A man pretending to work for Columbia entered at least three undergraduate classes this week, selling $5 tickets he claimed would get students in to popular nightclubs.
The man, who was eventually apprehended by Public Safety on Thursday, announced at the start of those classes that he was a representative from the Division of Student Affairs. He told students he was selling tickets to 12 nightclubs across New York, including Pacha and Webster Hall.
According to students in the three classes, he sold at least 45 to 50 tickets in total. He had gray hair, was wearing a blazer, and appeared to be in his 50s.
Sara Garner, SEAS ’15 and a Spectrum weekend editor and Spectator online developer, bought a ticket from the man in her 4:10 p.m. computer science class on Thursday. She said there was nothing suspicious about his appearance.
“The thing I was most struck by was that he came in and asserted himself as an authority, as if he was familiar with the school,” Garner said. “He dressed professionally—khaki pants, a button-down.”
But the man was not affiliated with the University and has been barred from campus, according to Swapneel Sheth, GSAS, who is the preceptor of Garner’s class. In an email to his class later Thursday evening, Sheth said Public Safety told him that the man “has been declared ‘Persona Non Grata’, which means that he can’t come to campus for any reason as he’s not allowed to sell anything on campus.”
After being tipped off by a student in one of the classes, Public Safety chased the man down and apprehended him in Havemeyer Hall.
A Public Safety spokesperson was not available for comment Thursday evening.
In each of the three classes, the man arrived at the scheduled start time and asked the teacher for permission to speak. He then spent about five minutes explaining that he was selling the tickets for $5 dollars—a bargain, he claimed, compared to their usual price of $20, and what he said was Columbia’s usual price of $10.
It’s unclear how many classes the man hoodwinked before getting caught. He sold about half a dozen tickets in Gil Eyal’s 1:10 p.m. sociology class on Tuesday and also gave Eyal a free ticket, according to Travis Simon, CC ’15 and one of Eyal’s students.
Simon said that he would have bought a ticket, but he didn’t have any money on him. Still, not having the full $5 wasn’t a problem for some students, Simon added.
“There was someone next to me, who only had four dollars, and the guy was like, ‘That’s fine,’” he said.
On Thursday, he sold about 20 tickets in Fabio Nironi’s 2:40 p.m. Calculus III section, according to Charlie Stigler, SEAS ’15 and one of Nironi’s students.
“He had a blazer on. He was kind of older,” said Stigler, who bought a ticket during class. “He seemed like the kind of guy who would be coming to do stuff like this.”
Jane Kim, CC ’14, said the man sold about 20 more tickets in Sheth’s 4:10 p.m. class on Thursday.
Kim said that she might have bought a ticket if she’d had $5 on her. She assumed the man was affiliated with the Columbia University Arts Initiative, which does sell discounted tickets to city events—but in retrospect, she said, he “was definitely sketchy.”
“He had an envelope and people were just giving him $5 bills,” Kim said.
It was unclear Thursday if the tickets would actually grant students access to clubs. The man told students that if they emailed the AOL.com email address on the ticket before 6:00 p.m. on a given day, they would be given two tickets to the club of their choice that evening.
The tickets, which purported to be issued by an organization called, “New York Nites,” had several misspellings, including, “Night club is not involve in this arrangement.now please enjoy your night out” and “NYN ticket holder will be admitted to the event or location on the NYN guestiest.” They also had the words “God bless” printed on them in two places.
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