Views from the Law Bridge

Numbers and shifting dynamics in campus protest. 

By Natalie Buttner

Illustration by Derin Ogutcu

Risk in protest is often a question of numbers. In the past year, Columbia students have learned how to do this math intimately. How big a crowd is needed to move from the sidewalk to the street? How many people need to jump the fence into the west lawn before I do too? There is strength in numbers. Though smaller, bolder protests have been successful historically, in the past month we have seen the severity of the consequences for those who are singled out. A common slogan of protestors is “we keep us safe”—more effective with a larger “we.” 

Perhaps lost in the national coverage of the Columbia protests in the past year—though evident to anyone who has lived through them—has been the decrease in attendance following a peak during the encampment in spring 2024. With fewer students willing to rally for their cause, pro-Palestinian organizers have had to re-orient their tactics. Recent protests are smaller in size, yet bolder in their tactics. 

On April 3, in a collaboration between Jewish Voice for Peace and Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition, four Jewish protestors chained themselves to the St Paul’s gate in support of Mahmoud Khalil. There were another four student activists standing behind them on the steps in support. No more than 40 protesters stood directly outside the gate, and variable numbers of people and onlookers moved past outside of the police tape: Drivers honked in beat with the chants, a bike delivery person with a pizza bungeed to the back of his bike stopped in the street to watch, and a man on a Citibike called in a loud voice, “Expel C-U-A-D!” From the Law Bridge, the whole scene looked small. 

In comparison with the hundreds that inhabited the lawns during key moments last spring, the eight at the gate are very few. There were far more journalists swarming the gates with their cameras, press badges, and notebooks. Far more public safety officers patrolling the immediate area; far more than police officers, zip ties swinging from their belts. 

Eighteen days later, about 10 alumni chained themselves outside the Amsterdam and 116th gates. A small crowd gathered around them to chant, sing, and listen to speeches. 

CPSC cited university scare tactics as the cause of the stark dip in student involvement in protests. Students participating in protest have been arrested, expelled, suspended, and faced other disciplinary action as a result of speaking out. Legal experts have identified a nationwide campaign of repression on college campuses, a trend which Columbia’s campus is an undeniable example of. 

The atmosphere of fear has discouraged many but encouraged a few. A pro-Palestine organizer named Shay, CC ’26, “I think about all those times that I was masked and I was afraid and [Mahmoud Khalil]  put himself on the line to protect me from disciplinary action, and he has done that for every student on this campus.” For these protestors, the privileges that made them comfortable speaking out openly—their citizenship status and circumstance—have made speaking up imperative. Besides, many of the unmasked protesters have already been doxxed and are on the college’s disciplinary radar. 

An incident at the first chain-in presented a reminder of the persuasive power of a crowd. Onlookers and fellow protestors pooled over the Law Bridge, in a seemingly low-risk area above the cops. A few protesters in masks hung a banner from the Law Bridge, reading: “Free Mahmoud Khalil Name the Trustees.” When five Public Safety officers approached the protestors holding the banner, the surrounding crowd rushed en masse.

“Take your hands off students!” 

“These are our students, don’t assault them!” 

“Back off!” 

“Don’t assault our students. Are you assaulting them?” 

The Public Safety officers, it seemed, were asking the masked people holding the banner to show their ID. 

“We are all students!” 

“If you are on campus, you are a student!” 

“It’s on the back of your card,” the Public Safety officer brandished the back of an ID, pointing to the fine print along the bottom edge that reads, “The ID is your official University ID and must be presented upon the request of a University official. Failure to do so is a violation of University regulations and subjects holder to disciplinary action.” 

“For who?”

“Shame!”

“Why does she have to show ID?” 

The Public Safety officers were surrounded tightly on all sides by a crowd of masked students, greatly outnumbered. The crowd moved in closer. 

“Hey! You all are the public, do you feel safe right now?” 

“No!” the crowd replied. 

“Who are you protecting?” 

“Quit your job!” 

Someone points out that Public Safety is only able to ask a student to identify themselves if they have reasonable belief that they are violating the rules of the University. “Please inform me of the exact rule I am breaking!” 

Without seeing the ID of any student, Public Safety filed out of the crowd. Someone called after them, “Bye piggie piggies.” It was a small glimpse at the feeling of power that comes with a physical majority. The banner went back over the bridge, and all attention returned to the eight students at the gate. 

During the alumni protest weeks later, one alumni protestor set up a tent on the sidewalk. Immediately the police moved in, arrested the individual, and mashed the tent into a pile of tarp and poles. The tent remains a poignant symbol. It conjures the image of crowds, which, real or implied, seem to remain the most potent tool to get a reaction. 

While the numbers of protestors on campus warily decrease, the victims of genocide increase daily. It is impossible to hold in one’s head and heart the amount of people who have died in Gaza over the last year and a half. A long strip of fabric ran down the side of the encampment, where protestors painstakingly wrote the names of those who had been killed by the IDF. In the fall, the names of the Palestinian victims of the genocide in Gaza could be heard as one walked home from Butler, being read from Low steps. Above the chained alumni, little pieces of paper with the names of Palestinian children tied to the gates flap in the wind. 

The presentation of names not only functions as a space to mourn and remember, but also to recenter the on-campus movement. One alumni reflected on her experience sitting under these names while protestors chanted and spoke in front of her: “It’s very intense. I don’t know if you heard the speaker who said that she was only able to print out 10% of children under the age of one who were killed in the month of September. That’s why students are protesting, and it’s extraordinary where protesting something this monstrous is being met with such extreme oppression.” 

To combat apathy, Marie Adele Grosso, BC ’26, recommends considering not crowds, but individuals. “I think it is easy when we see a ton of faceless bodies, or when we are seeing lists of people being deported who we don’t know. It can be really easy for that all to just blur together. Reading stories of people who are directly affected helps contextualize how real and close to home it is, and how much it matters.” At a vigil held on April 14, students take turns reading statements from civilians and journalists in Gaza, as well as Mahmoud Khalil’s Spectator op-ed, “A Letter to Columbia.” Listening to these testimonies, even when it is difficult, remains crucial to staying tethered to the reality of the importance of these protests, even when dwindling numbers are changing the way that they look. The federal government and the Columbia administration seek to increase the risk in protest. We can be silent in the face of their repression, or we can remember the small victory over Public Safety on Law Bridge and respond to repression en masse.