Three students from Columbia University filed a lawsuit on Monday morning against the school administration for their suspensions related to their pro-Palestine activism on campus.
Among the claims in the complaint, the students state that the university violated its own policies during the disciplinary process, that the university targeted the students for their views, and that it violated New York’s landlord tenant laws when it evicted the students from university housing.
“The university just pulled out all the roadblocks and threw out its rule book in an attempt to punish and silence the plaintiffs however they could,” James Carlson, an attorney representing the students, told Drop Site News. “Whether it was repeatedly siccing the police on the plaintiffs to violently arrest them for peaceful protest or whether it was diverting them into an illegitimate disciplinary program that threw out their due process rights or whether it was turning a blind eye to their assaults and abuse from faculty and students. This is a case where Columbia University basically went far out of its way to unjustly punish and silence these students.”
“The university just pulled out all the roadblocks and threw out its rule book in an attempt to punish and silence the plaintiffs however they could,” James Carlson, an attorney representing the students, told Drop Site News. “Whether it was repeatedly siccing the police on the plaintiffs to violently arrest them for peaceful protest or whether it was diverting them into an illegitimate disciplinary program that threw out their due process rights or whether it was turning a blind eye to their assaults and abuse from faculty and students. This is a case where Columbia University basically went far out of its way to unjustly punish and silence these students.”
Following a months-long convoluted, and often intimidating, disciplinary process, the university suspended two of the students, Aidan Parisi and Brandon Murphy, for one year, and the third student, Catherine Curran-Groome, for two years. Prior to the suspensions, all three had been scheduled to graduate this spring. Dozens of other students had initially faced interim suspensions or other disciplinary actions for participating in pro-Palestine events last spring but according to a congressional report, those students were eventually able to return to school.
“They singled out a few of us to try to make an example out of us,” Curran-Groome told Drop Site. “None of us, absolutely none of us, deserved what we've experienced this year at Columbia in terms of the targeting and the discrimination and the violence and the repression.”
“They singled out a few of us to try to make an example out of us,” Curran-Groome told Drop Site. “None of us, absolutely none of us, deserved what we've experienced this year at Columbia in terms of the targeting and the discrimination and the violence and the repression.”
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