NYC takes on Columbia over locked campus walkway

Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Bumbly March

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Eric Gillet · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

New York City has agreed to pursue legal action against Columbia University to reopen College Walk, the 116th Street pedestrian path locked since 2023 amid pro-Palestinian protests, citing a 1953 easement requiring the walkway remain open to the public. Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city reversed the prior administration's position and was dropped from the underlying lawsuit as part of a court-approved stipulation.

Columbia maintains the walkway is private property despite decades of public use, and cites campus safety concerns tied to the Gaza-related protests. Neighborhood plaintiffs, including a law professor who lives nearby, argue the closure creates a public nuisance for mobility-impaired residents and families, and note other universities have reopened similar spaces without incident.

A student survey found most current students consider the closure unjustified, though current seniors are the only undergraduates who remember it ever being open.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A university that called its own walkway a ‘tree-lined public walkway’ in its alumni magazine is now arguing in court that the public was never actually invited. That's a rough position to defend once someone finds the old brochure. Three years is a long time to keep a gate locked over a fear the neighbors say never had much evidence behind it.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Bumbly March · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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