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Book Ulsterbus Bus tickets for your next trip

Easily compare and book your next trip with Busbud

Book cheap Ulsterbus Bus tickets online, find schedules, prices, station locations, services, promotions and deals.

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Wondering how much are the cheapest Ulsterbus bus ticket? Find out with Busbud's extensive list of Ulsterbus fares.

We let you sort through Ulsterbus schedules and Ulsterbus bus ticket prices to find a deal suited to your individual needs.

You'll be able to see which amenities are available for each individual departure when you purchase your Ulsterbus bus tickets online. These amenities may include WiFi, onboard restrooms, A/C, and power outlets among many others.

All Ulsterbus bus lines are available on Busbud. Can't seem to find the Ulsterbus route you're looking for? Please get in touch, we have a dedicated team that is in charge of the quality of Ulsterbus mapping on Busbud.

Be sure to keep an eye out for a coupon code to benefit from Ulsterbus discounts and cheap bus tickets.

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3.9 out of 5 stars

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Mrk Garage M.

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Ulsterbus FAQ

Is there wifi on ulsterbus.

Yes, there is WiFi on Ulsterbus buses! Check your emails and stay connected with friends and family during your trip with Ulsterbus. Keep in mind that streaming is limited, so we recommend downloading your favorite shows and movies before your trip.

Are there power outlets or USB plugs on Ulsterbus?

Yes, there are power outlets and USB plugs on Ulsterbus. You can usually find 1 or 2 plugs per row of seats, so be a good traveler and check if your neighbor wants to charge up their devices as well.

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Yes, Ulsterbus buses have a toilet on board. Toilets generally do not have running water, so we recommend bringing hand sanitizer. Remember to always hold the railing when going to the toilet in a moving vehicle.

Does Ulsterbus offer meals or snacks during the bus trip?

There are no meals or snacks offered on Ulsterbus buses. We recommend that you bring some snacks and drinks in a reusable water bottle for your bus trip.

Do you have to print your Ulsterbus bus ticket?

No, you don't need to print your ticket. You can board Ulsterbus buses by showing your e-ticket on your smartphone, along with a valid photo ID. Your ticket will be sent to you by email when booking on Busbud.

Does Ulsterbus allow pets on board or in the hold of the bus?

Only Certified Service animals are allowed on Ulsterbus buses. Unfortunately, your pets are not allowed on the bus or in the hold of the bus.

What are the amenities on Ulsterbus buses?

Ulsterbus goes the extra distance to offer best-in-class services to all travelers. You will be able to enjoy Air conditioning, Standard seat, Power outlets, Toilet, Wifi on their buses.

Why choose Busbud?

The best way to book bus and train tickets.

Busbud is a bus and train search tool - we include Ulsterbus routes, schedules and prices in our searches along with many other train and bus companies. You can compare prices, amenities and times by searching for a route. If you find a suitable trip, you can go ahead and get your Ulsterbus ticket from us. Note that train tickets sell out, Ulsterbus and other operators generally charge a lot more for last-minute tickets or for tickets bought in person.

Ulsterbus Popular Routes, Destinations and Stations

Top ulsterbus bus lines.

• Glasgow to Belfast $52
• Belfast to Glasgow $52
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• Belfast to Ayr $45

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Ulsterbus most popular airports and destinations

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Leave the car at home, relax and travel with Translink, Northern Ireland's main provider of public passenger transport.

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Translink NI 4+

Designed for ipad.

• 1.0 • 3 Ratings

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Description.

The Translink Journey Planner provides information about all scheduled Metro, Ulsterbus, Goldline, NIRailways and Enterprise services. The journey planner has been designed to make finding out about public transport as easy as possible. You can plan journeys to and from stations/ stops/ address or postcode/ neighbourhood or, point of interest as well as create bespoke timetables for your service or preferred stop. The app and mobile site enable you to plan journeys from your current location. Features include: - Interactive and fully integrated Trip Planner - Full coverage of N Ireland bus and rail services - Dynamic zoom and scroll mapping - GPS using “my location” - Departure board of services from your point of origin - Updating maps “on the go” - Saves favourite locations and recent journeys - Email and In-calendar functions

Version 5.163

minor bug fixes and improvements

Ratings and Reviews

Did not work on iphone..

Screen is crowded and did not respond to finger touch to the iPhone screen.

Frequent Traveler

Worst travel APP i have ever used. Not user friendly.

Nicely done. Has everything I need for looking up Translink schedules in Northern Ireland. Also maps out the station locations. Nicely done.

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The developer, Translink , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

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The developer does not collect any data from this app.

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134 - Coleraine, Buscentre - Limavady, Buscentre

A bus service operated by Ulsterbus

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Limavady, buscentre- coleraine, buscentre.

