SUNDAY: What percentage of students got arrested?

SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2024

More numbers from the Times: How many students got arrested for participating in the seizure of Columbia's Hamilton Hall?

This past Monday, we offered this instructive report on that very topic. That said:

This past Thursday, the New York Times published a new report on this general topic. Below, you see the headline which appeared in print editions—and you see a passage which took us by surprise:

Columbia Workers Recount Fearful Time Trapped in Hall

[...]

When the police eventually raided the building, nearly 50 people were arrested, according to prosecutors. Many of them were students at Columbia or its affiliated colleges, but a New York Times review of police records found that nine appeared to be unaffiliated with the university.

Say what? Fewer than 50 people were arrested? Nine of those people "appeared to be unaffiliated" with Columbia?

That would mean that forty arrestees, at the most, were actual Columbia students. That seemed to differ from the numbers we included in our own report—a report which had been based on numbers we got from the New York Times.

We clicked the link on Thursday's report in the Times. When we did, we were taken to the very same news report on which we'd based our own report. 

That original Times report had included am array of numbers. Its initial jumble of numbers involved people arrested inside Hamilton Hall along with people arrested elsewhere as part of the Columbia action. 

That said, sure enough! If you read all the way to paragraphs 26 and 27 of that original Times report, you find the numbers in question. This was the headline, and the passage in question, from the original Times report:

Outsiders Were Among Columbia Protesters, but They Dispute Instigating Clashes

[...]

During a news briefing on Thursday, Columbia’s vice president for communications, Ben Chang, said figures supplied by the New York Police Department about those accused of occupying Hamilton Hall had confirmed the expectations of university leaders that many of the participants were not connected with Columbia.

“A significant portion of those who broke the law and occupied Hamilton Hall were outsiders,” said Mr. Chang, who said the figures showed that 13 of the nearly four dozen people arrested in the takeover were not affiliated with Columbia.

But the Times review of police records revealed a slightly different picture, showing that just nine of those people had no apparent ties to the university. The rest were current or former undergraduate or graduate students or university employees, The Times found. It was not clear why the university’s numbers differed.

So it said, near the end of that original report from the Times. 

Apparently, "nearly four dozen" people were arrested inside Hamilton Hall. Of that group, the Times said that nine had no apparent ties to the university. That left maybe forty who did.

Our point today is simple:

As we noted in our earlier report, there are more than 36,000 students on the rolls at Columbia. If the Times' account is accurate, it means that something like 39 of those students, and almost surely fewer, were arrested inside Hamilton Hall.

That means that we're down to something like one-tenth of one percent of the total student enrollment. But dear God! How the squeaky wheel does get the grease, given the norms of our journalistic culture!

None of this tells us if the students who seized Hamilton Hall were morally "right" or morally "wrong" in what they did. It does tell us this:

At Columbia, the ginormous majority of students were not inside Hamilton Hall during this extremely high-profile action. The same phenomenon played out at other colleges and universities as various types of protests led to arrests.

A tiny minority of Columbia students were involved in the seizure of Hamilton Hall. Sensible news coverage should include that extremely basic fact.

That would be sensible news coverage. Our floundering nation's bollixed coverage almost never did.

That's especially true on the Fox News Channel, where you'd think that all the brainwashed kids have gone wild.  That said, it's also true pretty much everywhere else.

The numbers create a bit of perspective. The numbers have rarely appeared.