One of the Columbia University students who bravely tried to stop a mob of anti-Israel protesters from taking over an academic building last night tells GlobeInstantNews Digital they tried to delay the agitators long enough so that police or security could arrive on the scene to back them up – but ultimately neither of them showed.
Rory Wilson, a 22-year-old history senior, says he is furious that the takeover occurred under the university police’s watch and that the NYPD never arrived despite students saying they called 911.
Wilson had been asleep in his dorm after midnight when his friends woke him up to say that protesters were targeting a takeover of Hamilton Hall, an academic building used by the dean and other senior offices.
Desperately wanting to protect the building from an illegal break-in, Wilson said he and his friends made their way to the entrance of the building by slipping through gaps in the human chains the protesters had formed that night. The chains broke up while agitators were trying to drag a black metal table up to the entrance of the building and tie it to the door, Wilson said.
Wilson and his friend Charles Beck then stood in front of the doors while the mob furiously pushed up against them, chaotic video from the scene shows.
“It was a matter of trying to stand for what I believe is right, even if ultimately we weren’t able to stop the mob,” said Wilson, a practicing Christian who has some Jewish lineage and Israeli relatives.
“They were acting illegally and – apart from what you think about the situation in Israel – we know that this was wrong and inappropriate.”
“Damaging university property, disrupting school activities, violating the university who’s administration had been trying very hard to negotiate with them. I was telling people that this is my protest of your protest, that they were completely out of line and that I was free to stand there as a student on my own campus.”
As Wilson stood his ground, his friend Beck was dragged away by the enraged mob.
A man dressed in all black then tried to toss Wilson onto the floor, says Wilson, who wasn’t sure if the man was part of the college or not.
Wilson said the man had been guarding the encampment on the lawn earlier in the day and had called him a “Zionist” as he passed by while he also spewed hateful rhetoric in Arabic, which a friend of Wilson’s later translated to mean “inbred.”
“He definitely seemed dangerous and was physically intimidating me and grabbing my leg,” said Wilson of the late-night showdown outside Hamilton Hall. Agitators later renamed the building “Hind’s Hall” by placing a banner over the facility. Hind Rajab was a 6-year-old who died during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, per a statement apparently from the group that was posted on X.
“I was holding out because there were some people signaling to me that police might be coming, so I thought that I could just hold out and make a big barricade to prevent the building from getting damaged, but then they never came,” Wilson said.
As the mob surrounded him at the doors, Wison said another friend told him to leave before things got more out of hand.
“I didn’t want to risk it because a masked mob – when they’re already smashing things, committing vandalism, all hyped up – you don’t know how violent it could turn so that’s why I left.”
Wilson, acting as the last line of defense, then stepped aside before the crowd smashed in the door windows and began occupying the building. It is still under occupation as of this afternoon.
“Security was nowhere to be seen. Immediately after exiting, my friends called 911 and I called public safety for campus saying that we had instances of assault because they were physically assaulting us… but there was no response, as far as I can tell, all night,” Wilson said.
Wilson said that the campus felt dangerous after the break-in and that he suspected people dressed in black were following him back to his dorm. Other people dressed in black, Wilson said, were climbing into buildings through windows and he wasn’t sure if they were students or outside agitators.
One suspected professional agitator in her 60s was captured on video footage leading the charge to take over Hamilton Hall and Wilson said she vilified him.
“She was harassing me the entire time,” Wilson said. She was attacking me saying, ‘Do you guys think you’re white saviors? Check your white male privilege. Who do you think you are? This isn’t doing anything.’”
“So she was just chewing us out the entire time, attacking us for our race and gender.”
Wilson wants the university to stop talking and to take action against the violent agitators.
“I’m very disappointed in the university that they just sent out an email this morning talking about how they care so much about all student’s safety but then when push comes to shove, when there’s an actual dangerous situation, they do nothing,” Wilson railed.
“And I think that assurance rings very hollow if they’re not willing to actually even show up and deal with situations when they are genuinely dire. When people are exercising their legitimate rights as students of this university to stand peaceably in public areas of the university, they’re being physically assaulted and they do nothing.”
“That really, really makes me disappointed in this university and I think it’s shameful.”
