Results tagged “stuyvesanthigh”

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a missing child on Bivona St. in the Bronx, a scaffolding collapse at Clifton Ave. in Brooklyn, and a bomb threat at 9th Ave. and 53rd St. in Brooklyn.
• The Fed lowered interest rates again - Bernanke is totally freaking out!
• NYU reaches an accord with neighbors regarding continued expansion. We won't have to start referring to New York as NYUC.
• Stuyvesant High is back on the scene by gaining acceptance to the final round of the Intel Science Competition.

One of the Stuyvesant High School students seriously injured in last Saturday's Vermont van crash has returned home to New York. Junior Lucia Hsiao, a member of the girls' junior varsity track team, had suffered serious neck injuries but was able to "gingerly walk" to her room on her own. The Staten Island resident is wearing a halo around her head and will require a lot of rehab, but her dad said, "It could have been worse. She's done with the first step of recovery."

A van carrying members of Stuyvesant High School's junior varsity girls' track team overturned on the way to a track meet in New Hampshire. The crash occurred last Saturday on I-91 in Vermont, when the van "veered into a median and rolled over," according to Vermont State Police.

The Legal Aid attorney who secretly videotaped his female colleagues while they changed clothes pleaded guilty yesterday to unlawful surveillance. Peter Barta, a Stuyvesant High debater and Georgetown Law graduate, attempted to have the felony charge reduced to a misdemeanor, saying in a letter, "I'm not asking for forgiveness, but an opportunity to earn it." He also said his behavior was "creepy, disrespectful, juvenile and stupid," and wrote, "I offer no excuse or justification for my action. My behavior was inexcusable."

Stuyvesant High School is known for many things - high SAT scores, award winning students, and admission to elite universities. Football is certainly not of of those things. A new documentary, The Peglegs of Stuyvesant High, airing tonight at 6:30 pm on CSTV, focuses on the 2006 Stuyvesant Peglegs (named after Peter Stuyvesant, who had a wooden leg). Coming off a winless 2005 season, new coach Brian Sacks tries to lead his team to its first winning season in years, but is up against parents that would prefer that their students join the chess team and some players that have never played football before.

The 22-year-old St. John's University student who brought a loaded .50 caliber rifle to the Queens campus on Wednesday was arraigned in his hospital room at Bellevue yesterday. Communicating via a video link to the Queens Criminal Court, Omesh Hiraman appeared "frail in his blue pajamas" (NY Times), while he "hands shook and he "rocked back and forth" (Daily News), but seemed lucid during the proceedings. Judge Deborah Stevens Modica ordered that he be given a psychiatric evaluation to determine his mental fitness.

Omesh Hiraman, the 22-year-old St. John's University student who caused panic when he brought a .50 cailber rifle on campus, will be arraigned today in his hospital room at Bellevue. Queens DA Richard Brown said that Hiraman was being "held on two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon (with intent to use said weapon unlawfully against another and possession of a rifle in a building or grounds used for educational purposes) and several violations of the New York City Administrative Code (possession of a rifle without a permit or a certificate of registration)." He will face up to one year in prison if convicted.

The Post got varying opinions from neighbors of Peter Barta, the Legal Aid lawyer accused of secretly videotaping his female colleagues. Barta was charged with four counts of unlawful surveillance and six counts of attempted unlawful surveillance after he allegedly planted a Sharper Image Security Camcorder Clock in his colleagues' offices to film them while they changed in their offices for the gym or court appearances.

A Legal Aid Society lawyer was arrested yesterday for allegedly planting a clock with a hidden surveillance camera inside it in a female co-worker's office. WNBC reports that 32-year-old Peter Barta's distaff co-workers told police detectives that they regularly used their offices to change into work clothes (like a suit for court) or for after-work activities. Barta had videotape in his home of one of his workers with her breasts and buttocks bared.

