honor of a five-year-old girl who died in Gaza under Israeli fire.
The intensification of protests came after the institution’s authorities announced that they would begin suspending those who defied the order to leave the pro-Palestinian camp.
The suspension process has already started, but the number of students to whom the measure has been applied so far is unknown.
After the NYPD entered Columbia they blamed protest participants for the situation.
“We regret that the protesters have chosen to aggravate the situation with their actions. “After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized and locked, we were left with no choice,” a statement warned. Police entered the campus shortly after 9:00 p.m. local time.
The students who occupied the building face possible expulsion, according to a school spokesperson.
This morning the camps at the University of Connecticut, Yale and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were evacuated. About four dozen camps on college campuses remain across the country, CNN noted.
The pro-Palestinian protests started at Columbia University on April 17 and from a few young people gathered, the flame spread to higher education centers in more than 30 states in the nation.
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