Timetable data from Translink open data , 25 April 2024

Jon Gosselin Gives Update on Weight Loss Journey and His Plan to Propose to Stephanie Lebo (Exclusive)

Jon gosselin gives update on health journey and future with girlfriend stephanie lebo (exclusive), 'fire country': bode and eve get into heated argument (exclusive), why brandi glanville feels ‘sad’ amid 'rhugt' legal drama (exclusive), 'dance moms' cast slams co-stars who skipped out on reunion special, ‘dance moms: the reunion’: jojo siwa defends abby lee miller's past behavior to co-stars, 'dance moms' star chloe lukasiak tears up over lingering abby lee miller trauma, 'dance moms' star kalani hilliker gets real about body image issues post-show, '90 day fiancé': loren spills on her ‘mommy makeover surgery’ that alexei didn’t want her to do, mark consuelos gasses up kelly ripa as she's named one of 'time's 'most influential people', chrissy teigen's daughters visit her dad in assisted living facility to cook and craft, savannah chrisley slams sister lindsie, says dad todd no longer wants relationship, ‘american idol’ alum fantasia barrino 'would love' to replace katy perry (exclusive), watch maya rudolph get emotional over amy poehler's 'love' (exclusive), nicki minaj treats son papa bear to epic day at chicago aquarium, jeannie mai smiles and laughs with daughter as custody battle with jeezy takes a turn, madison beer's 'make you mine': every 'jennifer's body' reference in the sultry music video, jerry seinfeld explains hugh grant's role as tony the tiger in 'unfrosted' | spilling the e-tea, travis kelce’s mom donna dishes on his and taylor swift's star-studded double date, chris pine sports 'hipster' look at 'poolman' premiere (exclusive), jim carrey’s ‘dumb and dumber’ co-star jeff daniels shares sweet message for 30th anniversary, the dad of eight said he is feeling great after losing a considerable amount of weight since recommitting to his health goals..

Jon Gosselin says his weight loss journey is coming along nicely and that a proposal to his girlfriend, Stephanie Lebo, may come sooner than she thinks. 

Speaking from the grand opening of the Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center in West Hollywood on Thursday, the 47-year-old dad of eight told ET's Brice Sander that his plan to shed weight before popping the question to Lebo, 36, is paying off. As for how and when the proposal will happen, Gosselin is keeping his lips sealed. 

"I can't tell you because she's probably going to watch this. So it's -- everything's like a big surprise," he said. "I've lost like 32 pounds, so, you know, I feel pretty good about it... I want to do further. So, I know when I'm going to propose." 

Gosselin -- who attended the event as the party's DJ -- told ET earlier this year that after more than two years of dating Lebo in private, he was finally considering putting a ring on it.

Since that interview, he said the questions about when he will get on bended knee have only ramped up, giving him -- and her family members -- a hilarious opportunity to egg Lebo on. Despite the jokes, he knows that she is a part of his future and that a proposal is coming down the pike soon. 

Gosselin shared, "I've always wanted to be with someone who's supportive and I love her to death and my kids love her, too. So, I mean, I'm not getting any younger."

In a candid conversation with ET back in February, the former TLC star opened up  about his health and potential wedding bells , which is when he first shared that getting down on one knee is more a "matter of when" than an "if." At the time, Gosselin said that he just wants to feel and look his best for both the proposal and the wedding.

"I love Stephanie and I have future plans with her, but I want to be in maybe the best shape of my life," he shared. "She loves me for who I am, dad bod or whatever, but in my mind, you know, we all see ourselves as 25 and fit... that's where I wanna be."

"I have plans," he added of what his future with Lebo could look like. "We have a house together... but I want to get this figured out, my health."

After he quit his day job to pursue his dream of being a DJ, Gosselin previously told ET that he let himself go. The situation only worsened, he said, by being in a healthy relationship where he felt comfortable enough to gain weight. 

"I just got complacent with my health," he said at the time. "I'm in a comfortable relationship. I love my girlfriend, Stephanie. We just eat whatever we want, do whatever."

Determined to change both his physical appearance and overall health as someone with a family history of heart disease, Gosselin recommitted to his health goals and devised a plan to cut body fat and improve his wellness. 

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The Crackdown on Student Protesters

Columbia university is at the center of a growing showdown over the war in gaza and the limits of free speech..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[TRAIN SCREECHING]

Well, you can hear the helicopter circling. This is Asthaa Chaturvedi. I’m a producer with “The Daily.” Just walked out of the 116 Street Station. It’s the main station for Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. And it’s day seven of the Gaza solidarity encampment, where a hundred students were arrested last Thursday.

So on one side of Broadway, you see camera crews. You see NYPD officers all lined up. There’s barricades, steel barricades, caution tape. This is normally a completely open campus. And I’m able to — all members of the public, you’re able to walk through.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Looks like international media is here.

Have your IDs out. Have your IDs out.

Students lining up to swipe in to get access to the University. ID required for entry.

Swipe your ID, please.

Hi, how are you, officer? We’re journalists with “The New York Times.”

You’re not going to get in, all right? I’m sorry.

Hi. Can I help please?

Yeah, it’s total lockdown here at Columbia.

Please have your IDs out ready to swipe.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, the story of how Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators, and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech. I spoke with my colleague, Nick Fandos.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

It’s Thursday, April 25.

Nick, if we rewind the clock a few months, we end up at a moment where students at several of the country’s best known universities are protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, its approach to a war in Gaza. At times, those protests are happening peacefully, at times with rhetoric that is inflammatory. And the result is that the leaders of those universities land before Congress. But the president of Columbia University, which is the subject we’re going to be talking about today, is not one of the leaders who shows up for that testimony.

That’s right. So the House Education Committee has been watching all these protests on campus. And the Republican Chairwoman decides, I’m going to open an investigation, look at how these administrations are handling it, because it doesn’t look good from where I sit. And the House last winter invites the leaders of several of these elite schools, Harvard, Penn, MIT, and Columbia, to come and testify in Washington on Capitol Hill before Congress.

