The proud Columbia dad supports the students who have camped on campus to protest the situation in Gaza.
As long as his daughter hasn’t been among them, given the tuition he’s paying by driving for Uber, delivering for Uber Eats and working multiple other jobs (a year at Columbia approaches $70,000 per year, according to U.S. News and World Report).
“Alexis Vanessa Roberts better have her butt in class. Let me find out she’s in one of them damn tents instead of the dorm room that I pay for,” said ‘Alphonse Roberts,’ played by Kenan Thompson in the opening skit of the most recent episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
“She ain’t talking about ‘free this, free that.’ Cause I tell you what ain’t free: Columbia. Do y’all know they have the nerve to want $68,000 a year?”
The skit was both timely and prescient. On Monday, Columbia announced it was canceling its main graduation while Emory will move its main commencement from campus to a Gwinnett arena, citing safety concerns.
“This girl started her college during COVID,” Thompson’s character said. “Had me out here paying $68,000 for tuition and she’s in my house taking classes on Zoom.”
The University of Southern California was among the first schools to cancel large commencement gatherings due to safety concerns following protest activity, leaving students whose high school graduations were scrapped due to COVID newly disappointed.
SNL cast members Mikey Day Heidi Gardner joined Thompson as parents of student protesters in the Saturday skit.
“I’m all for free speech, but I don’t understand what they think they’re accomplishing, and that’s really putting a strain on me and my daughter’s relationship,” said the Hunter College mom played by Gardner.
Day’s character, a New School parent, agreed, stating: “I want to let my son make his own choices, but to be honest, it’s a little scary; these protests are becoming way more aggressive.”
More than 2,000 people have been arrested following campus protests in recent weeks.
New York officials have said that 29% of the 112 people arrested after protesters took over a campus building were not affiliated with the school. The SNL skit parents worried about the lingering effects of arrest records.
Police arrested 16 people, nine of them students, after a recent UGA protest and arrested 23 people, 15 of them students after a similar incident at Emory.
Other gatherings at UGA and at Kennesaw State University, SCAD Atlanta and Georgia State University remained peaceful with no arrests.
During the SNL skit, Thompson’s character seemed incredulous that protest activity might scratch graduation and insisted his daughter “will be graduating, even if I gotta do it myself!” he said.
“Man, if she don’t walk, Columbia gonna be on the news for something else. That’s all I know,” he added, before yelling “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
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