At a court hearing, the Manhattan district attorney's office said it would not pursue criminal charges for 31 of the 46 people initially arrested on trespassing charges inside the administration building.
Students and their allies seized the building, known as Hamilton Hall, on April 30, barricading themselves inside with furniture and padlocks in a major escalation of campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
At the request of university leaders, hundreds of officers with the New York Police Department stormed onto campus the following night, gaining access to the building through a second-story window and making dozens of arrests.
At Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors said they were dismissing charges against most of those arrested inside the building due in part to a lack of evidence tying them to specific acts of property damage and the fact that none of the students had criminal histories.
Stephen Millan, an assistant district attorney, noted that the protesters wore masks and blocked surveillance cameras in the building, making it difficult to “prove that they participated in damaging any Columbia University property or causing harm to anyone.”