Now, the President of Columbia has what turns out to be a very well-timed, pre-planned trip to go overseas and speak at an international climate conference. So Minouche Shafik isn’t going to be there. So instead, the presidents of Harvard, and Penn, and MIT show up. And it turned out to be a disaster for these universities.

They were asked very pointed questions about the kind of speech taking place on their campuses, and they gave really convoluted academic answers back that just baffled the committee. But there was one question that really embodied the kind of disconnect between the Committee — And it wasn’t just Republicans, Republicans and Democrats on the Committee — and these college presidents. And that’s when they were asked a hypothetical.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.

And two of the presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, they’re unwilling to say in this really kind of intense back and forth that this speech would constitute a violation of their rules.

It can be, depending on the context.

What’s the context?

Targeted at an individual. Is it pervasive?

It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

And it sets off a firestorm.

It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

Members of Congress start calling for their resignations. Alumni are really, really ticked off. Trustees of the University start to wonder, I don’t know that these leaders really have got this under control. And eventually, both of them lose their jobs in a really high profile way.

Right. And as you’ve hinted at, for somewhat peculiar scheduling reasons, Columbia’s President escapes this disaster of a hearing in what has to be regarded as the best timing in the history of the American Academy.

Yeah, exactly. And Columbia is watching all this play out. And I think their first response was relief that she was not in that chair, but also a recognition that, sooner or later, their turn was going to come back around and they were going to have to sit before Congress.

Why were they so certain that they would probably end up before Congress and that this wasn’t a case of completely dodging a bullet?

Well, they remain under investigation by the committee. But also, as the winter wears on, all the same intense protests just continue unabated. So in many ways, Columbia’s like these other campuses. But in some ways, it’s even more intense. This is a university that has both one of the largest Jewish student populations of any of its peers. But it also has a large Arab and Muslim student population, a big Middle Eastern studies program. It has a dual degree program in Tel Aviv.

And it’s a university on top of all that that has a real history of activism dating back to the 1960s. So when students are recruited or choose to come to Columbia, they’re actively opting into a campus that prides itself on being an activist community. It’s in the middle of New York City. It’s a global place. They consider the city and the world, really, like a classroom to Columbia.

In other words, if any campus was going to be a hotbed of protest and debate over this conflict, it was going to be Columbia University.

Exactly. And when this spring rolls around, the stars finally align. And the same congressional committee issues another invitation to Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s President, to come and testify. And this time, she has no excuse to say no.

But presumably, she is well aware of exactly what testifying before this committee entails and is highly prepared.

Columbia knew this moment was coming. They spent months preparing for this hearing. They brought in outside consultants, crisis communicators, experts on anti-Semitism. The weekend before the hearing, she actually travels down to Washington to hole up in a war room, where she starts preparing her testimony with mock questioners and testy exchanges to prep her for this. And she’s very clear on what she wants to try to do.

Where her counterparts had gone before the committee a few months before and looked aloof, she wanted to project humility and competence, to say, I know that there’s an issue on my campus right now with some of these protests veering off into anti-Semitic incidents. But I’m getting that under control. I’m taking steps in good faith to make sure that we restore order to this campus, while allowing people to express themselves freely as well.

So then the day of her actual testimony arrives. And just walk us through how it goes.

The Committee on Education and Workforce will come to order. I note that —

So Wednesday morning rolls around. And President Shafik sits at the witness stand with two of her trustees and the head of Columbia’s new anti-Semitism task force.

Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best and at worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people.

And right off the bat, they’re put through a pretty humbling litany of some of the worst hits of what’s been happening on campus.

For example, just four days after the harrowing October 7 attack, a former Columbia undergraduate beat an Israeli student with a stick.

The Republican Chairwoman of the Committee, Virginia Foxx, starts reminding her that there was a student who was actually hit with a stick on campus. There was another gathering more recently glorifying Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and the kind of chants that have become an everyday chorus on campus, which many Jewish students see as threatening. But when the questioning starts, President Shafik is ready. One of the first ones she gets is the one that tripped up her colleagues.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Mr. Greenwald?

And she answers unequivocally.

Dr. Shafik?

Yes, it does.

And, Professor —

That would be a violation of Columbia’s rules. They would be punished.

As President of Columbia, what is it like when you hear chants like, by any means necessary or Intifada Revolution?

I find those chants incredibly distressing. And I wish profoundly that people would not use them on our campus.

And in some of the most interesting exchanges of the hearing, President Shafik actually opens Columbia’s disciplinary books.

We have already suspended 15 students from Columbia. We have six on disciplinary probation. These are more disciplinary actions that have been taken probably in the last decade at Columbia. And —

She talks about the number of students that have been suspended, but also the number of faculty that she’s had removed from the classroom that are being investigated for comments that either violate some of Columbia’s rules or make students uncomfortable. One case in particular really underscores this.

And that’s of a Middle Eastern studies professor named Joseph Massad. He wrote an essay not long after Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government, where he described that attack with adjectives like awesome. Now, he said they’ve been misinterpreted, but a lot of people have taken offense to those comments.

Ms. Stefanik, you’re recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairwoman. I want to follow up on my colleague, Rep Walberg’s question regarding Professor Joseph Massad. So let me be clear, President —

And so Representative Elise Stefanik, the same Republican who had tripped up Claudine Gay of Harvard and others in the last hearing, really starts digging in to President Shafik about these things at Columbia.

He is still Chair on the website. So has he been terminated as Chair?