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge's decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what's above the documents is the NYPD's rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive surveillance of disparate groups and people, listing various terror incidents between 2001 and the convention as well as other incidents of protest. Here is Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's statement:

“I think a close examination of the documents is going to show that the New York City Police Department did an outstanding job in protecting the City during the Republican National Convention. People wanted to come here and shut down the City, to replicate what happened in Seattle, Montreal and Genoa. We simply didn't let that happen, and I think it'll just underscore the outstanding work of the men and women of the Department. In terms of gathering information, the vast majority of information that was gathered was open-source information. It was gathered from the Internet; these groups that were coming here were advertising what they were going to do — bragging about what they were going to do. It wasn't particularly difficult to get the vast majority of this information.”

ACT UP, Sierra Club, City Council members (Charles Barron, David Weprin, Bill Perkins), Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Johnny Cash Bloc, MSNBC, A31 Coalition, NYCLU, NOW, Planned Parenthood, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Stuyvesant High School Students, Westboro Baptist Church, Indymedia, Democratic National Committee, Coalition of Fire and Police Unions, Grandmothers Against War, Falun Gong, Arab Muslim American Foundation, Time's Up, Billionaires For Bush, United for Peace and Justice, The Surveillance Camera Players, ACLU, Hip Hop Summit Action Network, The Federation of East Village Artists, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York

The NYCTV program "Inside the Archives" features a weekly hour of archival New York images set to music. A collection of photographer Bernice Abbot's mostly architectural photography of the city from 1935-38 called "Changing New York" is viewable at the New York Public Library's site. And the library also hosts a series of photos by Lewis Wickes Hines of the Empire State Building's construction in 1930-31. NYC Then and Now is an interesting pool of photos at flickr that documents alterations––sometimes small, sometimes dramatic––in streetscapes around the city.

Last Monday, Gothamist set down with award winning sportscaster Len Berman. A New York native, Berman attended Stuyvesant High School and started his broadcast career while a student at Syracuse University. He got his start in television news as a reporter (and later news anchor) in 1970 at WLWD-TV (now WDTN-TV)in Dayton, Ohio. Three years later, he moved to Boston’s WBZ-TV, where he served as sports director and called Boston Celtics and New England Patriots games. In 1979 he returned to New York as weekend sports anchor for WCBS-TV.

Last night, a man carrying two handguns and over 100 rounds of ammunition shot and killed a pizzeria employee in Greenwich Village and fatally shot two unarmed auxiliary police officers, before responding police officers shot him on Bleecker Street. The slain counterman at DeMarco's Pizza is being described as Romero Morales or Alfredo Romaro (we will refer to him as Romaro). The auxiliary police officers were identified as 19-year-old Eugene Marshalik, a NYU student, and Nicholas Pekearo, 28. And the shooter was David Garvin, 50 (also described as being 32 year old). Mayor Bloomberg said, "It's a horrible night for the New York Police Department and the city."

What does a Stuyvesant High grad who won the Siemens Competition prize for outstanding high school science project do these days? Study worms of course. Yin Li won the $100,000 scholarship in 2003 for his study of how certain proteins in the brain "might control the capacity of nerve cells to undergo local protein synthesis". Such a mechanism might be related to memory and learning.

The Village Voice has extensive September 11 coverage online, and one of the stories is about a movement from Stuyvesant High School students demanding health insurance after being exposed to the toxic dust when they returned to their school on Chambers Street. Lila Nordstrom, a senior during the 2001-2002 school year, sent a letter to officials:

"As victims of 9/11, and, especially, victims of the misinformation campaign, we served as ‘draftees' in the media campaign to reassure the American people. At the least, in recognition of the risks we undertook simply by attending school, we should be guaranteed health insurance for the rest of our lives."

Continue reading "WTC Health Issues Trickle Down to Stuy"

Conan O'Brien gave the commencement speech to Stuyvesant High School students, and thank God for YouTube. To win over the crowd, he slams grandparents and Bronx Science right out of the gate and later he mentions that he researched Stuyvesant using Wikipedia. Gothamist hopes Stuyvesant Class of 2006 knows how lucky they were, as their commencement speakers are probably down hill from here. And certainly this is better PR for Stuyvesant than cuddle groups on the cover of New York magazine (we think!).

