Amid calls for Public Safety reform, how does the University respond? by Drew Letellier Beatrice Shlansky / Senior Staff Photographer Following the death of Barnard first-year Tess Majors in December 2019, Columbia Public Safety and the NYPD faced calls from local politicians to increase its presence in the area around Morningside Park, which the NYPD did in the immediate aftermath of the incident. However, some students and residents opposed increased policing as a response to Majors’ death, advocating for alternate solutions. In the months following Majors’ death, the murders of Black Americans at the hands of police such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that followed, ignited a broader movement to reform or defund police departments. On Columbia’s campus, this movement manifested in demands from student groups, most notably Mobilized African Diaspora, to defund Columbia Public Safety and to amend the University’s past and present attitudes toward Black residents in the Harlem community.