Students gather on the Columbia campus on Jan. 19, 2024, to protest the violence in Gaza. (Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine/X)
Soph Askanase remembers the smell — “a mix of sewage, rot and dead animal” — coming on suddenly.
The stench hit the Columbia University student during a pro-Palestinian rally on campus Friday. About 300 people had gathered on the steps of the Low Library, protesting Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.
“I could hear protesters asking each other if they could smell it, too,” said Askanase, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Columbia University Apartheid Divest. “I really thought it was leaked sewage or something dead near us.”
Hours later, the scent had not lifted — and some of the protesters had begun to suffer nausea, burning eyes and stomach pain. Several were hospitalized, according to organizers.
Now, university and New York law enforcement officials are investigating reports that those at the demonstration were sprayed with a chemical substance in what the university’s interim provost, Dennis A. Mitchell, said Monday could be “serious crimes, possibly hate crimes.” He added that the school had banned “the alleged perpetrators,” whom he did not identify, from campus as the investigation continues.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms any threats or acts of violence directed toward anyone in our community,” Mitchell wrote in a statement.
No arrests had been made as of Tuesday, New York Police Department Detective Annette Shelton said.
The incident comes as tensions remain high over the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that the enclave’s Health Ministry says has killed more than 25,000, launched after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that Israel estimates killed about 1,200. Since the first days of the war, American college campuses have been inflamed by tensions over the situation in the Middle East. Protests have been held in support of both Israel and Palestinians, and donors and politicians have paid close attention to the stances taken by university officials.
At Columbia on Friday, hundreds of students gathered around 1 p.m. to encourage the school to divest from Israel and speak out against the killings of Palestinians. Cameron Jones, a lead organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace who helped put together the event, said the first 30 minutes were ordinary.
It was at 1:45 p.m. that he said he smelled something “like human poop mixed with decaying animals.” He pointed it out to a friend, who acknowledged the smell, but both were so focused on the rally that they initially didn’t think much of it.
The first report came in to police at 1:50 p.m., with a caller saying that “an unknown substance was sprayed into the air,” New York Police Department spokeswoman Thiffany Monderson said Tuesday.
Police received one report of someone experiencing irritated eyes and nausea, but five more with similar reports have come forward since the incident, Shelton said. Jones, the protest organizer, said that in addition to the eight people hospitalized, others visited urgent care.
Officials declined to comment on possible motives or elaborate beyond the statement shared Monday.
One student told The Washington Post she reported to police that she was harassed by two men at the protest.
Lea, a sophomore who spoke on the condition that her last name be withheld because of safety concerns, said she was standing with a sign that read “CU Jews for Ceasefire” when the men approached her and began questioning her Judaism.
The student, who grew up an Orthodox Jew, said she started talking to the men in Hebrew: “They told me, ‘What happened to you? Who spoiled you? Who ruined you?’”
In the days that followed the protest, attendees puzzled over what had caused the smell — and why some of them felt sick. In a group message between protesters, one wrote: “i’m alone now and can still smell it on me [let me know] if same happened for u guys,” one texted.
People offered all sorts of rationalizations: Some thought it was a stink bomb; another said “maybe we just stink.” Some felt isolated, wondering whether they were alone in feeling unwell. “i thought i was losing my mind,” one texted the group.
They traded messages describing some of their symptoms and encouraged one another to visit urgent care.
When Askanase and four other protesters reported their symptoms to campus police and the NYPD on Sunday evening, they brought a jacket that had been doused with the foul-smelling substance. Askanase said that even being in a room with the jacket made some of them feel ill.
“Three of us ended up in the hospital that night,” Askanase said. “I woke up the next day feeling foggy even though the rally at this point was three days ago.”
Cate Brown and Niha Masih contributed to this report.
