On April 29—nearly two weeks after the initial Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia—University President Minouche Shafik released a statement saying that the school “will not divest from Israel.”

Organizers started negotiations with administration after setting up their encampment. But when the university announced that it would evict and suspend students staying in the encampment after 2 pm on April 29, organizing coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) said that they had frozen talks until the university “comes to the table in good faith.”

The school was “toying with us,” said one organizer, whose name is withheld to protect him from potential retaliation. “Nothing concrete came out; they barely budged on anything,” he said. But the students decided to keep fighting. “What is there that we can do to escalate—to say we mean business?’”

On April 30, students occupied legendary Hamilton Hall—the same building that anti–Vietnam War and anti-gentrification protesters took over in 1968. Dozens have shuttered themselves in the hall until, as one protester with a bullhorn shouted from the occupied balcony, “Columbia meets every one of our demands.” The administration has since announced a complete lockdown of Columbia, with only students living on campus and “employees who provide essential services to campus buildings, labs and residential student life” permitted entry.

The action at Hamilton Hall—which activists are calling “Hind’s Hall”—began at around 12:30 am. Students, many wearing keffiyehs, jogged over from different points on campus and streamed into the hall. An organizer announced that the building had been liberated in honor of Hind Rajab, “a 6-year-old Palestinian child—murdered in Gaza by the Israeli Occupation Forces funded by Columbia University.”

Those inside stacked wooden chairs to secure the internal entrance of Hamilton. Meanwhile, picketers sealed doors with metal picnic tables, trash cans, and planters. This action drew attention from at least two Columbia students, who infiltrated the picket and attempted to physically block the placement of a table at one of the entrances. “This is mob rule; this is despotism!” A friend of the counterprotesters came to “de-escalate” by leading them away from the entrance. After they left, protesters resumed barricading the door, while more students began gathering in front of John Jay Hall to watch. Some—wearing heels and floor length gowns—had just left a Theta sorority formal. Others emerged in pajama pants from their dorms.

Inside Hamilton Hall, protesters used copies of the Columbia Daily Spectator to cover the ground-level windows and hinder visibility to outsiders. Around 1:30 am, the crowd erupted into cheers as a Palestinian flag was unfurled from a third-floor window.

After the occupation was complete, CUAD posted a press release on X, formerly Twitter, that identified those inside Hamilton as an “autonomous group” who represent the continuation of the university’s long history of student activism “which Columbia once repressed, but now celebrates.”