A New York judge has vacated disciplinary sanctions imposed by Columbia University against 22 students who occupied Hamilton Hall in April 2024, ruling that the school improperly relied on sealed arrest records.
In a Feb. 27 decision, Justice Gerald Lebovits, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, wrote that Columbia’s internal hearing panel was “statutorily barred from taking into account the fact that petitioners had been arrested in Hamilton Hall.” He added that the sealed arrests were “the only evidence before the hearing panel that petitioners were in Hamilton Hall while it was occupied.”
“As a result,” the court wrote, “the panel’s determinations that petitioners committed most of the charged disciplinary violations (as affirmed on administrative appeal) are arbitrary and capricious.”
The takeover, which lasted from April 29-30, 2024, involved a mob of anti-Israel protesters barricading themselves inside Hamilton Hall and briefly holding two university staff members hostage, according to authorities. The New York City Police Department ultimately removed the occupiers from the building. The ruling notes that participants masked themselves, spread throughout the hall, covered interior security cameras and set up barricades to block entrances and exits.
Students arrested during the incident were arraigned on misdemeanor trespass charges, but prosecutors later dismissed the cases, and the records were sealed under New York law. Prosecutors cited insufficient evidence tying individuals to property damage or injuries.
The court noted that, under the state’s Criminal Procedure Law, “the arrest and prosecution shall be deemed a nullity and the accused shall be restored, in contemplation of law, to the status he occupied before the arrest and prosecution.”
Lebovits concluded that Columbia could not rely on the arrests to establish that the students were present in the building. The university “could find that petitioners committed those charged violations only if it had evidence that petitioners were in Hamilton Hall in the first place,” he wrote.
The judge denied Columbia’s motion to dismiss and remanded the matter for further proceedings, leaving the university free to restart disciplinary action consistent with the ruling.
Shoshana Aufzien, a student journalist at Columbia, called the outcome “avoidable” and described the university’s handling as “gross negligence.”
“One motion from the Manhattan District Attorney would have kept the students’ records unsealed. One phone call from Columbia would have gotten him to file it. Nobody cared,” she wrote. “The students who occupied Hamilton Hall now walk free.”