Congresswoman, I —

And Shafik’s answers are maybe a little surprising.

— before getting back to you. I can confirm —

I know you confirmed that he was under investigation.

Yes, I can confirm that. But I —

Did you confirm he was still the Chair?

He says that Columbia is taking his case seriously. In fact, he’s under investigation right now.

Well, let me ask you this.

I need to check.

Will you make the commitment to remove him as Chair?

And when Stefanik presses her to commit to removing him from a campus leadership position —

I think that would be — I think — I would — yes. Let me come back with yes. But I think I — I just want to confirm his current status before I write —

We’ll take that as a yes, that you will confirm that he will no longer be chair.

Shafik seems to pause and think and then agree to it on the spot, almost like she is making administrative decisions with or in front of Congress.

Now, we did some reporting after the fact. And it turns out the Professor didn’t even realize he was under investigation. So he’s learning about this from the hearing too. So what this all adds up to, I think, is a performance so in line with what the lawmakers themselves wanted to hear, that at certain points, these Republicans didn’t quite know what to do with it. They were like the dog that caught the car.

Columbia beats Harvard and UPenn.

One of them, a Republican from Florida, I think at one point even marvelled, well, you beat Harvard and Penn.

Y’all all have done something that they weren’t able to do. You’ve been able to condemn anti-Semitism without using the phrase, it depends on the context. But the —

So Columbia’s president has passed this test before this committee.

Yeah, this big moment that tripped up her predecessors and cost them their jobs, it seems like she has cleared that hurdle and dispatched with the Congressional committee that could have been one of the biggest threats to her presidency.

Without objection, there being no further business, the committee stands adjourned. [BANGS GAVEL]

But back on campus, some of the students and faculty who had been watching the hearing came away with a very different set of conclusions. They saw a president who was so eager to please Republicans in Congress that she was willing to sell out some of the University’s students and faculty and trample on cherished ideas like academic freedom and freedom of expression that have been a bedrock of American higher education for a really long time.

And there was no clearer embodiment of that than what had happened that morning just as President Shafik was going to testify before Congress. A group of students before dawn set up tents in the middle of Columbia’s campus and declared themselves a pro-Palestinian encampment in open defiance of the very rules that Dr. Shafik had put in place to try and get these protests under control.

So these students in real-time are beginning to test some of the things that Columbia’s president has just said before Congress.

Exactly. And so instead of going to celebrate her successful appearance before Congress, Shafik walks out of the hearing room and gets in a black SUV to go right back to that war room, where she’s immediately confronted with a major dilemma. It basically boils down to this, she had just gone before Congress and told them, I’m going to get tough on these protests. And here they were. So either she gets tough and risks inflaming tension on campus or she holds back and does nothing and her words before Congress immediately look hollow.

And what does she decide?

So for the next 24 hours, she tries to negotiate off ramps. She consults with her Deans and the New York Police Department. And it all builds towards an incredibly consequential decision. And that is, for the first time in decades, to call the New York City Police Department onto campus in riot gear and break this thing up, suspend the students involved, and then arrest them.

To essentially eliminate this encampment.

Eliminate the encampment and send a message, this is not going to be tolerated. But in trying to quell the unrest, Shafik actually feeds it. She ends up leaving student protesters and the faculty who support them feeling betrayed and pushes a campus that was already on edge into a full blown crisis.

[SLOW TEMPO MUSIC]

After the break, what all of this has looked like to a student on Columbia’s campus. We’ll be right back.

[PHONE RINGS]

Is this Isabella?

Yes, this is she.

Hi, Isabella. It’s Michael Barbaro from “The Daily.”

Hi. Nice to meet you.

Earlier this week, we called Isabella Ramírez, the Editor in Chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, “The Columbia Daily Spectator,” which has been closely tracking both the protests and the University’s response to them since October 7.

So, I mean, in your mind, how do we get to this point? I wonder if you can just briefly describe the key moments that bring us to where we are right now.

Sure. Since October 7, there has certainly been constant escalation in terms of tension on campus. And there have been a variety of moves that I believe have distanced the student body, the faculty, from the University and its administration, specifically the suspension of Columbia’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. And that became a huge moment in what was characterized as suppression of pro-Palestinian activism on campus, effectively rendering those groups, quote, unquote, unauthorized.

What was the college’s explanation for that?

They had cited in that suspension a policy which states that a demonstration must be approved within a certain window, and that there must be an advance notice, and that there’s a process for getting an authorized demonstration. But the primary point was this policy that they were referring to, which we later reported, was changed before the suspension.

So it felt a little ad hoc to people?

Yes, it certainly came as a surprise, especially at “Spectator.” We’re nerds of the University in the sense that we are familiar with faculty and University governance. But even to us, we had no idea where this policy was coming from. And this suspension was really the first time that it entered most students’ sphere.

Columbia’s campus is so known for its activism. And so in my time of being a reporter, of being an editor, I’ve overseen several protests. And I’ve never seen Columbia penalize a group for, quote, unquote, not authorizing a protest. So that was certainly, in our minds, unprecedented.

And I believe part of the justification there was, well, this is a different time. And I think that is a reasonable thing to say. But I think a lot of students, they felt it was particularly one-sided, that it was targeting a specific type of speech or a specific type of viewpoint. Although, the University, of course, in its explicit policies, did not outline, and was actually very explicit about not targeting specific viewpoints —

So just to be super clear, it felt to students — and it sounds like, journalistically, it felt to you — that the University was coming down in a uniquely one-sided way against students who were supporting Palestinian rights and may have expressed some frustrations with Israel in that moment.

