From a NYT report about the student takeover of a building at Columbia University:
Mariano Torres, a maintenance worker at Columbia University, was cleaning on the third floor of Hamilton Hall in his signature Yankees cap one night last week, when he heard a commotion downstairs. He said he figured it had something to do with the pro-Palestinian encampment on the lawn outside and kept working.
He was shocked, he said, when he suddenly saw five or six protesters, their faces covered by scarves or masks, picking up chairs and bringing them into the stairway.
“I’m like, what the hell is going on? Put it back. What are you doing?” he recalled.
He said he tried to block them and they tried to reason with him to get out of the way, telling him “this is bigger than you.” One person, he recalled, told him he didn’t get paid enough to deal with this. Someone tried to offer him “a fistful of cash.”
He said he replied: “I don’t want your money, dude. Just get out of the building.”
It was the beginning of what would be a frightening time for Mr. Torres, who goes by Mario, and two other maintenance workers in Hamilton Hall, who were inside when pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia took over the building....
Mr. Torres and his colleagues called for help from the police and the school’s public safety officers, but no one arrived in time to assist them. The university eventually asked the police to clear the building and other protesters around campus, but they did not come until nearly 20 hours later.
That meant the workers, who were briefly trapped inside, had to make their own way out.
“They failed to protect us,” said Mr. Torres, 45, whose scuffle with a male protester was captured by a freelance photojournalist inside the building....
John Samuelsen, the international president of the union [that represents the maintenance workers], wrote Monday to Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia, saying she had “epically failed to protect the safety of these university employees, who were forced to fight their way out of the building.”
Mr. Samuelsen added that though Columbia had briefings with the police about the possibility that the protests could escalate, “they conveyed none of that information to the union.”...
Mr. Torres, who had worked there for five years, confronted some of the protesters, trying to protect what he saw as “his building.”
But as he saw the number of protesters grow to “maybe 15 or 20,” he said, he realized he could not fight them. He asked to be let out, but someone said the doors downstairs were already barricaded and that he couldn’t leave.
He thought of his two young sons at home. He had no idea if other buildings were being taken over, too. Fear made him “crazy,” he said. He grabbed an older protester and ripped off his sweatshirt and mask, demanding to be let out.
The man said he could bring 20 people up to back him. “I was terrified,” Mr. Torres said. “I did what I had to do.” Mr. Torres then grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and pulled the pin before someone persuaded him to calm down.
Mr. Wilson [another maintenance worker], 47, saw Mr. Torres facing off with protesters in the stairwell. He radioed his supervisors for help. Then he made his way down to the main doors. They were fastened shut with zip ties.
“So I begged them,” Mr. Wilson said. “I said, I work here, let me out, let me out.” Eventually, someone cut the zip ties and pushed him outside, he said, then secured the doors again. He found the public safety officer and told her that his co-workers were stuck inside.
“God knows what could have happened,” he said.
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