Unidentified protesters poured red paint over the bust of the famous “Alma Mater” (1903) statue on Columbia University’s Manhattan campus on the first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3. The apparent protest action comes after the group named Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) called on students to “shut it down,” noting that “Gazan students have no universities left to which they can return.”
While photos of the paint-soaked bronze were reposted by Students for Justice for Palestine, which was recently permanently banned by Meta, and CUAD on X, neither organization claimed responsibility. The action may have been the work of an autonomous group, a term CUAD and SJP also used to describe the individuals who organized the occupation of Hamilton Hall earlier this year and coordinated a screaming protest outside the residence of then-President Minouche Shafik before her resignation.
“This act underscored the student body’s refusal to forget the acts of the same administration currently welcoming us with naive yet predictable pomp and circumstance,” Anand Chitnis, a current Columbia senior and vice president of campus life for the college’s student council, told Hyperallergic.
“From what I can tell, we, the students, refuse to conform to the administration’s surface-level amnesia of the past semester,” Chitnis continued.
Photographs provided to Hyperallergic show maintenance workers using a power washer to remove the paint from the “Alma Mater” statue. By the end of the day, the official Columbia Instagram account shared a photo of students posing in front of a clean statue on its Stories.
Designed by artist Daniel Chester French, who also sculpted the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, “Alma Mater” is an important campus symbol. Students often pose in front of the sculpture to commemorate the start of classes and again at the end of the year in graduation regalia.
After Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, however, the statue took on a new significance. In its central location on campus, “Alma Mater” was the site of several historical moments during April’s student protests leading up to the raid of Hamilton Hall by hundreds of New York Police Department officers.
The sculpture was steps away from where students booed Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson during his speech calling for the arrest of students perpetuating “hatred and antisemitism.” Organizers also used the site as a communication hub, holding press conferences at its feet.
For Anand, it was not the most distracting moment of the first day of classes.
“The closed gates were more disruptive than any protest, causing crowds of students and staff trying to get to class to be trapped in endless lines,” Anand said.
After the spring protests, the university implemented a color-coded access system that tells students, faculty, and non-affiliates when they can enter or are restricted from campus. The new policy is similar to its pandemic-era contact tracing system that restricted students’ movement through campus based on their designated color.
“I long for the time when protests were a proud part of the university community and were a means to tangible change,” Anand said.