Yes. Certainly —

Isabella says that this was just the beginning of a really tense period between student protesters and the University. After those two student groups were suspended, campus protests continued. Students made a variety of demands. They asked that the University divest from businesses that profit from Israel’s military operations in Gaza. But instead of making any progress, the protests are met with further crackdown by the University.

And so as Isabella and her colleagues at the college newspaper see it, there’s this overall chilling effect that occurs. Some students become fearful that if they participate in any demonstrations, they’re going to face disciplinary action. So fast forward now to April, when these student protesters learned that President Shafik is headed to Washington for her congressional testimony. It’s at this moment that they set out to build their encampment.

I think there was obviously a lot of intention in timing those two things. I think it’s inherently a critique on a political pressure and this congressional pressure that we saw build up against, of course, Claudine Gay at Harvard and Magill at UPenn. So I think a lot of students and faculty have been frustrated at this idea that there are not only powers at the University that are dictating what’s happening, but there are perhaps external powers that are also guiding the way here in terms of what the University feels like it must do or has to do.

And I think that timing was super crucial. Having the encampment happen on the Wednesday morning of the hearing was an incredible, in some senses, interesting strategy to direct eyes to different places.

All eyes were going to be on Shafik in DC. But now a lot of eyes are on New York. The encampment is set up in the middle of the night slash morning, prior to the hearing. And so what effectively happens is they caught Shafik when she wasn’t on campus, when a lot of senior administration had their resources dedicated to supporting Shafik in DC.

And you have all of those people not necessarily out of commission, but with their focus elsewhere. So the encampment is met with very little resistance at the beginning. There were public safety officers floating around and watching. But at the very beginning hours, I think there was a sense of, we did it.

[CHANTING]: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest. Disclose! Divest! We will not stop!

It would be quite surprising to anybody and an administrator to now suddenly see dozens of tents on this lawn in a way that I think very purposely puts an imagery of, we’re here to stay. As the morning evolved and congressional hearings continued —

Minouche Shafik, open your eyes! Use of force, genocide!

Then we started seeing University delegates that were coming to the encampment saying, you may face disciplinary action for continuing to be here. I think that started around almost — like 9:00 or 10:00 AM, they started handing out these code of conduct violation notices.

Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!

Then there started to be more public safety action and presence. So they started barricading the entrances. The day progressed, there was more threat of discipline. The students became informed that if they continue to stay, they will face potential academic sanctions, potential suspension.

The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be! The more they —

I think a lot of people were like, OK, you’re threatening us with suspension. But so what?

This is about these systems that Minouche Shafik, that the Board of Trustees, that Columbia University is complicit in.

What are you going to do to try to get us out of here? And that was, obviously, promptly answered.

This is the New York State Police Department.

We will not stop!

You are attempting participate in an unauthorized encampment. You will be arrested and charged with trespassing.

My phone blew up, obviously, from the reporters, from the editors, of saying, oh my god, the NYPD is on our campus. And as soon as I saw that, I came out. And I saw a huge crowd of students and affiliates on campus watching the lawns. And as I circled around that crowd, I saw the last end of the New York Police Department pulling away protesters and clearing out the last of the encampment.

[CHANTING]: We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you!

It was something truly unimaginable, over 100 students slash other individuals are arrested from our campus, forcefully removed. And although they were suspended, there was a feeling of traumatic event that has just happened to these students, but also this sense of like, OK, the worst of the worst that could have happened to us just happened.

And for those students who maybe couldn’t go back to — into campus, now all of their peers, who were supporters or are in solidarity, are — in some sense, it’s further emboldened. They’re now not just sitting on the lawns for a pro-Palestinian cause, but also for the students, who have endured quite a lot.

So the crackdown, sought by the president and enforced by the NYPD, ends up, you’re saying, becoming a galvanizing force for a broader group of Columbia students than were originally drawn to the idea of ever showing up on the center of campus and protesting?

Yeah, I can certainly speak to the fact that I’ve seen my own peers, friends, or even acquaintances, who weren’t necessarily previously very involved in activism and organizing efforts, suddenly finding themselves involved.

Can I — I just have a question for you, which is all journalism, student journalism or not student journalism, is a first draft of history. And I wonder if we think of this as a historic moment for Columbia, how you imagine it’s going to be remembered.

Yeah, there is no doubt in my mind that this will be a historic moment for Colombia.

I think that this will be remembered as a moment in which the fractures were laid bare. Really, we got to see some of the disunity of the community in ways that I have never really seen it before. And what we’ll be looking to is, where do we go from here? How does Colombia repair? How do we heal from all of this? so That is the big question in terms of what will happen.

Nick, Isabella Ramírez just walked us through what this has all looked like from the perspective of a Columbia student. And from what she could tell, the crackdown ordered by President Shafik did not quell much of anything. It seemed, instead, to really intensify everything on campus. I’m curious what this has looked like for Shafik.

It’s not just the students who are upset. You have faculty, including professors, who are not necessarily sympathetic to the protesters’ view of the war, who are really outraged about what Shafik has done here. They feel that she’s crossed a boundary that hasn’t been crossed on Columbia’s campus in a really long time.

