Columbia told their student radio station to shut down right away and evacuate the building. Later the uni changed its mind.
Radio station's livestream - see the "listen" button - WKCR 89.9FM NY
Radio station's livestream - see the "listen" button - WKCR 89.9FM NY
Wow they are extremely not allowed to do that holy shit.
Would've loved to be a fly on the wall for the ensuing meeting with whomever gave the order for that one.
I have zero idea why it happened but in my mind's eye a uni bigshot had the bright idea to shutdown the station as a demonstration of power. Then a yes man (or two or three) started the process until somebody lower down in the food chain said something like "I don't think we can do this..." And maybe the impetus for all of this was that same bigshot (or yet another one) got annoyed by the livestream and their coverage of the protest and those in power wanted it killed and killed right away.
In any case - I assume tomorrow there will be lots of lying by those in power and a focus on the passive voice plus words like "miscommunication" to explain this mess.
I wish I had context for this situation. Did it happen before at other universities and colleges during the Vietnam War? It's sort of amazing to me how powerful Israel is in the US.
I think it's less about how powerful Israel is and more about why the ultra wealthy and powerful Americans unconditionally want to commit old-school settler-colonial genocide in the name of "strategic interests".
Excited to call upon my onetime experience as a college radio station manager here and say that the FCC's very strict requirements about dead air produce a kind of funny opportunity here to get your university fined big bucks if they send their private security staff to tell you stop broadcasting.
https://bsky.app/profile/sorenspicknall.bsky.social/post/3kqmfscdcb42i
A journalist's post that I used to grab the screenshot.
Update from Columbia's student radio station WKCR tonight
https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3kqmflezxps2l
>open up the student radio
>they're playing the literal worst music i've ever heard
edit: the sax just came in, this is pretty cool actually 