Today's NY Times feature about the growth of Seekers in city high schools was pretty interesting and the video that accompanied the story is good, too, but for sheer choreography, we point you to this YouTube clip of Stuyvesant High Seekers dancing during Jesus Day. The Seekers are a Christian club that has become very popular at city high schools; here's what Regina Chan, co-president of the Stuyvesant Seekers Club, said

"There are a lot of people who respect that you're religious and you're involved in Seekers. And there are also a lot of those who just kind of see you as someone who's a religious fanatic, that we don't care about science, that we're ignorant."

- Romona Moore's mother filed suit against the NYPD for racial discrimination and negligence in dealing with her daughter's murder- back in July 2004.

Forget Henrietta Hudson-- the new lesbian hotspot is the second floor of Stuyvesant High School during 10th period (after 3pm.) Of course, that's only if you believe the slightly tittilating cover article in this week's New York Magazine:

Designed with sweeping windows, the aquarium will allow passersby to observe native New York Harbor fish, invertebrates and seaweed from outside, although visitors could also step inside the 1,000-square-foot structure, which might open to the public as soon as next summer. Greenery will cascade down from the rooftop and decorate the ground level as well.

While finding a movie "beautiful" is not the same thing as finding it "hot," it can't be denied that it helps if the leads are of the sex one prefers, and if the setting is something more inspirational than, say, the Chambers Street subway station. Straight men (or anyone, for that matter) seeking to ban "Brokeback Mountain" may be accused of homophobia; the men who roll their eyes when their girlfriends or wives suggest the film are perfectly justified, their reputation as tolerant individuals intact. Am I heterophobic to prefer "Yossi and Jagger" to "Yossi and some really hot Israeli actress"? Perhaps, but you can't help what you like.

Nothing, except maybe college admissions, seems to get New York parents panties into a twist like the city's specialized high schools. Parent have, since the inception of "the Test," been complaining about how unfair it is that admission into the city's math and science schools is decided completely by a test that is taken only once in eighth grade. They complain that at the Boston Latin School admissions takes grades into account and that at the Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, a sibling school to Stuy, they not only use test scores but also grades, essays and teacher recommendations.

Check out the Livejournal blog of Stuyvesant. And Gothamist on Stuyvesant High School.

Ned Vizzini, Be More Chill author

Jessica Lappin, City Council Candidate

Gong will be running tomorrow afternoon through the streets of downtown. See him and more torchbearers, like the Diddy, Chuck Close, Sarah Hughes, and Brian Stokes Mitchell tomorrow at during the Olympic Torch Relay. More on the Olympic Torch route and other torchbearers.

The city's best public high school, Stuyvesant, is in the middle of a strange situation: Flying in the face of the city's recommendation that schools try to accept as many student as possible, Stuyvesant's incoming classes are shrinking. The Times article lists lots of contradictory statements, but, finally, education officials "confirmed" that Stuy Principal Stanley Teitel was in fact reducing the size of classes by 100 students (though 30 more will come at the end of summer through other programs), saying that Stuy was built for 2,600, not the current 3,000. Stuyvesant is generally the top choice of students after they take their high school entrance exams, and the news of smaller classes sizes has outraged many parents whose kids tried to apply to Stuy but didn't get in, as well as the parents of 14,000 students who are still without high schools, and school officials, since other schools have much worse off than Stuyvesant. The Board of Education is going to relook at Stuyvesant's capacity.

- And the weekly wrap-up in advice from Ask Gothamist.

Gothamist applauds the Tribeca Film Festival for celebrating Stuyvesant High School in its current advertising campaign. Our alma mater deserves the press, as it lends its auditorium each year for screenings. Not to be too intensely detail oriented, but we can spot at least one thing about this poster that seems a little bit weird. Can you?