Columbia University quad was never public can close anytime despite local outrage, NYC says

The Big Apple is backing Columbia University in its war to keep its gates shut.Attorneys for the city said the Ivy League school should be allowed to block the public from a beloved community space on its Morningside Heights campus — after outraged locals sued to get access.“This has always been private property,” Rachel Moston, senior counsel for the city Law Department, argued in court this week.At the heart of the legal battle is College Walk, a once bustling footpath on West 116th Street that allows pedestrians to cut across the school’s campus instead of being forced to walk around the six blocks that Columbia takes up.Members of the Morningside Heights Community Coalition are fuming over Columbia’s decision to close the gates to the walkway — a closure that went into effect during last year’s chaotic student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.“It’s been a great public space,” Dave Robinson, the neighborhood group’s president, told The Post.“It really enriches the lives of the students [and] it enriches the lives of people in the community to have those interactions,” Robinson said.“Our kids played on the campus.

After-school groups come there.“It’s been a very important public space for people who live in the community – and that’s sort of obscured by the arguments about safety, which safety is important, but it’s not the only thing.”The closure only permits those with a valid Columbia ID to enter the main campus, which extends from West 114th to West 120th streets.Locals can apply for a pass, but the disgruntled neighbors argue it’s a convoluted process for aging seniors and leads to long wait times and congestion on the street.After submitting petitions and an open letter demanding the reopening of the campus to the public, Morningside Heights resident Philippe Auffray – alongside three other gray-haired locals – sued the university in January, The Post previously reported.“[Columbia] is part of the community...