A Columbia graduate ripped up her degree and wore a zip tie on her hands during the weekend’s commencement to protest Israel’s war on Hamas and the university’s crackdown on student protesters.
According to a livestream of the Columbia School of Social Work’s ceremony, the woman walked onto the stage to get her degree with her arms raised over her head and her wrists bound by the plastic zip-tie.
That binding, however, caused problems with the other part of her plan — ripping up her ceremonial sheepskin.
The video shows the newly minted alumna take the diploma, turn to the audience and start to rip it, a task that becomes difficult if someone binds your hands with a zip-tie.
“She eventually threw the tattered paper over her head onto the floor,” Fox News wrote in an account Monday of the viral video.
The woman, who also was wearing a traditional Arab keffiyeh on her shoulders above the blue graduation gown, removed her cap and showed the audience a message taped to the underside but which the video could not see.
Fox News could not identify the social-work graduate based on the livestream of the ceremony.
But she was not alone, according to Fox News.
Other students wore zip-ties and various Arab and Islamist garments over their robes and showed off “Free Palestine” signs. One social-work graduate, another woman, wrote the name of Hamas leader Mazen Jamal Al-Natsheh on her graduation cap, Fox reported.
The School says tuition for full-time students is over $26,000 per semester.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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