And so you start to hear things by the end of last week like censure, no confidence votes, questions from her own professors about whether or not she can stay in power. So this creates a whole new front for her. And on top of it all, as this is going on, the encampment itself starts to reform tent-by-tent —

— almost in the same place that it was. And Shafik decides that the most important thing she could do is to try and take the temperature down, which means letting the encampment stand. Or in other words, leaning in the other direction. This time, we’re going to let the protesters have their say for a little while longer.

The problem with that is that, over the weekend, a series of images start to emerge from on campus and just off of it of some really troubling anti-Semitic episodes. In one case, a guy holds up a poster in the middle of campus and points it towards a group of Jewish students who are counter protesting. And it says, I’m paraphrasing here, Hamas’ next targets.

I saw an image of that. What it seemed to evoke was the message that Hamas should murder those Jewish students. That’s the way the Jewish students interpreted it.

It’s a pretty straightforward and jarring statement. At the same time, just outside of Columbia’s closed gates —

Stop killing children!

— protestors are showing up from across New York City. It’s hard to tell who’s affiliated with Columbia, who’s not.

Go back to Poland! Go back to Poland!

There’s a video that goes viral of one of them shouting at Jewish students, go back to Poland, go back to Europe.

In other words, a clear message, you’re not welcome here.

Right. In fact, go back to the places where the Holocaust was committed.

Exactly. And this is not representative of the vast majority of the protesters in the encampment, who mostly had been peaceful. They would later hold a Seder, actually, with some of the pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters in their ranks. But those videos are reaching members of Congress, the very same Republicans that Shafik had testified in front of just a few days before. And now they’re looking and saying, you have lost control of your campus, you’ve turned back on your word to us, and you need to resign.

They call for her outright resignation over this.

That’s right. Republicans in New York and across the country began to call for her to step down from her position as president of Columbia.

So Shafik’s dilemma here is pretty extraordinary. She has set up this dynamic where pleasing these members of Congress would probably mean calling in the NYPD all over again to sweep out this encampment, which would mean further alienating and inflaming students and faculty, who are still very upset over the first crackdown. And now both ends of this spectrum, lawmakers in Washington, folks on the Columbia campus, are saying she can’t lead the University over this situation before she’s even made any fateful decision about what to do with this second encampment. Not a good situation.

No. She’s besieged on all sides. For a while, the only thing that she can come up with to offer is for classes to go hybrid for the remainder of the semester.

So students who aren’t feeling safe in this protest environment don’t necessarily have to go to class.

Right. And I think if we zoom out for a second, it’s worth bearing in mind that she tried to choose a different path here than her counterparts at Harvard or Penn. And after all of this, she’s kind of ended up in the exact same thicket, with people calling for her job with the White House, the Mayor of New York City, and others. These are Democrats. Maybe not calling on her to resign quite yet, but saying, I don’t know what’s going on your campus. This does not look good.

That reality, that taking a different tack that was supposed to be full of learnings and lessons from the stumbles of her peers, the fact that didn’t really work suggests that there’s something really intractable going on here. And I wonder how you’re thinking about this intractable situation that’s now arrived on these college campuses.

Well, I don’t think it’s just limited to college campuses. We have seen intense feelings about this conflict play out in Hollywood. We’ve seen them in our politics in all kinds of interesting ways.

In our media.

We’ve seen it in the media. But college campuses, at least in their most idealized form, are something special. They’re a place where students get to go for four years to think in big ways about moral questions, and political questions, and ideas that help shape the world they’re going to spend the rest of their lives in.

And so when you have a question that feels as urgent as this war does for a lot of people, I think it reverberates in an incredibly intense way on those campuses. And there’s something like — I don’t know if it’s quite a contradiction of terms, but there’s a collision of different values at stake. So universities thrive on the ability of students to follow their minds and their voices where they go, to maybe even experiment a little bit and find those things.

But there are also communities that rely on people being able to trust each other and being able to carry out their classes and their academic endeavors as a collective so they can learn from one another. So in this case, that’s all getting scrambled. Students who feel strongly about the Palestinian cause feel like the point is disruption, that something so big, and immediate, and urgent is happening that they need to get in the faces of their professors, and their administrators, and their fellow students.

Right. And set up an encampment in the middle of campus, no matter what the rules say.

Right. And from the administration’s perspective, they say, well, yeah, you can say that and you can think that. And that’s an important process. But maybe there’s some bad apples in your ranks. Or though you may have good intentions, you’re saying things that you don’t realize the implications of. And they’re making this environment unsafe for others. Or they’re grinding our classes to a halt and we’re not able to function as a University.

So the only way we’re going to be able to move forward is if you will respect our rules and we’ll respect your point of view. The problem is that’s just not happening. Something is not connecting with those two points of view. And as if that’s not hard enough, you then have Congress and the political system with its own agenda coming in and putting its thumb on a scale of an already very difficult situation.

Right. And at this very moment, what we know is that the forces that you just outlined have created a dilemma, an uncertainty of how to proceed, not just for President Shafik and the students and faculty at Columbia, but for a growing number of colleges and universities across the country. And by that, I mean, this thing that seemed to start at Columbia is literally spreading.

Absolutely. We’re talking on a Wednesday afternoon. And these encampments have now started cropping up at universities from coast-to-coast, at Harvard and Yale, but also at University of California, at the University of Texas, at smaller campuses in between. And at each of these institutions, there’s presidents and deans, just like President Shafik at Columbia, who are facing a really difficult set of choices. Do they call in the police? The University of Texas in Austin this afternoon, we saw protesters physically clashing with police.

