Some people are stuck on stupid.

Some of them can be found at Columbia University, where pro-Hamas protestors reared their ugly heads and took over Butler Library, just as students were studying for finals.

According to Fox News:

Hours after more than 100 masked anti-Israel agitators stormed the Butler Library at Columbia University in New York City, pushing past campus security as students prepared for finals Wednesday afternoon, college officials summoned the New York Police Department (NYPD) in an effort to subdue the unruly mob.

More than 80 people have been arrested, all students at the university, NYPD sources told Fox News. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was also monitoring the situation. If arrests were made, the suspects were to be fingerprinted to determine if any are non-citizens, Fox News has learned.

Since I'm an alum, Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, put out this note in my email:

Dear members of the Columbia community:

Earlier today, a group of protesters occupied one of the main reading rooms in Butler library, refusing to leave, and another group breached the front door causing substantial chaos—all of this as the bulk of our students are working hard to prepare for exams. These actions not only represented a violation of University policies, but they also posed a serious risk to our students and campus safety. We had no choice but to ask for the assistance of the NYPD, and I’m grateful for their help and professionalism, as well as that of our Public Safety team. Let me be clear, what happened today, what I witnessed, was utterly unacceptable.

I spent the late afternoon and evening at Butler Library, as events were unfolding, to understand the situation on the ground and to be able to make the best decisions possible. I arrived to see one of our Public Safety officers wheeled out on a gurney and another getting bandaged. As I left hours later, I walked through the reading room, one of the many jewels of Butler Library, and I saw it defaced and damaged in disturbing ways and with disturbing slogans. Violence and vandalism, hijacking a library—none of that has any place on our campus. These aren’t Columbia’s values.

It sounds quite a bit more horrible than the media was reporting.

After this, she eventually called the cops:

Let me also make clear, our administration spent substantial time working to diffuse the situation in multiple ways, through Public Safety and Delegate visits to the students, scenes I witnessed firsthand. The students were told they simply needed to identify themselves and then leave, but most refused. I worked with professors who generously came to have the same conversations. I am enormously grateful for the many people we have in our community, our Public Safety officers, our faculty, our staff, and my team, who work so hard to make Columbia what we know it can be and should be for our community. I also made sure to be present when the police arrived; I wanted to see for myself how the operation would unfold, and I’m grateful that it was orderly, professional, and extremely limited, with a focus on the students who refused to leave the reading room.

Unfortunately, then she pivoted to the usual weakness, starting with talking to these thugs like they were kindergarteners learning what is and isn't civil disobedience:

We, at Columbia, value freedom of speech, robust debate, and peaceful protest. Today’s disruption of Butler Library was not that. We must, and we will, come together as a community to consider what civil disobedience actually is and what it means. We need to recognize that when rules are violated, when a community is disrupted for the sake of a few, that is a considered choice—one with real consequences. There is a clear line between legitimate protest and actions that endanger others and disrupt the fundamental work of the University. Today that line was crossed, and I have confidence the disciplinary proceedings will reflect the severity of the actions.

I am working with the Provost and University Life to ensure any affected students receive the support and resources they need. We have opened a new study space at Uris that will be available overnight for students.

Let me also say this. I’ve received many messages from concerned parents. The group involved less than one percent of our 36,000-person student body. Their actions had a disproportionate impact.

She should have called the cops immediately instead of "negotiated" with them, and they needed to arrive with billy clubs and paddy wagons.

Those kids at Columbia pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to study there and they have a right to do it before finals. Providing them with an 'alternate' space is pretty outrageous, given the crazed clowns in their library.

The protestors needed to be raked out and handed over to immigration authorities for appropriate dispatch.

Columbia has been through this before, with everything wrecked about a year or two ago. Now there's a new government and a new president, and this nonsense is not being tolerated. But Shipman, who saw her two predecessors thrown out for this kind of weakness, seems to be following this garden path, which is why these protests are happening.

It was astonishing, given that previous pro-Hamas protestors there have had their visas yanked and been thrown out, while Columbia itself has had its funding pulled over the antisemitism issue. The best response to a problem like that would be to send in the toughest cops on the block, immediately, with no backtalk tolerated, to get those disruptive bounders out of there.

Fortunately, not everyone is as weak-kneed as Shipman.

Marco Rubio has gotten busy:

And one can only hope that the sob stories for the press follow about these "scholars" who are really disruptive terrorist sympathizers, if not terrorists, who really meant to vandalize the school and ruin finals.

Rubio is right to throw them out since Shipman is just going to try to talk to them, and when he does, the problem doesn't come back.

Image: JSquish, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed