Columbia University Considers Disciplinary Action on Speech Fracas

Columbia University is about ready to identify seven students who crashed a debate at the university on border security.

Columbia University has identified seven students who could face disciplinary charges for rushing the stage and preventing the leader of an anti-illegal immigrant group from giving a speech on campus last October.

Six students were informed last month they face penalties for disrupting the Oct. 4 speech of Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist, who was forced to leave the stage after the incident.

Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby said yesterday a seventh student was recently identified.

It is unclear if any more students could face disciplinary action.

Columbia's student newspaper, The Spectator, yesterday published a Jan. 7 letter received by one of the students.

"I have received a complaint from a member of the University that you may have engaged in conduct that violation sections . . . of the Rules of University Conduct by participating in a demonstration," the letter from the Office of Rules Administrator said.

Universities are supposed to be places where ideas are able to be aired and debated. These students sought to shut down an opposing viewpoint, not with debate, but with violence. The university's slow motion disciplinary action serves absolutely no one on the campus and sends the wrong messages to the student body.