Date: 28/2005 2:42:21 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
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Columbia Spectator
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Students 'Camp' to Protest Expansion
Day-Long Demonstration on Sundial Sought to Put Human Face on Columbia's Manhattanville Plans
By Tanveer Ali and Erin Durkin
Spectator Staff Writers
April 28, 2005
You may have thought your housing number was bad, but local residents camped out on campus thought they were getting a much worse deal.
Members of the West Harlem community made College Walk their temporary home yesterday in what they called “Bollingerville,” hurling strong words against Columbia’s administration and imploring students to join their cause.
The Tent City protest was sponsored by the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification and the Coalition to Preserve Community. It was intended to highlight the issues of displacement and gentrification surrounding Columbia’s plans for Manhattanville.
Nell Geiser, CC ’06 and member of SCEG said, We’re here “to change public opinion on this campus from apathy to agitation on this issue.”
She was one among many speakers who called for Columbia to respect the community-supported 197-A Plan, a framework for future development in West Harlem drafted last fall by Community Board 9.
A late afternoon rally featured testimonials from 10 Manhattanville residents who fear they will lose their homes if the expansion plan goes forward.
All the residents delivered the same message: they have lived in Manhattanville for years, they have raised children and grandchildren here, and they have no intention of leaving.
“I do not plan and do not wish to move,” said Mary Watkins, a Manhattanville resident for the past 45 years.
Some of the residents who live in the expansion zone, stretching from 125th to 133rd Streets between Broadway and 12th Avenue, fear they will be pushed out to make way for Columbia’s new campus. While they do not face direct displacement, others who live in the surrounding area are concerned that rising property values and rents resulting from expansion will make it impossible for them to afford their current homes in West Harlem.
“We’re here, and we’re going to stay here because we have no other place to go,” Nellie Bailey, director of the Harlem Tenants Council, said.
University officials said that they viewed the demonstration positively.
“The University supports student-sponsored activities that seek to foster discussion on the proposed expansion, while it continues its efforts to solicit input from students, faculty, and the greater community,” Columbia spokeswoman Liz Golden said. “This event... reflects an important aspect of education at Columbia—the civic engagement of students on issues of concern to the University and our neighboring communities.”
Participants in Tent City said their fears of losing their homes and businesses were amplified by the recent disclosure of a letter written by Columbia officials last July to the Empire State Development Corporation, obtained by Spectator under the Freedom of Information Law. In the letter, the University asked the state authority to consider using eminent domain to condemn property in the expansion zone. Enlarged copies of the letter with the words “Eminently Dishonest” branded across them in red hung from the tents.
Eminent domain is the power of government entities to forcibly buy private property for “public use.” It has been used in the past to take “blighted” property for private development, but whether this practice is considered a “public use” is widely debated, and a case calling it into question is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Speaker after speaker vowed that the University’s plan to use eminent domain would not be allowed to go forward. Norman Siegel, an attorney hired by Manhattanville business owners to challenge any use of eminent domain, said, “This is a civil rights struggle. This is a David vs. Goliath struggle... just as David won, we’re going to win.”
“Not only will we meet you in the court of public opinion,” Siegel said, “I’ll meet you in a court of law.”
Several participants described what they see as the “vibrancy” of the Mahattanville neighborhood, in contrast with the designation of “blighted” that is required for eminent domain to be invoked.
At a meeting of Community Board 9’s 197-A Task Force this Monday, Warren Whitlock, Columbia’s director of construction coordination, apologized on behalf of the University both for not disclosing the communication with ESDC and for the fact that Columbia paid the authority $300,000 to cover its costs in considering options for the area.
“We did not have our finest hour... we apologize for not keeping the community informed,” he said, describing the decision not to notify the community as “a major miscommunication, a major mistake.”
The apology was accompanied by a letter to the Community Board from Assistant Vice President for Facilities Planning and Space Management Geoffrey Wiener in which he acknowledged a “lapse in our communication,” and wrote, “Columbia did not take, or seek to take, actions inconsistent with our conversations with you and members of the community. However, we regret that our actions caused concern.”
The University’s attempts to make amends did not seem to have changed any minds at the tent city, where many participants accused Columbia of lying about its role in the eminent domain process, and said that the University’s payment to ESDC represented a conflict of interest for the authority.
The participants were also disquieted by the possibility of having a large amount of the expansion project be committed to biotech labs. They feel this is a public health hazard and that Columbia is only considering it for profit. Participants raised the prospect of dangerous bio-defense research being conducted in their neighborhood, with one sign proclaiming, “No Anthrax on the Hudson.”
While Columbia’s plans for the area do include science facilities, University officials have said that it is premature to make claims about research that may or may not take place in buildings that haven’t been built. They have also committed that they will not build a Level-4 research facility, the classification for labs working with the most dangerous materials. They have said that none of their plans will involve public health risks for the area.
Another major issue brought out in the course of the day was the impact expansion will have on employment in the area. Columbia administrators have argued that both the University and the neighborhood’s economy stand to benefit from expansion.
“The University believes its proposed expansion will solve critical space issues while significantly contributing positive benefits to the larger Manhattanville community and the city as a whole by creating opportunities for commercial and retail development and adding, both directly and indirectly, some 14,000 new jobs,” Golden said.
But Tom Kappner, a member of CPC, claims that only a fraction of those jobs will likely go to area residents, adding that Columbia can only offer clerical and support staff jobs to the area and eliminate existing jobs.
Kappner said, “Less than 2,000 jobs over 30 years will be available to community residents. We have 1,000 to 1,500 in the area already.”
Organizers of the event emphasized that it represented a united front between students, other members of the University community, and the neighborhood. “For a long time Columbia has divided the students from this community,” SCEG member Brett Murphy, BC ’07, said.
“All of this expansion is being touted as for the students,” she said. “But as a student, personally, I know that I am not in favor of this expansion.”
Robin Kelley, professor of anthropology and a Harlem native, who authored a letter from professors supporting the 197-A Plan to President Lee Bollinger and Columbia’s Board of Trustees, said that Columbia students and professors have a responsibility to support the community.
“I don’t want to go down in history as contributing to the displacement of people in a community where we live,” Kelley said. “These are our neighbors.”
Activists at the tent city frequently took an incendiary tone towards Columbia, often invoking the 1968 protests against Columbia’s expansion into Morningside Park and the general political climate of the era. “We’re not being polite today because our lives are at stake,” Nellie Bailey said.
“Their apartheid politics persist,” she said, attacking Bollinger for being inaccessible to the community. Vowing to “bring Bollinger to his knees,” Bailey said, “If you don’t come down to talk to us then we’re going to climb those steps of Low Library and talk to you... Let’s move Bollingerville to his goddamn office.”
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EMILY LOWRY/CDS
Anne Whitman, who owns a business that would be affected by the expansion, held a blow-up of a letter sent by Columbia asking the state to consider using eminent domain.
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