Columbia University crisis! Chaos ensued uptown this morning as five students were arrested as part of the NYPD's "Operation Ivy League," a case that has been building through undercover buys since the summer. According to the Post, the students sold cops drugs "totaling $11,000 including cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, Adderall, and LSD. In some cases, LSD was applied to Altoids mints and other candy."
The Columbia Spectator has the official statement from the Special Narcotics Prosecutors Office, which reveals the names of unlucky student-dealers: Chris Coles, Harrison David, Adam Klein, Joseph Stephan Perez (all 20), and Michael Wymbs, 22.
Perez, known as Stephan around campus, is a club promoter-entrepreneur with the dual identity of a BMOC and prestigious Gates Millennium Scholar (known equally for his raps, modeling, and super friendly yet garish behavior), Adam Klein used to be a member (albeit one with Legolas-esque hair) of the fencing team—the only good team left in Columbia Athletics—while Mike Wymbs sat on the engineering school's student council as Vice President. As for the others, David was a salutatorian of a ritzy prep school and Coles was just trying to get by, telling police "he was selling drugs to pay for school."
Some of the sales were made out of fraternities-in-brownstones Psi Upsilon, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Alpha Epsilon Pi, senior party-haven dorm East Campus, and the Intercultural House since the summer, which other students didn't necessarily love. According to DNAInfo at PsiU Tuesday morning a brother hand-wrote in an agenda item that read: "'Don't sell drugs out of the frathouse...Adam [Klein] should have followed this rule."
In an email just sent around to students living in frats, sororities, and other brownstones around campus, Columbia tried to save whatever is left of its drugged-up image: "Columbia University has not given media outlets permission to enter your brownstones. Reporters are only able to enter brownstones with your permission and as your visitor." Bwog also reports that "as a possible consequence of this, a tipster has informed us that sororities have been instructed to take down Theta + Pike posters around campus and to remove Facebook photos from inside fraternity houses."
The drug ring also reached outside of the school's Morningside Heights confines: The Daily News reports that the sting operation nabbed the drug traffickers who were supplying the students, like East Village dealer Miron Sarzynski, 23, who was planning to go Tony Montana on some drug-dealing rivals using guns, LSD torture, and at-gunpoint ransom tactics. Sarzynski allegedly said, "I would have done something nasty, like put a few drops of acid in his mouth and then leave him there." Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, "The fact that a supplier to the Columbia students was willing to kill his rivals should demolish any argument that drugs on campus is a victimless crime." The arrested students will be arraigned Tuesday afternoon.
