Brooklyn College is joining the ranks of other New York academic establishments by adding a dorm next spring (something they've already started, and stopped, work on). The school has a little over 15,000 grads and undergrads, with about 99% hailing from New York and 77% from Brooklyn. The school hopes that by adding a dorm, some out-of-staters will flock to Midwood. The Daily News reports the eight-story Farragut Road building will house about 214 students......

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former NYU student against the university after he broke his hip in a Jell-O wrestling tussle gone horribly wrong. As a junior in 2004, Avram Wisnia was one of the organizers of what was supposed to be a totally awesome “Beach Bash” event, held in an NYU dormitory courtyard with water guns, water balloons, and a kiddie pool filled with the gelatinous snack. Wisnia sought a......

New York University's Child Study Center is pulling the plug on a controversial ad campaign publicizing childhood mental health problems that was considered stigmatizing. The campaign was meant to raise awareness of conditions like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Asperger's Syndrome, autism, depression, and bulimia. Critics strongly objected to the style of the campaign, however, which took the form of realistic looking ransom notes addressed to parents that stressed kids with these conditions would be doomed......

A sophomore at New York University was found dead in his Water Street dorm room on Friday night. The Washington Square News reports that other residents were told about the death on Saturday and that the university did not send out an NYU community-wide email per a request from the deceased students' parents: "The family has asked that they be accorded the utmost privacy, and the university will do its best to honor its wishes......

New York University is urging students who are feeling overwhelmed to contact the school's mental health facilities, a few days after one of its incoming freshman killed himself by jumping from the 15th-floor roof of his Union Square dorm on East 14th St. Eighteen-year-old "Trey" Allan Oakley Hunter III leapt to his death minutes after texting a goodbye message to his parents and brother. In an email sent out to students, university president John Sexton......

A freshman from New York University apparently committed suicide yesterday morning. The student, Allan Oakley Hunter III, jumped from the roof of University Hall, a 15-story dorm at 110 East 14th Street; his body was found in the courtyard. The Washington Square News reports that police were searching his room around 10AM yesterday morning and that his body was removed by 1PM. Friends told the Washington Square News that Hunter was "introverted but friendly," but......

As it is the week before Labor Day, many area schools are welcoming a new class of students to New York in what is generally known as an orientation week. The New York Sun reports on various efforts schools put into shepherding thousands of 18-year-olds into NYC.First-year students arriving at Barnard, Columbia, and New York University have many activities to choose from this week, including: yoga classes, exclusive tours of the new Greek and Roman......

New York University is reaching out to placate New Yorkers whose parking is disrupted by incoming students by paying to place cars in garages. An annual headache for New York residents is NYU's move-in day, when thousands of students arrive in the city en masse to take up dorm life at one of the school's many residences. Streets are blocked off as parents line up car after car, many pulled onto the curb itself. NY1......

Yesterday we got a tip that Polytechnic University posted an emergency message on their site. Later it became clear in an update to the tipster that "NYU is taking over Polytechnic, which will become Polytechnic Institute of New York University." Apparently NYU's President Sexton has been wanting an engineering program for a while. In October 2004 The NY Times published an article about the possible alliance, mentioning the closure of the engineering program at NYU......

Mayor Bloomberg has been an independent all of a couple days, but there is tons of ink being devoted to his chances. The most interesting story is from the NY Sun, which offers various scenarios where Bloomberg could win the 2008 presidential election (not that he wants to run for president). For instance, he'd need the Northeast, West Coast, Florida, and Heartland states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, etc. And if "extreme" candidates run in......

Perhaps New York University finally felt that it owned enough New York real estate, because now it's thinking about buying up parts of Paris, France. The American University of Paris is building new facilities on an island in the Seine in a partnership with NYU, and hopes to one day become absorbed into the New York school's system. 90% of the Paris school's students hail from outside of France and the American University of Paris......

