Columbia Students arrested after storming library: some are repeaters including student who demanded humanitarian aid

Pro-Hamassholes

Well, folks, the Ivy League’s gone full circus again. At least six Columbia students nabbed for storming a university library on Wednesday are old hands at this game, including one genius who demanded “humanitarian aid” from the school, according to a Washington Free Beacon dig. These repeat offenders were already slapped on the wrist for prior campus raids or last spring’s tent-city shenanigans.

Out of 81 total arrests, 44 are Columbia kids, 13 hail from Barnard College (Columbia’s sister school), and one Barnard staffer, Eva-Quenby Johnson, got cuffed too. Oh, and two students from Union Theological Seminary, another Columbia affiliate, joined the party.

This masked crew didn’t just waltz in. They roughed up two security guards, handed out pamphlets cheering Hamas’s violence, trashed the library, and rechristened it after Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian terrorist who met his maker in a 2017 shootout with Israeli forces. Classy.

Columbia’s security team locked the exits, told the radicals to flash their IDs and skedaddle or face cuffs. After a few hours of defiance, the university called their bluff, and NYPD rolled in, zip-tying the troublemakers and herding them onto a bus.

Let’s meet some of these all-stars.

Ramona Sarsgaard

Yep, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s kid, Ramona Sarsgaard, was among the anti-Israel crowd hauled off by NYPD. Maggie, a Columbia grad herself, once gushed about her daughter’s eco-warrior cred. “She, like many, many children, isn’t able to push out of her mind the dire situation that we’re in,” Gyllenhaal told People in 2019, when Ramona was 13. “They’re really concerned and upset, demanding that the grownups pay attention. My daughter did that to me and it took me a minute.”

Guess saving the planet didn’t stop Ramona from rocking a tan leather getup at Paris Fashion Week in January. Priorities, right? She’s also got Hollywood royalty in her corner—her uncle Jake Gyllenhaal, inspired by Ramona and her sister, co-wrote a 2023 book about aunts and uncles. Cute.
Serial Building Stormers

At least four of the arrested students are no strangers to campus chaos. Columbia’s Symmes Cannon and Hannah Puelle got pinched and suspended for storming Barnard’s Millstein Library in March, clashing with cops when they refused to bounce. No word on whether their suspensions stuck. Another student, Gabrielle Wimer, was back in class by mid-April after a similar stunt, per the Free Beacon.

Then there’s Marianne Almero, a fresh Columbia grad, and Barnard’s Samarra Sankar, both nabbed for raiding Hamilton Hall last spring. Almero’s resume includes interning at the Urban Indigenous Collective, where she pushed “social justice advocacy to decolonize education institutions, climate justice, incarceration and police systems, and health accessibility.” The Manhattan DA dropped most charges, and Columbia disciplined the culprits—nearly a year later. Swift justice, huh?

Two more Columbia students, Johannah King-Slutzky and Anjali Vishwanath, got detained and suspended for last year’s encampment. King-Slutzky, a doctoral student, became a meme for demanding “humanitarian aid” and “a glass of water” for the radicals occupying Hamilton. She didn’t join that takeover but was arrested at the encampment earlier and still taught a “Contemporary Western Civilization” course last fall. Gotta love Ivy League standards. Vishwanath, from Columbia’s School of Social Work, called it “an honor to be arrested and suspended for Palestine.” This year, she’s part of Columbia’s Action Lab for Social Justice, which aims to “uproot systems of oppression.” Subtle.

Sueda Polat

Sueda Polat, a Columbia grad student in human rights, played negotiator for last spring’s encampment, repping Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the campus’s most rabidly anti-Semitic group. She teamed up with Mahmoud Khalil, a protest leader currently in ICE custody, to bully Columbia into ditching Israel by “any available means necessary.” Polat also rubbed elbows with CUAD’s Khymani James, who’s openly fantasized about “murdering Zionists.” Charming company.

Dalia Darazim

Dalia Darazim, a sophomore studying Middle Eastern studies, took to the Columbia Spectator in January 2024 to blast her school and classmates for not going hard enough against Israel post-Oct. 7. “I realized that for my peers in the human rights major, Palestine was not a part of their self-proclaimed efforts for social justice,” she wrote. “I realized that not only was the Palestinian cause not included in anyone’s agenda, but Palestinians themselves had no place on Columbia’s campus.”

Darazim, who joined last spring’s encampment, doubled down in a June 10 Spectator op-ed, accusing reporters asking about Jews feeling unsafe of enabling genocide. “Time after time, I took a deep breath, and delivered a thoughtful, diplomatic answer in response to this genocide-enabling question—a question that deliberately denies Palestinians the right to narrative by centering college campuses and their students over the ongoing slaughter in Gaza,” she wrote. “No American college student’s feelings should be centered over Palestinian lives.” Diplomacy at its finest.

Sumera Subzwari

Sumera Subzwari, a grad student at Columbia’s Teachers College, calls herself a “disabled mushroom forager.” In an April 2024 piece, she explained her fungi obsession: “I fell in love with mushrooms because they align so clearly with disability justice. Disabled folks exist outside of what society considers ‘normal,’ and mushrooms are just the same—thriving through nonconformity.” Deep. She also snagged a Vegan Women Summit scholarship in 2023. Mushroom foraging and vegan cred? She’s living the dream.

None of these geniuses responded to requests for comment, and Columbia’s staying mum. Shocker.

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