Do they hold back, like at Harvard, where there were dramatic videos of students literally running into Harvard yard with tents. They were popping up in real-time. And so Columbia, really, I think, at the end of the day, may have kicked off some of this. But they are now in league with a whole bunch of other universities that are struggling with the same set of questions. And it’s a set of questions that they’ve had since this war broke out.

And now these schools only have a week or two left of classes. But we don’t know when these standoffs are going to end. We don’t know if students are going to leave campus for the summer. We don’t know if they’re going to come back in the fall and start protesting right away, or if this year is going to turn out to have been an aberration that was a response to a really awful, bloody war, or if we’re at the beginning of a bigger shift on college campuses that will long outlast this war in the Middle East.

Well, Nick, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. The United Nations is calling for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza. Officials in Gaza said that some of the bodies found in the graves were Palestinians who had been handcuffed or shot in the head and accused Israel of killing and burying them. In response, Israel said that its soldiers had exhumed bodies in one of the graves as part of an effort to locate Israeli hostages.

And on Wednesday, Hamas released a video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American dual citizen, whom Hamas has held hostage since October 7. It was the first time that he has been shown alive since his captivity began. His kidnapping was the subject of a “Daily” episode in October that featured his mother, Rachel. In response to Hamas’s video, Rachel issued a video of her own, in which she spoke directly to her son.

And, Hersh, if you can hear this, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days. And if you can hear us, I am telling you, we are telling you, we love you. Stay strong. Survive.

Today’s episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Olivia Natt, Nina Feldman, and Summer Thomad, with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow, contains research help by Susan Lee, original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 26, 2024   •   21:50 Harvey Weinstein Conviction Thrown Out
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• April 22, 2024   •   24:30 The Evolving Danger of the New Bird Flu
• April 19, 2024   •   30:42 The Supreme Court Takes Up Homelessness
• April 18, 2024   •   30:07 The Opening Days of Trump’s First Criminal Trial
• April 17, 2024   •   24:52 Are ‘Forever Chemicals’ a Forever Problem?
• April 16, 2024   •   29:29 A.I.’s Original Sin
• April 15, 2024   •   24:07 Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel
• April 14, 2024   •   46:17 The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’
• April 12, 2024   •   34:23 How One Family Lost $900,000 in a Timeshare Scam

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Nicholas Fandos

Produced by Sydney Harper ,  Asthaa Chaturvedi ,  Olivia Natt ,  Nina Feldman and Summer Thomad

With Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow

Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, walks us through the intense week at the university. And Isabella Ramírez, the editor in chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, explains what it has all looked like to a student on campus.

On today’s episode

Nicholas Fandos , who covers New York politics and government for The New York Times

Isabella Ramírez , editor in chief of The Columbia Daily Spectator

Background reading

Inside the week that shook Columbia University .

The protests at the university continued after more than 100 arrests.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Research help by Susan Lee .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos

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From Turks & Caicos to South Jersey to ... NFL? That's the plan for Yvandy Rigby

Yvandy Rigby wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

As he anxiously waits to hear if his name gets called at the NFL Draft this weekend, the hulking 6-foot-2, 230-pound linebacker plans to just “chill with (his) family.”

Amazing when one considers that the kid from a tropical island didn’t even know what a football was, nor did he know the people he now calls family, when he reached the United States a decade ago.

Rigby is projected to be a late-round pick in this weekend’s NFL Draft and, if that doesn’t develop, he would likely be signed as an undrafted free agent by a team.

“It’s been a great journey,” said Rigby, a native of Turks and Caicos, an island group about 230 miles north of the Dominican Republic and 1,300 miles from South Jersey.

“If it’s going to happen, it will happen. This is what I’ve worked for.”

He would become the second player drafted from Turks and Caicos, joining Faion Hicks, who was selected by the Denver Broncos in the 2022 NFL Draft.

Rigby hopes to celebrate with the Stetsers — who took Rigby into their family when he was a junior at Egg Harbor Township High School. Kevin Stetser is a special education teacher and former head football coach at EHT.

“When I came to live with them, that’s when I began to flourish like a flower,” Rigby said. “They sacrificed so much for me. Coach was the father figure in my life and (with his wife Laura), they definitely took on the mom and dad role when I needed it the most.”

Long way from home

Rigby calls his homeland a “beautiful island,” a paradise for tourists and fishermen.

What it doesn’t have, according to Rigby, is a lot of opportunities.

“I had a lot of ambition and it just wasn’t going to happen there,” he said.

His mother, Almonthe, wanted the best for son, a chance to succeed in life. That was going to be a challenge on the British Overseas Territory.

So, at the age of 14, Rigby entered the United States and lived with a family friend. He attended Atlantic City High School as a freshman.

That’s where he was introduced to football.

“Never even grabbed a football in my life, but it was love at first sight,” said Rigby, who was recruited by one of the football players to give the sport a try because of his size.

Love didn’t translate into success right away. It was more like heartache.

“I was terrible,” he said with soft laugh. “They put me on defense, I was playing safety. The running back broke through the hole. I had no idea what I was doing. He juked me and I fell down on the ground. Everybody on the whole field was laughing at me.

“I never wanted to feel that way again. I knew I had to get better.”

So Rigby kept practicing, but he also turned to YouTube.

