Meet the Columbia Radicals Arrested for Storming a Barnard Building

Students were charged with disorderly conduct, trespassing, and 
obstructing governmental administration

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Nearly half the radical activists arrested Wednesday after storming a 
Barnard College library are Columbia University students, a Washington 
Free Beacon review found.

Of the nine individuals arrested after storming Millstein Library, four 
are Columbia students: Gabrielle Wimer, Hannah Puelle, Yunseo Chung, and 
Symmes Cannon. One, Tramy Dong, is a Barnard student. Another, Christopher 
Holmes, attends Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia affiliate, while 
the remaining three appear unassociated with either school. They were 
charged with disorderly conduct, trespassing, and obstructing governmental 
administration, according to an NYPD spokesman.

Barnard president Laura Ann Rosenbury, however, stressed that the police 
weren’t called in because the radicals stormed Milstein Library. Rather, 
she felt the building needed to be cleared to protect the broader student 
body because of a bomb threat in the building.

The radicals rushed in through a back exit that an accomplice held open, 
hoisted an effigy of Rosenbury, and passed out Hamas propaganda. They 
refused to leave, even after they were alerted of the bomb threat. Law 
enforcement eventually cleared the agitators from the library, but the 
protesters refused to clear the courtyard outside and clashed with police. 
Officers began making arrests.

Wimer is a medical student at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and 
Surgeons. According to screenshots of her LinkedIn that has since been 
deleted, she is "passionate about global health and human rights" and has 
"experience in research, program management, and community outreach in 
multicultural settings." Wimer is the Class of 2025 president, the 
programming coordinator for Columbia’s Human Rights and Asylum Clinic, and 
an active member of Columbia’s chapters of White Coats for Black Lives and 
Students for a National Health Program, according to an online bio.


A screenshot of Gabrielle Wimer's LinkedIn before it was deleted.
Puelle is a Columbia senior studying philosophy and sociology. The 
Columbia Undergraduate Law Review website listed her as its publisher, but 
the page was removed Thursday afternoon. Puelle is also a research 
assistant at Columbia’s Labor Lab, according to her LinkedIn. A source 
familiar with Puelle said she was a resident adviser in the first-year 
residence dormitory John Jay Hall. She is also a member of Columbia’s 
Resident Advisers Collective Bargaining Committee, according to the 
Columbia Spectator.


Hannah Puelle's LinkedIn photo.
The third, Chung, is a Columbia junior pursuing her bachelor’s degree in 
English and Women’s and Gender Studies. According to a screenshot of her 
LinkedIn taken before it was deleted, she is involved in Columbia’s 
Criminal Justice Coalition and Columbia’s Queer Alliance and was the 
valedictorian of the high school she attended.


A screenshot of Yunseo Chung's LinkedIn before it was deleted.
Cannon is the deputy editor of Columbia Spectator’s weekly magazine, the 
Eye, but the page appears to have been removed.


A screenshot of Symmes Cannon's page on the Columbia Spectator website 
before it was removed.
Even though it was a Barnard building that was stormed, the focus will 
likely center more on Columbia because its students make up the bulk of 
those arrested. Since President Donald Trump took office, the university 
has taken a more aggressive posture toward its anti-Semitic students. In 
the past, however, it has been lenient. It dropped the vast majority of 
the suspensions leveled against students who participated in illegal anti-
Israel protests last spring, for example.

"We have been notified that four Columbia students were arrested as part 
of yesterday’s disruption at Barnard’s Milstein Library and we are working 
swiftly through our discipline process. We regret that members of our 
community participated in this unacceptable disruption at Barnard," a 
Columbia spokeswoman told the Free Beacon. "Any violations of our rules, 
policies, and of the law must have consequences. We remain committed to 
supporting our Columbia student body of over 36,000 students and our 
greater campus community during this challenging time."

Columbia students Wimer, Puelle, Chung, and Cannon did not respond to 
requests for comment.

The only Barnard student arrested, Dong, is a junior studying computer 
science. She was listed as a communications intern with the Surveillance 
Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit organization working to "fight 
against mass surveillance in New York and beyond"—the group’s intern page 
was removed Thursday afternoon. According to an online bio, which was also 
removed, Dong is "interested in the intersection of technology and 
activism, hoping to learn more about surveillance systems and possible 
solutions." According to her LinkedIn, she is part of Barnard’s Science 
Pathways Scholars Program, a "highly selective four-year program that 
supports young students from low-income or first-generation households."


A screenshot of Tramy Dong's intern bio.
Dong did not respond to a request for comment.

Barnard’s vice president for development and alumnae relations Michael 
Farley, however, in a statement claimed that "none of the individuals 
arrested on our campus Wednesday evening are Barnard students." It is 
unclear if Dong was one of the two students the college expelled for 
storming an Israeli history class at Columbia in January and targeting 
Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers. Barnard did not respond to a 
request for comment.

The radicals stormed Barnard’s Milbank Hall last week to protest those 
expulsions. A third Barnard student was expelled soon after for storming a 
Columbia building last spring. The agitators behind Wednesday’s incident 
demanded the reversal of all three.

A mob led by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia 
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)—the Ivy League institution's most 
anti-Semitic student groups—stormed Barnard’s Milbank Hall on Feb. 26, 
sending a security guard to the hospital and causing $30,000 in damages. 
CUAD and SJP also took credit for orchestrating Wednesday’s incident at 
the Milstein Library.

Once inside, the agitators handed out Hamas propaganda justifying the Oct. 
7, 2023, terror attack. They demanded the immediate reversal of the 
Barnard students’ expulsions, "amnesty for all students disciplined for 
pro-Palestine action," and a complete "abolition of the corrupt Barnard 
disciplinary process." They also renamed the library after Hussam Abu 
Safiya, a Gaza hospital director the Israel Defense Forces accused of 
being a terrorist and holding a rank in Hamas.

Even though the agitators voted to stay overnight, until Rosenbury 
returned to campus in the morning, a bomb threat reported in the building 
forced Barnard vice president for strategic communications Robin Levine to 
try to evacuate the library. She told students, "You need to leave now, 
this is not a joke," but the protesters refused to vacate the building, 
telling her, "you're lying" and "prove it."

NYPD Strategic Response Group officers were called to the scene and 
entered the occupied building, pushing most of the activists off campus. 
Those who resisted were among the nine arrested.

Holmes is a 26-year-old graduate student at the Columbia affiliate college 
Union Theological Seminary. He was arrested twice at Columbia during last 
spring’s illegal pro-Hamas encampments, once on April 18 and again on 
April 30 over the violent occupation of Hamilton Hall and was charged with 
third degree criminal trespass. In September, Holmes was featured in a 
video posted to X where he called for "the overthrow of the corporate 
totalitarian state."

The last individuals arrested are 21-year-old Pranavi Davuluri, a student 
worker at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, according to her 
LinkedIn, Alexander Nanci-Marr, 20, and Allison Wuu, 18.

In a statement sent to the Barnard community, Rosenbury said that the 
decision to allow NYPD on campus was due to the bomb threat, not the 
occupation of the campus library.

"The safety of our campus, and every single person on our campus, must be 
protected above all else. The moment we received the bomb threat, we had 
to clear the Milstein Center and inform the authorities," she said. "The 
decision to request NYPD assistance was guided and informed entirely by 
the absolute obligation we have to keep every member of our community 
safe."

https://freebeacon.com/campus/meet-the-columbia-radicals-arrested-for-
storming-a-barnard-building/