The nine agitators arrested during Wednesday nightās takeover of a Barnard College academic building were all released with desk appearance tickets, as it was revealed none of them were actually students at the elite womenās college.
The disruptors taken into custody included several from privileged backgrounds, including one whose family founded the popular Hampton Jitney bus service in the 1970s ā and one rabble rouser who had been busted at two other protests and has called for the āoverthrowā of America.
The nine were cuffed after more than 200 protesters swarmed the Milstein Library at Barnard College, many of them from nearby schools including Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, a source told The Post.
Among those arrested was Alexander Nanci-Marr, 20, whose family, from tony Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, started the Hampton Jitney, which in its heyday shuttled Hollywood royalty like Lauren Bacall and George Plimpton to their oceanside estates, and even once appeared in an episode of āSex and the City.ā
She was taken into custody after refusing copsā orders to disperse while trying to clear the area following a bogus bomb threat that prompted an evacuation of Milstein Library. According to sources, Nanci-Marr locked arms with fellow protesters and pushed back against police lines.
Christopher Holmes, 26, is a serial troublemaker who was previously arrested when the NYPD stormed Columbia Universityās Hamilton Hall last April after a violent and chaotic occupation by anti-Israel demonstrators.
The protesters smashed glass, barricaded the building from the inside and draped a large flag calling for āintifadaā from the building named for Alexander Hamilton. Holmes, who officers saw smashing glass windows, was charged with reckless endangerment, burglary, criminal mischief and conspiracy.
Alexander Nanci-Marr, a 20-year-old from Sag Harbor whose family started the Hamptons Jitney. Christopher Sadowski
Cops eventually got inside and arrested 44 people including two professors.
Holmes was featured in a video on X filmed at Columbia in which he blasted the university curriculum as āimperial in natureā and flippantly said he was āfighting for the total eradication of western civilization,ā adding, āexcept for African civilization.ā
Also arrested was Columbia class of 2025 president Gabrielle Wilmer, a medical student at Columbia Universityās Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons from Westport, Connecticut, on the Nutmeg Stateās āGold Coastā ā one of the wealthiest suburbs in the US.
Sheās an active member of White Coats for Black Lives at the university, and Students for a National Health Program, according to her social media posts.
Others hauled off campus by police included Hanna Puelle ā whose Instagram identifies her as publisher of Columbia Law Review ā and Yunseo Chung, a Columbia womenās studies junior, former high school valedictorian and social media editor for Quarto, the universityās official undergraduate literary magazine.
The bomb threat that came in at the height of Wednesdayās protest at Barnard was apparently meant to intimidate the rowdy mob of masked students and interlopers, a source told The Post.
An unknown individual sent the school a vulgar email through an anonymous dark web messaging service claiming to have placed a 1-inch by 8-inch pipe bomb in the Barnard College library, specifically targeting what the sender referred to as āanti-white fā-t terrorist communist (sic).ā
A staff member called 911, which prompted the police to come in and evacuate the library, the source said.
The chaos at Barnard on Wednesday spilled into Thursday, when a fresh crop of some 200 student protesters gathered on the steps of Low Library at Columbia in the afternoon. The NYPD set up barricades and was checking student IDs before allowing them on campus in an attempt to maintain order.
Some anti-Israel protesters outside the campus, all of whom refused to speak to The Post, held signs reading āCUNY faculty member says: Down with McCarthyite witch hunts against pro-Palestine protesters!ā and āCUNY students in solidarity against the witch hunt ā cops out!ā
Another protester handed out flyers from Bob Avakianās New Communism group, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, comparing President Trump to Hitler.
āTrumpās fascist rule, like Hitlerās before him, is a regime of horrors ā and is completely illegitimate,ā it read in part.
By mid-afternoon, some students from the Columbia protest, most wearing masks and keffiyehs, marched to Barnard, chanting āBarnard College we know you, you arrest our students tooā and āLaura Rosenbury we know you, you arrest students too,ā in a reference to Barnard President Laura Rosenbury.
This weekās protests, which followed another campus building takeover last week, were sparked by the expulsion of a pair of students who barged into a class on modern Israel to distribute hateful literature, including a flyer featuring an army boot stomping down on a Star of David.
Rosenbury and other Barnard administrators drew most of the protestersā ire, who were even featured in an Old West-style āwantedā poster and a hastily rigged effigy outside Milstein Library.
There were signs calling for Rosenburyās removal, and even suggesting Wednesdayās bomb threat was fabricated to have students removed.
āLyinā Laura must resign, we will fight for Palestine,ā one chant repeatedly rang out.
Just before 3 p.m. the protest at Columbia ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, but the protesters vowed they would return.
āWe will be back, fāk the police. Buddy up, mask up, stay safe,ā they chanted before departing in an uncharacteristically orderly fashion.