Right near the 116th Street and Broadway gate to Columbia University is Pulitzer Hall, the graduate school of journalism. Through months of protests and administrative upheaval at the university, the polished halls and studios of the building remain largely unchanged. Each night feels similar to the next, with many student journalists working until late, sitting in empty classrooms or killing time in communal spaces. Last week, however, the usual scenario was cut short.

A lone Public Safety officer appeared around 10 p.m., knocking on classroom doors and telling students to pack up and leave. He explained to students the building was closing. “We got this from the head of public safety,” he told students. “I’m just following policy.”

The building closure came on April 28, almost exactly a year after the April 30, 2024, occupation of Hamilton Hall in solidarity with Palestine. A security staff member later told The Indypendent the closure policy was in effect for a series of buildings on Morningside campus until graduation. The officer on shift explained: “They just don’t want anyone hanging out in the buildings after hours. They are taking extra precautions.”

A building hours schedule the first guard shared with some students says Pultizer closes at 8 p.m. for the duration of the spring semester. Many of the Journalism School’s classes end at 9 p.m. Despite the officers’ claims, security has not ordered students out of Pulitzer since. University spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

The policy adds to the list of ways that Columbia has policed space amid pro-Palestine protests on campus since 2023. It comes as a part of a broader series of actions that consolidates and centralizes control over the campus and its community within the top rungs of university administration and the board of trustees. Both law enforcement and university disciplinary action has caused a chilling effect on speech across campus.

Over the past two months, Columbia University has undergone epochal changes. On March 8, Palestinian student protester Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and detained without a warrant by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security officers. The Trump administration announced a $400 million cut to Columbia’s federal funding on March 7. The week after, the administration demanded that Columbia, pending the negotiation of the budget cut, make changes to the university’s governance, curricula and disciplinary processes. Columbia complied.

In an April 18 email to Columbia affiliates, Acting President Claire Shipman announced a summer “review” of the university senate, the only university-wide elected body of students and faculty. Shipman, who spent the bulk of her career in journalism and just a few months ago was co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, wrote, “the Senate was not built to function efficiently and effectively in intensely challenging moments like this.”

Acting President Shipman took over after the resignation of Interim President Katrina Armstrong in March shortly after Columbia agreed to many of the federal government’s demands. The university’s board of trustees, which appoints the president, is self-selecting and, until recently, its bylaws were not publicly accessible.

On March 31, members of the university senate released the 335-page Sundial Report on the school’s actions from October 2023 to December 2024 pertaining to harms to academic freedom, privacy, due process and shared governance. The report says the “university has conducted itself in unprecedented ways” that “render the institution more fragile and jeopardize the institution and its mission.”

On April 22, days after the announcement of the senate review, a university senate town hall consisting of hundreds of Columbia affiliates was attended by two trustees — a rare occurrence. A faculty member asked what the “rush” was to change the senate. Trustee Keith Goggin, who graduated from and has served on alumni boards for the Columbia Journalism School, moved toward the exit without addressing the question. This reporter followed Goggin and reiterated the question to no answer. A Columbia security officer touched and physically blocked Santomauro-Stenzel from following Goggin further down a hallway otherwise accessible to students.

Governance concerns arose again at a May 2 plenary of the university senate. Senator and classics professor Joseph Howley asked Acting President Shipman about an article in The Observer claiming members of the board of trustees advised the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress on how to make demands of the university. Shipman denied the allegations.

After Shipman left the meeting, the chair of the senate’s Executive Committee, who led the Sundial Report, Professor Jeanine D’Armiento, read a statement calling federal pressure a “convenient excuse” for university trustees to disempower shared governance. The acting president, in an “ostensibly temporary role,” is enacting “sweeping” changes to University governance, disregarding and “unilaterally rewriting” the school’s statutes, D’Armiento said. “The Board of Trustees and their Acting President aim to consolidate power and silence dissenting voices.”

Meanwhile, as reported by the Associated Press and Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia’s newly created discipline body, the Office of Institutional Equity, has pursued investigations in relation to a pro-Palestine op-ed in the Spectator.

Columbia’s policies around public space since the encampments of last year have tightened. On the eves of protests, metal fences often block the Low Library steps and surround Alma Mater, a statue in front of the central administration building.

Columbia took to gating off many of its gates with barricades after student protesters chained themselves to campus gates multiple times over the last month and a half, demanding the University to reveal the names of the trustees who allegedly assisted in the disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil, as reported in March by The Forward. 

Columbia remains embroiled in crisis, and many community members question who is really in charge. “It’s never clear whether we’re hearing from the [university] president or from the board,” said Professor Howley.

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