Columbia University’s graduate student union is demanding the Ivy League institution establish a “sanctuary campus” where public safety officers are barred from patrolling “organizing spaces, including classrooms.” The union, which is embroiled in active contract negotiations with Columbia, also wants the school to provide free “legal support” for student visa holders, destroy “all records” related to campus protest participants, and sue the Trump administration “and other anti-immigrant actors.”
Student Workers of Columbia, which boasts roughly 3,000 members and is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, shared an internal document outlining the demands during a Saturday Zoom meeting, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. The document, written by a “working group” of the union’s international members, cites the “unprecedented detainment of former student-worker Mahmoud Khalil by the Department of Homeland Security while in a Columbia University apartment building and the ongoing presence of ICE around campus” before making “immediate demands of Columbia University.”
Hellbound and Down 