By Alexia Massoud
I visited Columbia University with my mom several times between 2021 and 2022. I walked in and out of the Morningside Heights campus as if it were my own: we had no scheduled tours, no appointments, no QR codes, no identification.
We were just two wanderers — one looking into her past, and one looking into what she hoped would be her future, trying to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
I went to high school in Rockland County, New York, less than an hour-long drive from the Columbia University campus. My mom attended Columbia in the late 1990s for her graduate studies, so when I was of age to start looking for colleges, the obvious move was to take a little trip over the George Washington Bridge.
Five years later, the campus is my own. Like my mom, I am a graduate student at Columbia. But it’s not the same as it was when I visited it with her. It’s fortified. Tall black gates surround the entire campus. Every entrance is narrow and monitored by at least two security officers. I have to tap my Columbia ID twice (for some unknown reason) before stepping onto university grounds.
I have to wait in line most times to perform the tapping ritual.
On its website, Columbia says that it “recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis.”
But with the campus closed, how can that creed stay the same?
Ironically, I came from an undergraduate campus that underwent a similar transformation. I watched as George Washington University became less and less welcoming, when the thing that made me fall in love with it in the first place — its openness to Washington, DC — was lost.
The State Department was two blocks away from my sophomore dorm. The White House was part of my walk to my favorite gelato place. Our track and field practices were often held at the National Mall.
But after the spring of 2024, one of our only green spaces on campus had large — and quite ugly — gates surrounding it. I thought they’d be temporary, but two years later, they are still there, appearing permanent.
Columbia is now in its third year of having a closed Morningside Heights campus. I’m beyond fortunate to have been, and still be, a student at institutions like these. Columbia is absolutely beautiful, and people deserve to see it.
I made memories with my mom walking around for hours, full of glimmer in my eyes, as she showed me the buildings she took classes in and where her favorite kebab trucks were. But these are moments that someone else won’t be able to experience for as long as these gates remain closed.
I owe those memories to the open gates of Columbia University in the City of New York.
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Beautiful essay, Alexia, it really resonated with me. In the late 1980s I was studying English literature in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences program, and I just loved spending time on the campus, taking in the magnificent buildings and lawns, trees and flower beds. (On occasion my mom would join me on quiet strolls there.) I have fond memories, and miss those wide open gates too!
Who cares keep the gates closed for now. We’re gaining a lot of peace and quiet that we didn’t have when they were open before.
You live on campus?
You came to NYC for peace and quiet?
LOL is this the part where I’m supposed to tell you to go back to Ohio? Not all of us “came” here.
Part of the richness of going to school in NYC is being connected to the city – and NYC bemefits as well. Security matters, but so does openness, exchange and disagreement….everything that we send our kids to college to learn in the first place! And a few years on, I believe many of the students we tried to silence with those gates were brave to speak up. Let’s course correct and open the gates.
As much as I love this university as an ‘04 alum, I believe the safety of all our students is paramount. And by all our students I mean the Jewish ones too. Imagine going to school every day met with lies about a genocide that never happened, a famine that never happened etc, all orchestrated by the DSA who then proceeded to take over the buildings and promulgates all this Jewish hate. Until the stench of antisemitism is washed I say keep the gates closed.
Agree completely. Columbia was always a campus for debates. Until he happened. Students stood up for their beliefs which differed. That was respected. I worked there and loved the open gates,campus and freedom. This is just disgusting.
The students are free to enter campus as they please and to say what they want as long as they’re not disrupting other people trying to go to class. When the Hamilton Hall protestors were finally arrested the Times found that at least nine of them had no ties to the school at all. That is what’s being prevented and isn’t it odd how once the outsiders were locked out suddenly there’s peace and quiet. It’s almost like they were leading the protests all along.
Okay- do time to open it again.
Yes. It was an “astroturf” movement all along, organized and funded by groups like CAIR.
Pushing Islamophobic conspiracies in the comments?
Overwhelming majority of protesters were students? This is a wild fiction that is straight out of the MAGA/Marco Rubio/Steven Miller playbook
When I was admitted to their PhD program in 2012 and they gave me a tour of the campus – designed to convince me to take their offer – one of their main points of pride was that they had an open campus, with open gates for the entire city. They took this aspect as an important part of their identity. It was convincing. I ended up going there for my PhD. I often wonder how it would feel to be there now.
Columbia is responsible for protecting the students. They did not create the issues that necessitate the closure. Let them do their job.
