Results tagged “citycollege”

Former governor Eliot Spitzer, who denies that he's running for office next year (not matter what the Post says or hopes), is starting a new career: As an educator. According to Politics on the Hudson, he's teaching "a three-hour law and public policy class once a week in the political-science department for the fall semester" at City College of New York. CCNY spokesman Ellis Simon said, "We’re delighted that Eliot Spitzer has become an adjunct member of our facility. His experience as attorney general and as governor of the state of New York gives him a unique and powerful perspective that can only benefit our students."

City College of New York told the NY Times the opening reception for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service would be delayed. The decision was made “by mutual agreement between the congressman’s office and the college." Earlier this week, the House ethics committee announced it would expand the probe into Rep. Rangel's dealings. Previously, the committee was investigating his (1) use of Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for the CCNY graduate school, (2) four rent-stabilized apartments, and (3) non-payment of taxes on rental income from a vacation villa; now the committee will look at, per Rangel's request, charges that he helped preserve a tax loophole for an oil company whose chief executive donated $1 million to the Rangel Center.

After the NY Times reported Rep. Charles Rangel helped preserve a tax loophole for an oil executive who donated $1 million to a school named after Rangel, Republicans are asking for a House Ethics Committee investigation. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) said, "Charlie Rangel needs to resign as Ways and Means Committee chairman," and nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, "Representative Rangel’s ethics problems continue to mount, yet the ethics committee and the Democratic leadership remain silent." Rangel denied securing the tax break in return for the donation, but it seems his legal bills are likely to pile up. Speaking of, the Daily News reports that he fired his old lawyer, Clinton friend Lanny Davis because Davis's bills were really high!

Yesterday afternoon, a Brooklyn man was apprehended after threatening a City College student and holding what looked like a gun--but turned out to be a pellet gun--against the head of another student. The police convinced him to drop the gun and Kirk Hanley, 22, who had also pointed the gun at his own head, was found with suicide notes and taken to St. Luke's Roosevelt for observation.

Last night at City College, it was Gotham Girls Roller Derby fever. The two-time defending champions the Queens of Pain faced off against the Bronx Gridlock to decide who would reign supreme for the 2007 season and take home a pretty sweet trophy. Raymond Haddad was on the scene for the championship match and took some amazing pictures. He reports, "The Queens of Pain made a ferocious comeback [apparently 31 unanswered points', led by...

Green Brooklyn (via Brownstoner) has a not-surprising-as-it-should-be post on, well, the Gowanus Canal having a touch of the gonohorrea. According to a Scienceline article, "a biologist at the New York City College of Technology, has her students analyze water samples and observe the oily substance that coats the water’s surface each afternoon. 'One group of students found gonohorrea in a water drop,' said Haque. She’s particularly interested in fluorescent white gauze that lies near the canal’s bottom, and thinks that the substance is a colonizing life form that adheres to the contaminated sediments."

The City University of New York is planning on raising math and English requirements for 2008 freshman at 11 colleges. CUNY's chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, told the NY Times, "We are very serious in taking a group of our institutions and placing them in the top segment of universities and colleges. This is the kind of profile we want for our students."

The police department has launched a citywide dragnet to find suspects who fired at two police officers during a Brooklyn traffic stop early yesterday morning. 23-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko was shot twice in the head while 26-year-old police officer Herman Yan was shot in the arm and chest. A surveillance video showed that the cops were shot before they had reached the driver and passengers in the car. The Daily News' Michael Daly describes:

Footage from the surveillance camera mounted outside the Little Red Riding Hood preschool shows the green BMW SUV pulling over.

Continue reading "Police Search For Suspects in Double Cop Shooting;
One Cop is "Clinging to Life""

The Post gives more detail about the brutal attack: Apparently the attacker rushed her when she opened the door to her apartment Friday and beat her. Then he tied her to a futon with coaxial cable, beating and sexually assaulting her. He poured boiling water on her in an attempt to remove DNA evidence and set the futon on fire Saturday afternoon before leaving. But the fire "melted the plastic covering of the coaxial cable" and she was able to escape. A building resident tells the News that the woman "keeps blaming herself" for letting him in.

It is a day for rodents, that's for sure. To the excitement of Big Apple animal lovers, the NY Times reported the first beaver in 200 years has been spotted in the city. A 2- or 3-year-old beaver has been seen in the Bronx River, doing one of two very New York things: Looking for a mate or trying to make his home better (the Times says he was spotted "looking for more material to insulate its home").

The death of the written word must be near, because City College wants to build a power plant inside its library. Via the Columbia Spectator, the school wants to build a 16,700 square foot power plant in the 20,722 square foot Morris Raphael Cohen Library - an 80% reduction of space. The power plant would be used to support two new science facilities, which begs the question, why couldn't they build the power plant in the Science and Engineering Library?

It's a new semester at City College and it'll be a new round of fighting over a campus center's "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur" sign. The Daily News reports that City Councilman Charles Barron re-placed the controversial sign for the City College NY community center and vows to re-place it if it's taken down again:

"We are here to say to the City University that we have a right to self-determination, that we have a right to free speech, that we have a right to freedom of expression," Barron said. "We are saying that you can't determine who our heroines and heroes are going to be."

