While studying at Columbia’s School of Journalism in 2024, we found ourselves reporting on the historic Gaza Solidarity Encampment on our doorstep, along with our colleagues at The Columbia Spectator, WKCR, and Bwog. 

After the NYPD was called onto campus on April 18 to remove the protesters’ first encampment, similar encampments were set up at hundreds of schools across the country, and the protests at Columbia quickly became a national, and then an international story. 

Many of us were suddenly flooded with media requests, appearing on outlets like the BBC, NPR, and Al Jazeera and publishing stories in places including The Nation, The Intercept, Time, and Rolling Stone. 

For a lot of us, it was our first time working with editors at major news organizations, and we had to contend with the gaps between our perspectives on the protests, which we could see outside of our classroom windows, and the way the outside press was interested in covering them. 

During this coverage, we observed that a lot of media focused on political hot topics – accusations of antisemitism on college campuses, debates around freedom of speech, and attacks on higher education. What felt left out was a larger discussion about why these protests had such a magnetic appeal to so many, and what we might be missing as a country if we ignore these young people’s demands. 

As we took turns sleeping in Pulitzer Hall, keeping tabs on the camp as it evolved, we also amassed a trove of photos, soundbites, and videos that never made it to print. 

Now, as a new semester begins and the genocidal campaign on Gaza continues, we think it’s important to tell the story of what happened on campus last semester in our own words and make this archive accessible to the wider public. 

We hope that this project, “Occupation No More,” gives you a greater understanding of the protest movement in all its nuances. Whether or not you agree with the protesters’ goals or their methods, it feels critical to understand what it took for this group of Columbia’s students, staff, and part-time faculty representing over 100 student groups to come together, and in a display of astounding coordination and determination, maintain a small community of tents on Columbia’s lawns for two weeks. 

The project name is a reference to both what the protests were calling for and the administration’s response. Protesters called for the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Meanwhile, their own occupation of the lawns on campus, and later, Hamilton Hall, was met with strong opposition from the Columbia administration, who ultimately brought the NYPD back onto campus to forcibly remove them. 

In this project, we revisit what they did, who they are, and what drove them to camp out at the end of their school year, risking their housing, meal plans, scholarships, academic futures, public vitriol, arrest, doxxing, police violence, and in some cases even their visa statuses, to do what they thought was right.

This project is a collaboration among Marco Postigo Storel, Emily Byrski, Brendan Rose, Edward Lopez, Claire Davenport, Samaa Khullar, Anna Oakes, Indy Scholtens, Elza Goffaux, Jude Taha, Claudia Gohn, Sara Selva Ortiz, Sofia Mareque, Hoda Sherif, and Nandhini Srinivasan.

Further, our reporting would not have been possible without the professors and administrators at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and we are incredibly thankful for their support.