PS- If you’re an alum, you can arrange entry.
It’s done. Time passed.
They could have protected the students by arresting those who were protesting in a disruptive way. If they made it clear that they were going to enforce the laws, the problems would have gone away. Very simple. This is a major over-reaction. Re-allocate the officers who are working the gates to patrolling the campus and everything will be fine.
I know a lot of current students and faculty who hate this, even though they have access, and feel like animals in a zoo.
I’m not clear why there are some posters here, most of whom likely have no direct affiliation to Columbia, who feel so strongly about keeping it closed. Mkaes no sense.
Protecting the students from different points of views is not protection
Right. College is meant for learning- which includes different points of view and ideas. If some security is needed- fine but open the gates. We feel like we’re trapped enough in this country.
They aren’t protecting the students from different points of view. As pointed out before, a large number of people riling up students on campus were from outside of campus. The “protests” became unruly and dangerous for some people including violence and vandalism. It cost the university millions of dollars in damages. While the University wants to foster free speech, since it is private property, they don’t have a RIGHT to free speech. There is also no right to commit vandalism and damage buildings and property. If the protests were entirely peaceful and did not include violence and vandalism, I’m sure the campus would still be open. Now if the students themselves wanted to do something now, they still could because they still have access. But as Sal pointed out above, it is very telling that with the campus closed to outsiders, everything is peaceful.
Protecting students from violent outside protestors is…..
As a Barnard alum I have mixed feelings about the campus closures. But students aren’t prisoners, they are free to come and go and explore the city’s vast and diverse environment where they will be exposed to myriad points of view.
And I’d add that Columbia and Barnard continue to host events that are open to the public with the proviso that you register in advance and show ID at the gates.
People have to change and stop using Columbia’s campus as a protest grounds. It is misguided. Protest where decisions are actually made in Washington, Congress, the White House. People abused their privilege. Put that together with Trump’s anti education divisiveness, ICE agents on campuses arresting students, murders on campus (Brown, Princeton) this is why the gates are closed. NYPD has to take a bigger role in monitoring and screening people entering campus. Campus security cannot be responsible for policing an entire neighborhood.
An open campus was the magnet for all the foreign non student violent activism that necessitated its gates being closed. Keep its access controlled. Most oif those protestors weren’t students.
The activism was non-violent, it was the police who brought violence onto the campus. I was there and witnessed it firsthand.
While most of the activists might have been non-violent, it only takes one act of violence to change the whole narrative. And there were many more than just one act within the protests.
Plus, there was a great deal of property damage. Property damage is not protest. Holding signs, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya is protest. Spray painting walls, ripping off doors and destroying chairs and desks in college buildings is not protest – it’s illegal property damage. Beating people because they have a yarmulke or share a different opinion – that’s a hate crime, not a protest.
Seconded. I was there that evening, and the NYPD’s goon squad were running riot both at CU and CUNY
I was there too, and your statement is false.
Tell that to the Columbia maintenance workers who sued because they were assaulted and held captive by the fake students who also offered them cash on the spot to go along with the protest. Real students don’t do that.
As I recall, two janitors were held against their will and assaulted during the takeover of Hamilton Hall. That’s violence, and the police were not yet involved.
Nothing about the students though, or whatever “danger” they continue to face. This event happened years ago. The violent police crackdown wasn’t the best look either. Militarizing a college campus
That’s because they let it go too far. Had they stopped it earlier, like some other schools did, it would not have gotten to that point.
It saddens me that so many of us are comfortable living and putting others in cages of “protection”. I understand the fear, especially for a parent, but to me they feel like jails or a way to segregate each other from our common humanity.
Thanks for the essay. We live in difficult times.
It’s a sad commentary on the world created by politicians who don’t care about human life quality and think law enforcement should do what they do not care about. Poverty and corruption are increasing in the city impacting our poorer citizens. Social services are being cut and funding is going to unnecessary wars. We are in dire need of a better system .
The Columbia campus is now the Gramercy Park of the UWS: a private sanctuary for the spoiled rich.
The public tends to trample and ruin public spaces. This is the sad and disgusting reality we live in. Because of this I welcome more private parks where like-minded individuals are vetted and there’s more respect for the property.
Security needs in large cities are real. And unfortunately, some folks took advantage of Columbia’s previous “openness” by disrupting the campus and the life of students (who pay to attend) in favor of their political views. So sadly the campus had to defend itself against these types of nonsense. The vast majority of campus is private space with the exception of a new city thoroughfares.
