If true, then no argument with your post.
I wasnt following too close this story. Only peripherally keeping track. I tend to think that lefty colleges are so stuck on stupid and naive about consequences that they could not have foreseen the outcome. So the question I have, using your analogy, is did the CCNY administrators start the fire, or did professional anarchist from outside create a crisis that had only bad outcomes to choose from?
If the latter then maybe you just have a 'being stupid' fine for the college and collect the rest as fines from those arrested criminal trespassers.
This at Columbia University (a private Ivy League school), not City College (a tax payer funded school).