The president of the Transport Workers Union, John Samuelsen, is condemning Columbia University for allegedly failing to protect the union’s members during the protest at Hamilton Hall last week.

In a letter to the university, Mr. Samuelsen said that school officials “epically failed to protect the safety of these university employees, who were forced to fight their way out of the building.”

“Columbia also failed a TWU-represented Security Officer who was subjected to verbal abuse by aggressive and threatening protesters who broke into the building,” Mr. Samuelsen wrote.

During the protests, students and others involved in the demonstrations broke into and barricaded themselves in Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, a hall which has featured prominently in past protests at the university. Police ended up storming the building to forcibly remove the protesters, according to police.

When the building was breached, according to Mr. Samuelsen’s letter, the custodians inside informed the protesters that they wished the leave the building.

The custodians “were informed by at least one smarmy, sanctimonious, elitist, shite
occupier, in a direct reference to the Gaza protests and subsequent occupation of
Hamilton Hall, that there was no chance of leaving because ‘this moment is bigger
than you,'” Mr. Samuelsen writes. “The custodians then had to courageously fight their way towards one of the exits.”

The union, which represents 725 employees at Columbia, is now demanding the names of those arrested at Hamilton Hall, the CCTV footage of the incident, and any information relating to the incident supplied to Columbia by the police.

The union’s president is also demanding a meeting with the university to discuss how they plan on avoiding issues in potential future protests.