A 13-year-old boy was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter in the Friday night death of a Columbia graduate student. According to a Daily News source, the boy bragged to his 15-year-old friend before chasing Ming-Hui Yu, "Look what I do to this one." The teen and his friends apparently hassled Yu, a 24-year-old Ph.D. student in statistics and a teaching fellow, at the median at Broadway and 122nd Street. The Post reports one "punched......

Columbia University’s 17-acre, $7 billion dollar expansion plan (which was approved late last year) has some up in arms, and standing firm. Anne Whitman, owner of a building in the midst of the expansion territory, wants the University to move her owner-occupied building instead of having to give it up altogether. The building, a 1903 dairy stable purchased by her father in 1972, currently houses her antique moving and storage company. Originally part of Sheffield......

Photograph of the fire truck donated to Ladder 101 by Triborough on Flickr Members of a marching band from South Carolina were still years from entering high school when the attacks of 9/11/01 occurred, but the band arrived in New York City this week to visit a Red Hook Engine and Ladder Company that received a replacement truck in 2002 purchased with funds raised by White Knoll Middle School students and the residents of......

UPDATE: It appears I may have been punk'd. Bwog is reporting that there was no vote to ban JuicyCampus by Columbia's student council. The university magazine talked to a student council VP of Policy who "claims that a mischievous tipster must have sent in a fake tip to Gothamist and the [New York] Post." No tip was received at Gothamist, but the Post was the source of this afternoon's item, along with background from The......

Photograph of the 116th station by edEx on Flickr The man who fell into the uptown tracks at the 116th Street subway station - and was saved by a Columbia maintenance worker who saw him from the downtown side and crossed the tracks - has finally spoken out. The 46-year-old NJ resident relayed his message to rescuer Veeramuthu Kalimuthu, via the Daily News, "Thank you for saving my life. I came less than 60......

Juicy Campus, the multi-college message board where students anonymously post malicious comments about each other, is facing legal action in New Jersey, where prosecutors have subpoenaed the website’s records. The NJ Attorney General is trying to bring the site down on a technicality of sorts, by accusing Juicy Campus of violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act – because while the site claims it doesn't allow offensive material, there is no way for users to report......

The abrupt elevation of Lieutenant Governor David Paterson to the top seat in NY State government should mix things up a bit in Albany and NYC. First up is the state budget, and with a grim economic outlook and behind-the-scenes transitions, he said yesterday, “We cannot afford to waste another second. We have a budget that is due and a deadline to meet.” Paterson added he would attempt to govern by consensus, rather than take......

Juicy Campus, the multi-college message board, has been generating controversy at Columbia University because of the site’s discussions, which feature edifying topics ranging from “Fattect [sic] Girl that Looks Good at Columbia ” to “Males at Columbia – Dickless Wonders.” Michelle Diamond, president of the Columbia student council, has been exploring the feasibility of blocking the site from the University web servers. Alternatively, Diamond may initiate a campus-wide "pledge" against Juicy Campus, in which students......

After a year-plus long investigation, Columbia Teachers College has sanctioned a professor for plagiarism. And the professor happens to be Madonna Constantine, the professor who found a noose on her office door last fall. The Columbia Spectator got confirmation that the Teachers' College “found numerous instances in which she [Constantine] used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years: "Prompted by complaints from students and one former......

Last year, the federal authorities had been looking for Esther Elizabeth Reed, a woman who faked her way into attending Harvard, Cal State and most recently Columbia University, by using a dead woman's identity. Reed was on the lam, but this past weekend's murders at a mall outside Chicago led the police to Reed, who had been living in the very same town the killings occurred. In 2006, while in NYC, Reed had applied for......

...for being totally rude! It's actually not the kind of #1 ranking Bollinger would prefer, as it's for Time's Top 10 Awkward Moments of 2007 list. As Bwog points out, Bollinger deftly bypasses "David Hasselhoff, David Vitter, Rosie, Paris, Miss Teen South Carolina, Caroline Giuliani, and (wait for it) BRITNEY SPEARS" for his introduction of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last September, calling him a "petty and cruel dictator." Ahmadinejad earns the #2 spot on Time's......

A Columbia grad student, Arun Wiita, and the New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the NYPD last Thursday. Over the summer, Wiita was photographing a subway station entrance and its surroundings at 207th Street and 10th Avenue as part of an ambitious 10-day photography project. He was detained by police, handcuffed and held for 30 minutes; now Wiita is "seeking compensatory damages and reimbursement of legal fees." He believes that his South......

Today is a citywide "Day Out Against Hate." City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Reverend Al Sharpton have spearheaded the event, which was prompted by a number of disturbing hate crime incidents, from swastikas in Brooklyn Heights to a noose found at the Columbia University campus. The Politicker was at one of the events this morning, where Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz "suggested, rather strongly, that city public school students be required to make......

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual salary survey of the heads of educational institutions and the value of a college education is evidenced in the paychecks being cashed by institutions' presidents. More than a dozen heads of private universities took home more than $1 million during the 2005-06 school year. According to the New York Post, the dean of higher earning was Donald Ross, who took home $5.7 million--most in deferred compensation after......