At the podium with his highest approval ratings ever, Mayor Mike gave his annual State of the City address and outlined an agenda that will dictate his last three years in office and most likely, his legacy. Some of these items include passing $1 billion in tax cuts (including $750 million in property tax and eliminating sales tax on clothing and shoes), improving the school system, pursuing anti-gun laws, and continuing development projects across the city. In fact, his recommendations to continue school reform were the first things he mentioned, from further empowering principals to do a better job retaining good teachers (and getting rid of tenure), and shifting funding to students, instead of schools, and grading the schools themselves..

Gothamist has received a report that two people were struck by a downtown 1 train at the 137th Street-City College station this afternoon. Because of this, there are currently delays with the downtown 1 line suspended from 168th Street to 96th Street at this time.

A day after the Daily News reported that City College had allowed a campus center to be named after two controversial figures on its cover, complete with scorching editorial criticizing the school, City College's chancellor Matthew Goldstein had the sign taken down. The center was called the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community Center. Guillermo Morales was a radical for Puerto Rico's independence and made bombs, including one that killed four people at Fraunces Tavern in 1975. His fingers blown off while making a bomb, but he escaped from Bellevue to Mexico and now lives in Cuba. Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, was a member of the Black Liberation Army. In 1973, she killed NJ State trooper Wayne Foerster, she escaped from prison in 1979, headed to Cuba and now goes by Assata Shakur. There is still a $1 million reward for her capture.

The Atlantic Yards Project's public meeting last night was packed with Brooklyn residents wanting to have their say. WNBC reported that hundreds of people were waiting outside the New York City College of Technology, since the auditorium was full, and inside, "the crowd became unruly, cheering wildly for their cause until security was called in to remove a few of the audience members." That sounds about right - and they had lots of signs for and against the project! About 300 people had signed up to speak, and since 3 minutes is allowed for each person, that would mean a public meeting that would go on for more than half a day.

The big real estate news of the day is that the empty lot on the southeastern corner of West 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue - right near the movie theater on the south side of 42nd Street - will finally get developed. The NY TImes' coverage of the deal starts off with:

A New Jersey developer plans to build a $1 billion office tower on the last parcel in the 13-acre Times Square redevelopment district, bringing an end to the 26-year effort to clean up an area that was known as the Deuce when it was a motley collection of movie houses, sex shops, T-shirt stores, pimps and drug dealers.

- John Farrell, another pilot, said: “In this age, you can’t afford too much sentimentality. There are razor-thin margins in this business, and I don’t think anybody ever buys a ticket because American Airlines has a very nice stained window."We definitely understand the last pilot's comment, but it's just sad that something that made people feel like they weren't in yet another airport has to go. Two other interior murals at Terminal 8 are being sold to finance a new mural for the terminal.

- Solar energy (like at Stillwell Avenue at Coney Island) Robert Paaswell (former executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority; currently director of City College's University Transportation Research Center) says, "If you want to know what New York City subways are going to look like in 20 years, go to Hong Kong." We have, and you can see their version of a "smart pass," as well as glass walls and doors between platform and tracks and warning about escalators here (their subways are also like one continuous train car, since they are computer operated - it's like a sinuous tunnel).

- The ME's office confirms that the body found off Bronx shores is that of Jim Runsdorf, who went missing after the boat he and friends were rowing crashed into a motorboat

The Daily News today has one of those stories that is not particularly surprising but sad nonetheless. Basically, getting a green card in New York is harder and takes longer than anywhere else in the country. By next year the backlog of old cases and applications could go as high as 144,000 with people having waited years just to get an interview. To hammer in the point the News manages to find the saddest stories to give as examples, like the woman who has been waiting for 15 years for a green card so that she can legally go back to Bolivia to see the grandfather who raised her until she was six and who is now going blind ("'He wants to see me before he goes blind' said the part-time City College student, housekeeper and waitress"). And what is the government doing about all of this? Upping quotas and then sending in more immigration officers so as to at least keep up the current, very slow, pace. In the meantime if you or someone you know are waiting for a green card, the News recommends moving to Jersey where the wait is noticeably shorter.

Today and Thursday are Rent Guidelines Board's hearings for the public to weigh in on the proposed increases to rent stabilized apartments. The board is looking at a 2-4.5% increase for one-year leases, and a 4-7% increase for two-year leases, and you can expect the tenants to argue for lower increases and the landlords to argue for higher ones, with some clever signs and passionate discourse. Today's hearing is in Brooklyn, at the NYC City College of Technology at 285 Jay Street, from 4PM to 10PM; Thursday's hearing is in Manhattan, at Cooper Union's Great Hall at 7 East 7th Street, from 10AM to 6PM. Let Gothamist know if you attend any of these sessions.

- In the early hours of this morning, two people were slashed in Washington Heights in separate incidents. During a ten minute span, a City College senior and then a livery cab driver were attacked by a young man. The student, Yelyselev Valerio, didn't see the attacker on 189th and Audobon, but did hear his "war scream" at 2:30AM; Vaerio ran across the street to another building, but the attacker caught up with her, leaving an 8" wound. Driver Agapito Frias said the attacker suddenly punched him; Agapito needed 58 stitches to close up his wound.

Basically, the report is trying to get Governor Pataki to invest in transportation infrastructure first, like repairing the 37% of bridges of NY State that were found to be obsolete or damaged. Yeah, that'd be a good idea if you want that fourth term, buddy.

The last time Gothamist can remember an incident with NYC professor and claims of anti-Semitism was in 1991, when City College professor Leonard Jeffries gave a speech saying Jews were central to the slave trade and called a fellow professor "the head Jew at City College." And Gothamist must admit - our issues with Columbia being inhospitable had more to do with the dorms than the professors.