Everywhere there is gloom, and uncertainty about what happens next at Columbia University.

Students told the BBC that the university’s decision to call in police to clear a Gaza protest late on Tuesday, leading to a raid on the occupied Hamilton Hall and hundreds of arrests, has left the college community shattered.

The university president, Nemat Shafik, said that it was with great regret that she ordered the police raid against students and others she said had infiltrated the protest. It would “take time to heal”, she added in a message in the operation’s aftermath.

For students of this prestigious school in Manhattan, New York, how long is unclear.

“It definitely feels like things are scattered,” said Anna Oakes, a graduate journalism student at Columbia University who covered the removal of protesters from Hamilton Hall on Tuesday evening. “There’s this feeling of scramble in the aftermath.”

After a night of chaos and confrontation, the clearest reminder of the protests on Wednesday morning were water-logged flyers littering streets alongside the campus perimeter. One promised that protest organisers “will not stop. We will not rest”.

Read Original Article