'They Held Me Hostage': Worker Does More to Defend Columbia Than Admin After Protesters Break In

AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah

As we reported earlier, things are getting out of control with the radical college encampment protesters. 

Police had to cart off screaming protesters who refused to leave at the University of Texas at Austin. Protesters at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) attacked the police when they came to get them, throwing bottles and projectiles at them, and then further pushing back against them when they moved in. 

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Then there is Columbia University, where they broke into Hamilton Hall, smashing the windows on the doors to get in, hanging an "intifada" sign out the window, and barricading themselves into the building. 

This followed the university's decision to start suspending people for their actions. 

At about 12:30 a.m., they rushed the building.

Simultaneously, a stream of protesters carrying sleeping bags and backpacks diverged from the picket line, picking up black metal barricades as they rushed into Hamilton.

Upon entry, protesters quickly set down their belongings and raced up the stairs, bringing tables and chairs from classrooms to block the doors from the inside, covering security cameras with black trash bags and tape, and shuttering the blinds.

But there were also people inside, including facilities workers. 

One of them demanded to be let out and when he was finally released at about 12:40 a.m. he said, "They held me hostage," according to the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper. 

It looks like the maintenance worker was doing more to defend Columbia than anything the administration was doing. You can check out the pictures here in the Fox News coverage of the story. He appears to be yelling at them and one picture has him appearing to push a protester against a wall. Two students were also trying to block the protesters.

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Protesters removed the barricades blocking one door at 1:10 a.m., allowing several individuals who had remained inside Hamilton—including at least three Facilities workers, according to a source inside the building—to leave. Afterward, the protesters immediately relocked the door.

Two students attempted to block protesters from barricading the front center doors of Hamilton, shouting, “You don’t have a right to tear down our University.” At 1:25 a.m., the contesting students left and the protesters reinforced the door barricade with metal tables and trash cans from campus.

The public safety department of the University issued an advisory saying access to the campus was being limited to resident students and any essential employees - such as dining, public safety, and maintenance staff. There's also only one access point into the campus, so hopefully that should mean they can police who is getting in. 

So what is the University going to do? It's New York, so the district attorney Alvin Bragg will probably go after the maintenance worker. The University has already shown weakness which is why it has gotten to this point and why the protesters think they can do anything they want. 

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All the colleges affected need to respond or it's going to be a long, hot summer and shades of 1968. The conventions are going to be fun. 

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