Last year around this time, the Observer pitted Williamsburg hipsters and Park Slope yuppies against each other. This year, the Observer tackles the yearning some native New Yorkers have for when NYC was bad (sorta like Michael Jackson video Bad!). Summer of Sam, Needle Park, Ford telling the city to drop dead, all of it seems better than it is now. Here's what some people told the Observer:- “I was flashed all the time—that’s......

A guilty pleasure many people have is watching Dateline's To Catch a Predator. We assume so, because it's on a lot and because there's nothing as satisfying as watching people try to weasel their way out of chatroom transcripts and out of the clutches of swamp things. So we're glad that the Asbury Park Press and Staten Island Advance are keeping tabs on the show. The APP detailed the recent filming of a sting at......

Since NYU hasn't had a Minutemen style brouhaha lately, some NYU students - including two College Republicans - appeared on Neil Cavuto's Fox News program to detail the difficulties of being a conservative in the classroom. From the Washington Square News:Senior Sara Zerner and NYU College Republicans David Laska and Christina Gonzalez participated in a short segment of "Your World With Neil Cavuto," after Fox News approached the NYU College Republicans. Neil Cavuto introduced the......

In a feature that can only be described as "why Gothamist is so hungry so early, Fast Food nation be damned," the NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni went on a 9 day, 3,650 mile tour of fast food restaurants across the country, enjoying some selections more than others and learning to ask for the "most popular" items, instead of "recommendations." And he also muses about some chains that need some more exposure in the......

During this Sunday's 60 Minutes, Philip Seymour Hoffman will reveal that he really loved doing drugs when he was younger. Here's what the 60 Minutes website says:For the first time publicly, the actor, hailed for his performance as author Truman Capote, talks about his decision to get help for substance abuse... Fresh out of New York University’s drama school, Hoffman was lured into New York City’s fast life. "It was all that (drugs and alcohol),......

Welcome to 2006! What's coming up in events around the city...sex, drugs, and rock & roll. And also some art and design (all downtown, of course). Some things never change, even with the passing of a year. First up, Parsons presents the first exhibition to explore one of the most avant-garde periods in 20th-century American Design, titled Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New York, 1974 -1984. The exhibit aims to examine important interior, furniture, fashion,......

New York University is set to ban Coca-Cola products from campus on December 8th, unless the company agrees to an independent investigation of its Colombian bottling operations. Coke has been dogged for years by rumors of unspeakable brutality at the Colombian plants-- everything from kidnappings to murder-- and for the last couple of years, a national movement led by KillerCoke has been organizing bans on university campuses across the United States. Already 19 colleges have......

The NY Times has an obituary for 95 year old Edith Spivack, a lawyer for the city's Law Department, and she lived a long, amazing life. Spivack started working for the city in 1934 and only retired last year, and in those 70 years of working for the city (and through 10 mayors, from LaGuardia to Bloomberg), she helped keep the city out of bankruptcy in the 1960s and would make foreign consulates pay their......

Man in Gray...

New York University has had a remarkable rise into the top echelons of universities, in terms of a strong academic programs and desirability from prospective students, but it's also had it rough. Over the past few years, there were a spate of student suicides and outcries over its rapid downtown development. And now, there's a spate of deep-pocketed donors who have turned out to be frauds. Alberto Vilar, a supposed billionaire philanthropist, pulled the wool......

Murtaza Vali, Graduate Student...

Gothamist has often wondered about the new luxury condo, 455 Central Park West, because there would be nothing cooler than living in a rotunda. It looks like one of the rotundas at the American Museum of Natural History - it's just that one wouldn't necessarily have any dinosaur fossils to display in it. The NY Times' City section looked at the 455 Central Park West, which used to be a nursing home and cancer hospital.......

NYU is getting into the dating service game: They have launched NYUSingles.com. [Updated: Upon closer reading of the fine print, it's not endorsed by NYU the university but rather some entrepreneurs trying to tap into the online meeting people craze.] Their mission: Meeting people with common interests, opinions and ideas has never been easy. With today's deadlines, daily commutes, and personal duties, it's even tougher to find the time and opportunity to explore new......