Outrage at Columbia

This is Jewelnel (apparently pronounced “Genelle”) Davis, the University Chaplain of Columbia University, who at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon closed to the public an event of the College Republicans scheduled for 8 p.m. where former terrorist Walid Shoebat, author of Why I left Jihad, and two other speakers were to appear. 120 people had RSVP’ed and received reservations, but were prevented from attending after the university limited the event to students, press, and the entourage of the speakers. While many of the prospective attendees got e-mails at the last minute telling them they could not come, others did not, because they were already en route. Some had traveled from other states, one from Boston, another from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (a five-hour bus trip), others from Long Island, others from New Jersey.

As a result, a group of between 12 and 20 people including me found themselves outside the Roone Arledge Auditorium at 115th Street and Broadway in the rain last evening holding their e-mail reservations in their hands and prevented from entering by security guards. (While I had not RSVP’d, I had received a general invitation indicating it was a meeting open to the public.) There was no responsible person present who could explain why people were not being admitted or perhaps to make exceptions for people who had traveled long distances to be there. No one from the Chaplains’ staff was there except an underling who knew nothing. No one from the College Republicans came out to the door to speak to us.

The man from Harrisburg, a Christian Zionist, told me that Shoebat’s book is the best thing on Islam he has read, and that he had been looking forward to hearing him and meeting him. He was properly and loudly incredulous that he was being prevented from entering the auditorium.

The official story that eventually emerged was that the university was concerned about security problems in the wake of a violent student takeover of the stage at the College Republicans’ meeting last week where Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen was the speaker. So, because leftist students had disrupted a College Republicans event last week, conservative non-students with reservations were closed out of a College Republicans event this week.

And that’s not even mentioning the administration’s decision not to close the event until three hours before it took place.

This outrageous conduct is apparently what one can expect from the leftist institution that Columbia University has become.

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Howard Sutherland writes:

Ah, the smiling face of one of our new rulers. This must be how the Romans felt when they realized that the barbarians really were in charge.

Gintas J. writes:

What, somebody didn’t tell you that “Genelle” is pronounced “Joe-Naya” (just kidding, who can tell these days?).

We live amongst a savage rabble (I’m thinking of the mob that shut the Minutemen down). And that’s just the Americans.

A reader writes:

Why didn’t she do it earlier in the week at least, so that people wouldn’t make the trip for nothing? I think she should be made to resign.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 12, 2006 03:45 PM | Send