Two Columbia University custodians who were violently trapped by anti-Israel rioters during the notorious Hamilton Hall takeover have reached a financial settlement with the Ivy League school, ending their battle with the university—but not with the protesters who allegedly held them hostage and beat them while hurling antisemitic slurs.

Lester Wilson and Mario Torres, both non-Jewish minorities, filed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints against Columbia after they were assaulted, threatened, and forced to clean swastikas off campus walls during a wave of anti-Israel unrest last year. Their complaints sparked a federal civil rights probe and contributed to a damning $220 million settlement between Columbia and the Trump administration.

While the exact terms of their payout remain undisclosed, The New York Post reported that the pair’s compensation comes from a $20 million fund set aside specifically for victims of civil rights violations under the settlement agreement. Another $200 million from that deal was earmarked to resolve broader discrimination claims and restore federal funding to the university.

But Wilson and Torres aren’t done. The two men, both of whom have not returned to work since the Hamilton Hall riots, are pressing forward with a separate lawsuit against more than 40 student protesters they accuse of physically assaulting them and preventing their escape during the takeover.

“The university set up the situation and ended up putting them into that situation,” said Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which is litigating the suit alongside former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr’s firm, Torridon Law. “Now the issue is holding accountable those who carried it out and were responsible for the takeover and the assault.”

According to their complaints, both men—each employed at Columbia for over five years—suffered serious injuries during the April 2023 siege of Hamilton Hall. Protesters labeled them “Jew-lovers,” violently shoved them, and threatened their lives.

“I’m going to get twenty guys up here to [expletive] you up,” one masked rioter told Torres, who grabbed a fire extinguisher to defend himself. He was later beaten repeatedly in the back by rioters. Wilson, meanwhile, was shoved and had furniture hurled at him as he tried to flee the building. NYPD officers eventually stormed the building, arresting over 100 protesters.

But the nightmare began long before the riot. As early as November 2023, both men were routinely ordered to scrub swastikas and other hateful graffiti that appeared across campus. Wilson, an African-American man, was deeply disturbed by the imagery. “Mr. Wilson recognized the swastikas as symbols of white supremacy,” his complaint noted. “As an African-American man, he found the images deeply distressing.”

He reported the vandalism to supervisors. Their response? Erase the graffiti—and do it again when it reappeared.

Torres, who is Latino, counted dozens of swastikas defacing Hamilton Hall and grew increasingly frustrated by the university’s passivity. Though Columbia has electronic ID access and security cameras, administrators did little to stop the hate. At one point, Torres began removing chalk from classrooms to stop the vandalism. Instead of support, he was reprimanded by his supervisor.

Campus security, according to Wilson’s complaint, even brushed off his report of a masked protester chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” while scribbling swastikas in the halls. The response: the vandals were “exercising their First Amendment rights.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)