Results tagged “stuyvesanthighschool”

Just days after a student was suspended from Stuyvesant High School for allegedly setting fires, investigators say a copycat arsonist has been lighting blazes in the esteemed Lower Manhattan school — and taunting police in hieroglyphics.

A 16-year-old Stuyvesant High School student was caught on camera setting two fires in school bathrooms this week, according to police. Cops arrested junior Mohammed Hassan after obtaining surveillance tapes that apparently show the teen entering a seventh-floor bathroom at 1:13 pm and leaving two minutes later as a trash can went up in flames. At 1:16 pm, a different camera purportedly captures Hassan entering and quickly exiting another bathroom, leaving "bright orange and yellow flames rising out of a large garbage can," according to investigators quoted by the Daily News.

As Stuyvesant High School prepares for prom this weekend and the end of the school year to follow, word is that their school librarian has been arrested and charged with sexual abuse. The News reports that 56-year-old Christoper Asch is accused of inappropriate behavior with male students where he "massaged students' shoulders and backs, touched bellies and ran his hand through kids' hair." The Department of Education intends to fire Asch after having him reassigned to the rubber room last fall. According to a report obtained by the Post, "He'd creep the boys out even more by smirking or whispering in their ears to be quiet while he groped them in the library." His lawyer told reporters, "Mr. Christopher Asch categorically denies engaging in any inappropriate conduct with students, and ... intends to vigorously defend the charges."

Administrators at Stuyvesant High School have been using handheld metal detectors on students—not to detect weapons but to disarm cheaters who might use their mobile devices during a test. Teens at the elite public school in lower Manhattan were outraged when the wands were introduced recently during two weeks of AP testing. One student tells the Post, "To wand students is absurd. If they can't tell kids are using a cellphone to cheat, it's their own fault. Next thing, we're going to have to take our shoes off like we're going through the airport." And then they'll be forced to take tests naked like they're cutting coke for some paranoid drug lord! Another student also argues that "wanding is pointless. You can cheat in so many other ways." Principal Stanley Teitel declined to comment, but Dr. Teddi Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity, says the tactic is counterproductive, because it creates "an adversarial relationship where students try to get away with [cheating] and we try to stop them... Anything that can be cheated on easily is usually too simplistic a test."

The Department of Health is investigating whether there is another case of meningitis at Stuyvesant High School. Last week, a student died from the infection that causes meningitis. The Daily News reports, "Officials have not said [Ava Hecht] died from the contagious disease but have said her symptoms were consistent with bacterial meningitis" and the Health Department had been working to alert people in close contact with Hecht. The other student is currently being treated for the possible meningitis. Additionally, symptoms include "fever, headache, vomiting, stiff neck and a rash."

The Department of Health believes that the sudden death of a 17-year-old Stuyvesant High School senior on Thursday may have been from a bacterial infection known to cause meningitis. Ava Hecht of Bayside, Queens died Thursday afternoon after friends say she appeared fine in class earlier in the week and even had been working on homework the night before. Health officials began alerting students at Stuyvesant Friday, where a moment of silence was held for Ava and seniors were broken the news in an assembly. Ava sang in the chorus, was a cartoonist for the school paper, The Spectator, and drew a comic, "Soprano Man", that was based on a singing friend whom she transformed into a super hero. The school has set up a Facebook page as a memorial and in less than 48 hours it already has 1,300 members and 75 wall postings. A doctor for the DOH said that while there are a few dozen meningitis cases annually, “We see something like this once or twice a year.”

Officials at Stuyvesant High School told parents that they want to install metal detectors, but not because of concern that students are bringing weapons to school. The prestigious public high school simply wants to catch students who are breaking the Department of Education's ban on cellphones and are using them to text each other test answers. Principal Stanley Teitel said that the scanners would hopefully be installed during finals week in January. In the past, students at high schools that have metal detectors installed to combat them from bringing weapons in have griped about having their cell phones taken away, while students magnet schools like Stuyvesant can sneak them in unchallenged.

The Times has released a study focusing on the racial breakdown of students admitted into the city's high profile specialized high schools. They found white and Asian students to be offered admission at nearly five times the rate of black and Hispanics who took the test. That has led to demographics such as Stuyvesant being comprised of 67% Asians and Bronx Science of only 4% blacks. The disparities do not improve greatly even when just looking at students who came out of special test prep programs. The paper points out that diversifying the schools is hampered by a recent Supreme Court decision only allowing income to be a factor in admission's decisions as well as simply "a dearth of blacks and Hispanics taking the test." As far as why they're not taking it, the paper talks to students who suggest factors such as lack of motivation to not knowing where the admission testing sites even are.

George Zisiadis is currently attending Harvard, but the new film Frontrunners documents his time as Stuyvesant High School, and more specifically, his time campaigning to be president of the student council. The film is akin to Election, but true-to-life and filled with competitive New York teens, all attending one of the most competitive high schools in America. Currently at the Film Forum through the 28th, we highly recommend checking it out. George recently told us his thoughts about the current election, and how he would fix New York.

The Daily News reports that the Stuyvesant High School junior who was paralyzed from a van accident in January is suing Ford (the van's manufacturer) and NYC for $300 million.

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.

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."

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!).

- 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.