‘I Could Only Get in Because I’m a Student’: CNN Reports Live From Columbia as Police March Toward Campus

CNN reporter and Columbia University student Julia Vargas Jones reported live from the student pro-Palestine protests on campus, Tuesday, before officers with the New York Police Department forced her to leave the area.

“I’ve been here since about six in the morning and I could only get in because I am a student,”  Vargas Jones told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper as police marched towards the campus. “At the time, students were allowed on campus. At this point, only if you live on campus or you’re an essential worker, like you said, can actually be here or enter. There’s very few people on campus.”

Just feet away from the protesters, who could be heard chanting in the background, Vargas Jones reported:

This, all around here, all of these are dorms. People live here. Students live here. You can see people are just watching from their windows, waiting to see what happens. One of them said, you know, “We are waiting to see the New York Police Department come in and arrest potentially some of our classmates.”

Vargas Jones told Cooper that while she was a student on campus, she had struggled to get certain information from the organizers of the protest and was forced to rely only on what she could see.

“I’m a student. I am a member of the Columbia community. Even I am not trusted by some of the organizers here, so it’s really difficult to get that kind of information,” she said. “This is finals week, we’re a couple weeks away from graduation. I’m supposed to graduate. We have no idea what is going to happen.”

Vargas Jones concluded, “It is obviously a huge disruption and it also changes the mood on campus. It’s not just the logistics. It’s pitting people, it’s dividing people, and putting people against each other.”

Less than an hour later, Vargas Jones was moved on from her position by New York police in a moment caught live on camera.

Watch above via CNN.