The daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been suspended from Barnard College and is barred from entering certain buildings on the school's campus after helping to organize an anti-Israel protest at Columbia University last week.
Isra Hirsi, a junior at Barnard, a private women's liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University, announced last week that she and three other students who helped organize the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University were suspended and barred from entering the Manhattan school's dining hall and dorm buildings on campus not long after the school called in police officers to break up the encampment.
Hirsi told Teen Vogue in an interview on Sunday that "there's some misunderstanding of what the camp was and what was happening in the camp," and claimed that the protesters were not "disrupting campus life."
She added that police came on Thursday morning and "arrested our legal observers," who were charged with obstruction of governmental administration, and several protesters, who were charged with trespassing.
Hirsi said that her "biggest concern" was being unable to return to her dorm room, adding that her roommates brought her a "bag of clothes because they knew that I was likely evicted."
The group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine later posted a photo on social media showing signs reportedly displayed in dorm buildings on the school's campus with her picture and name, as well as those of the other protest organizers, with "no entry" written across the top.
Hirsi said despite this, she has not "formally been evicted" from Barnard campus housing, but she "cannot go to the dining hall" and was told to "pick up a prepackaged bag of food a full 48 hours" after being suspended.
She added the punishment for Barnard students has been more strict than the punishment for Columbia students, who she said "still have access to a dining hall and to their homes."
Hirsi said that she and the other suspended students "have no clue" what will come next for them.
She said, "Our interim suspension is contingent on what happens at our hearings, which has not been set. They told us that we would receive a date by Monday at noon, so I'm basically at least houseless until then."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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