“I just watched as many videos as I could,” Rigby said. “I became a student of the game. I watched Peyton Manning on how to throw spirals. I watched Jerry Rice on how he worked out. I watched all the greats and how they worked to get better. I needed to sharpen my tools and get better.”

No Friday Night Lights

When he arrived stateside, Rigby joined the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, his guardian’s faith.

The church observes Saturday as the Sabbath, which begins at sunset on Friday.

That meant no Friday Night football for Rigby.

While he was practicing hard throughout the week, not being able to compete in a game with his teammates really tested his faith.

“I just felt like there was this big cloud over my head that I couldn’t shake off,” Rigby said. “I was a true believer in Christ. I was also passionate about the game.

“I went all out at practice. I wanted the guys next to me to get better. It made me feel good as a teammate. But it also took a toll on me not being able to go out there and showcase my talents. I got angry during that time. I was questioning things like why I had this skill, but couldn’t showcase it (in games).”

Before his junior season at EHT, Rigby and Stetser arranged a meeting with the church’s pastor and Rigby’s guardian to talk about playing football on Friday nights.

After getting the OK from his mother, Rigby said the pastor also gave his blessing for him to play. However, his guardian still balked at the idea.

“I thought that meeting was going to go nice and smooth,” Rigby said. “The pastor said I was a young, Black man who came to this country and is trying to better his life. But my guardian got so angry, and said, ‘If he plays in that game on Friday night, I’m going to kick him out of the house.’”

“That’s when I started to get really paranoid. I was worried. I was 16 years old.”

The day of the season opener against Millville, Rigby was thrilled to wear his varsity jersey to school, but was “also losing my mind” about what would happen later that night when he got home.

But he drew some comfort, remembering that Stetser said he would have his back whatever decision he made.

Rigby took the field that night. When he arrived home, all of his clothes were in a black trash bag.

Before moving in with the Stetser family, Rigby remembers meeting Laura for the first time.

When Rigby was a sophomore, Kevin Stetser noticed he kept looking at the sun as he competed in the javelin throw at the Woodbury Relays. The athlete was getting really antsy, the coach realized.

“He tells me he has to be home before that sun goes down and I’m like, 'You couldn’t have told me that earlier?'” Kevin said. “There I am, asking my wife to drive a kid who she’s never met in her life back home.”

The usually quiet Rigby was a “chatterbox” on the one-hour ride, opening up to Laura like she was a best friend.

“We talked the whole ride home,” Rigby said. “She was just so accepting. We talked about a lot of things, but I just remember telling her Coach was wrong, I’m not a linebacker, I should be a safety.”

For eight months after playing in that fateful Friday night game, Rigby bounced around, staying with the Stetsers, offensive coordinator Jim DeBendictis Jr.’s family, and his guardian. On Mother’s Day weekend in 2017, Rigby moved in full-time with the Stetsers.

While he was the newest member of the Stetser household, Rigby was still for responsible for chores, even one he had never experienced before: shoveling snow.

“I’d never seen snow in my life,” Rigby said.

He was even pressed into some babysitting duties, watching the Stetsers’ son Jack and daughter Madeleine, who were 7 and 8 at the time.

Higher learning

Rigby’s dream of playing in the NFL will likely be as a linebacker, something he and his high school football coach still laugh about now.

“As frustrating as it is, I tell him every day that he was right, I’m a linebacker," Rigby said.

Kevin Stetser knew where Rigby’s strength was on the football field, but he also had a good feeling of what type of kid he was bringing home to join his family.

“He attached himself to this crazy train of our family and what a ride it’s been,” Stetser said. “We consider him our son. He has a heart of gold. And we’re extremely proud of what he has become.

“He’s worked for everything that he’s earned. When he first moved in with us, he learned one of our neighbors was a reading specialist. He met with her every single night to help improve his reading level. He wanted to be a better student.”

After graduating from Egg Harbor Township, Rigby played one season at Milford Academy (N.Y.) before landing in North Philadelphia at Temple University.

Rigby was a three-year letter winner with 207 tackles in 35 career games for the Cherry and White and earned a single-digit uniform number, a huge deal in Temple tradition that is awarded to those who lead on and off the field. He was only the second TU player to ever wear No. 0.

Rigby graduated last spring with a bachelor’s degree in Adult Organization Development.

“Getting that degree was the highlight of my career,” Rigby said. “It means a lot because I wasn’t the most studious student in school when I got to the United States. Football came natural for me. School was more challenging than football for me, a lot more challenging.

“I wanted to make my mom proud. She gambled and risked a lot in me (in letting me come to the United States). She would never ask me about football, she always asked me about getting my degree and how that was going.”

Rigby’s mom and two sisters, Johnika and Ashley, have moved to the United States and remain a big part in Yvandy’s life. His two older brothers, John and John Paul, remain in Turks and Caicos.

“My mom has come to some of my games, but she always watches with her hands over eyes. She’s afraid of me getting hurt,” Yvandy said.

If Rigby gets the opportunity to play on Sundays in the fall, he would become the first player from Egg Harbor Township to make the NFL.

A path that began with so much uncertainty has turned into an unbelievable journey.

Tom McGurk is a regional sports reporter for the Courier-Post, The Daily Journal and Burlington County Times, covering South Jersey sports for over 30 years. If you have a sports story that needs to be told, contact him at (856) 486-2420 or email  [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter at @McGurkSports. Help support local journalism with a digital subscription.

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