But they can’t indefinitely block the city thoroughfares. Just like I can’t decide the block CPW or any other street.
The public is invited to many evening events at Columbia’s Italian Academy, on Amsterdam Avenue. The walk there from the subway is desolate. The route from the subway through the campus would be better lit, more direct, livelier. The “outsiders” who are discouraged by the locked gates from attending these events include scholars and artists.
Sure, let’s sacrifice the safety of the hard-working and paying students and the order on the campus so that the short walk for some would be “livelier”. Makes a lot of sense.
The safety is important but security can help with that. A sense of freedom matters too. Time has passed. Worth giving it another try rather than feeling locked in.
The hard working and paying students want the campus OPEN. Why don’t you respect their wishes?? It’s pretty clear that those blithely and snidely pushing to keep the gates closed have little or no connection to Columbia, as few students, alums, and staff (and yes, I am/have been all three) agree with that assessment. You know who wants the gates closed? The Board of Trustees, who also thought it was a good idea to placate the criminal exterprise running our country to the tune of $200 million – that’s the side you’re taking. And while you’re at it, have a little sense of history. Would you prefer that Columbia had been barricaded for the past fifty-eight years, since the much larger and arguably consequential unrest of 1968? Seems those anti-war efforts have aged pretty well. And in case haven’t noticed, public opinion in the United States has likewise shifted in favor of the protesters. Columbia prides itself on being absolutely integrated into the city – it’s official public name is “Columbia University in the City of New York.” It’s time that it lived up to its name.
Only some. Others don’t and neither does most of the faculty.
You are factually incorrect.
Columbia became an encampment zone. While the p protestors set up tents to live in there, no one else could enjoy the peace and safety of the campus., including students, faculty, staff, neighbors and tourists. Plus the disgusting encampment conditions caused significant damage that the school had to pay to repair instead of those who caused the mess. The same goes for damage caused by the takeover of Hamilton Hall. Had there been peaceful protests by actual students maybe the school wouldn’t have decided to close the campus. It isn’t that big of a deal to tap a couple of times to gain entry in exchange for security the school and those who need to be there.
Totally ignoring the reason for these safety measures is ignorance beyond comprehension. Are you truly pretending they were not necessary?
Yes. Many UWSiders are completely delusional.
When the violent protesters stop, the gates will come down. Easy.
Like years ago atp?
So you mean now?
The protests against genocide stopped three years ago.
There were crowds chanting, “Disclose, divest, We will not Stop, We Will Not Rest.” if the gates are opened, will non-Columbia types come onto campus and start all that up again?
Back in the old days, Sam Siegel would sit on campus and offer his (crazy) paintings for sale. An old woman and her two chihuahuas would sun themselves on the ledge outside Butler to the west. There used to be a guy who would come into Butler and make menacing noises at grad students. I was there, he made noises at me. I just smiled and suggested he read Pindar.
Lots has changed since the 1970s, let alone since the days when Low was the actual library.
Meanwhile, today … I think it harms the mission of the university if there are massive demonstrations about political causes to which the university has but a tenuous tie, if that.
Sam Steinberg. (I have 3 Sam’s) Let me know if you want a bookmark, 795, with his story and artwork that was distributed at at one reunion.
For everyone else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Steinberg_(artist)
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/nyregion/outsiders-art-is-saluted-at-columbia-then-lost-anew.html
I’m confused by the claim here—and a claim I’ve seen repeated elsewhere—about having to wait in line to enter campus. I’m on campus at least 3x a week and other than the first day of classes in the fall, I’ve never had to wait behind more than a couple of people. It’s hardly a line, it takes just a couple of seconds. We all have our opinions about whether campus should be open but there’s no need to exaggerate the minor inconvenience of tapping an id card.
Defending the conduct of Columbia University in the year of our lord 2026 is equivalent to defending Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. That’s it
Confounding that so many of our neighbors explicitly object – in their words – to “chanting” and “demonstrations.”
I think it’s the whole “get the Jews” thing that has many in the neighborhood up in arms.
This is a joke. People in the hood have to walk all over the place to get around locked gates. Every college in the world seems to manage just fine without becoming a fortress. Plus the university folded like a house of cards –
I would love to see the energy and passion many feel on this topic redirected to protect our Jewish students and neighbors who have been accosted by the recent wave of blood libel against them. If keeping the gates closed and these instigators out is the way to do it than so be it. It’s not a free speech issue as this is a private institution. It’s also hate speech which is not protected.