UPDATE: This form has been updated so that faculty, staff,
librarians, and other workers at Columbia can sign and join us.
We, independent student workers at Columbia, are sick of this university and its reprehensible actions towards its student protestors. We are calling for a sickout and we will withhold our labor, including final grades, for the following demands:
Full amnesty for all past and future students suspended, expelled, or subject to disciplinary action because of participation in pro-Palestine protest activity, including both Gaza Solidarity Encampments and the Hind’s Hall sit-in.
Removal of all members of the New York Police Department or any other state or federal policing force from campus immediately and permanently.
The current living and working conditions near the Morningside campus are intolerable. The neighborhood has become a militarized stronghold for the NYPD and its most violent unit, the Strategic Response Group (SRG), all at the behest of Columbia Administration and the Board of Trustees.
On the night of Tuesday, April 30th, the entire world witnessed the violent police invasion of the campus and the surrounding neighborhood. The NYPD locked media reporters, first responders, legal observers, and other bystanders inside John Jay Hall building before brutally attacking and arresting dozens of students outside and inside Hind’s Hall. The police then prevented paramedics from aiding injured students. We are relieved that, out of sheer luck, no lives were lost that night, as we now know that NYPD officers charged into rooms with weapons drawn and fired a stray bullet in Hind’s Hall.
After unleashing this assault, the administration has locked us out of campus, preventing us from working, studying, accessing our belongings, and receiving in-person medical care. Due to the lockdown, many of our students are now unable to access the campus food bank or dining halls and are experiencing food insecurity. On Friday, May 3, the University decided to have the NYPD barricade several blocks adjacent to Morningside Park and restrict access to all pedestrians, again for no clear reason other than fearmongering and without warning.
This administration has become progressively dangerous in its decisions over the past two weeks. Some students have been suspended for simply being on campus, for example having swiped into Butler Library. Many may now be faced with expulsions. While the repeated rhetoric has been that this is all to quash "violent" and "disrupting" protests, the only real, and very dangerous, violence that took place on campus has been that of the police, and the only disruption to classes and work has been from locking us all out.
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After you sign the pledge, a co-worker will follow up with an email on next steps. Signatories alone will determine by vote in regular meetings all major decisions on the continuation, ending, and changes in strategy of this sickout action. We may also use polling for signatories to reach some decisions.
The names on this pledge will not, and never will, be made public.
