A Columbia University janitor this week slammed the university's administrators for failing to protect him as he was taken hostage for hours by a mob of anti-Israel protesters who stormed and barricaded themselves inside a campus building.
"[Columbia] could have done more to a) prevent this and b) to be there for us when we needed them. We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves," said janitor Mario Torres, a father of two who was among the facilities workers held hostage inside Hamilton Hall by anti-Israel protesters in the early hours of April 30. "They failed us. They should have done more to protect us, and they didn’t."
Torres said he came face to face with the mob’s leader, a millionaire advertising executive’s 40-year-old son who lives in a $3.4 million, four-story Brooklyn townhouse, according to the Free Press.
"He had a Columbia hoodie on," Torres said, "and I managed to rip that hoodie off of him and expose his face. I was freaking out. At that point, I’m thinking about my family. How was I gonna get out? Through the window?"
"[Columbia] should have protected us a little bit more," Torres added. "Even when I left the building I did not see one public safety officer. What's that about? We had to fight our way out."
The New York Times reported that it was not until about 20 hours after Hamilton Hall’s takeover that police officers in riot gear entered the building and arrested more than 100 protesters.
Torres has not yet returned to work and is concerned that there could be retaliation against him for speaking out. "I haven't been to work since that happened. I have a family to support. This story is going to blow over. Is Columbia going to retaliate to find a reason to fire me? Is someone going to come after me?" he said.
Torres’s comments came as John Samuelsen, head of the Transport Workers Union, on Tuesday announced the union’s plans to sue Columbia for waiting too long to authorize the police to clear out Hamilton Hall and protect its staffers. "It’s on [Columbia] to protect their workforce and they didn’t do it," Samuelsen told Politico.
"We’re exploiting every legal means at our disposal against Columbia, against the individual occupiers of the building … [who] thought that they could hold our custodians hostage to their ideology," Samuelsen added.