The lecture that rocked New York. (BWOG)

After a tape released yesterday showed Columbia Professor Emlyn Hughes beginning the Frontiers of Science three-lecture physics unit by stripping down, curling up in a fetal position and letting ninjas harass him while a projection of the Twin Towers falling and the Holocaust played on the television. Maybe he was trying to pull a Booth Jonathan ... we have no idea. But thanks to a trusted source at Columbia, we now know a little bit more about the events of the lecture, student and faculty reactions, and the status of Professor Hughes.

- BWOG, one of the campus blogs, was able to finagle a response from the administration:

Universities are committed to maintaining a climate of academic freedom, in which the faculty members are given the widest possible latitude in their teaching and scholarship. However, the freedoms traditionally accorded the faculty carry corresponding responsibilities. Columbia’s Faculty Handbook states that “In conducting their classes, faculty should promote an atmosphere of mutual tolerance, respect, and civility [and] should confine their classes to the subject matter covered by their courses.” While one must exercise caution in judging excerpts from a lecture or short presentations from an entire course outside of their full context, the appropriate academic administrators are currently reviewing the facts of this particular presentation in quantum mechanics.

- Apparently we forgot to mention that Lil' Wayne was playing over the beginning of the strip tease.

- Professor Hughes is probably tenured, which would put the administration in a tougher position if it decided to terminate him. According to our source: "He's chair of Frontiers of Science and was deputy chair of the Physics Department in 2010. He must be tenured.

- Also according to our source, the Frontiers of Science class is "a little like a series of TED Talks. Each week, a world-renowned prof lectures freshmen. That lecture is done in a huge auditorium. A few days later, groups of 20 students discuss the lecture with grad students/untenured profs." And let's face it ... we all know how weird TED Talks can be.

- "Frontiers has always been a weird class," says our source. "A few years ago, a student made this video about it":

Hopefully that video wasn't for credit ...

This is how your daughter is paying for law school. (SeekingArrangement.com)

SeekingArrangement.com, the Sugar Daddy website that hooks up poor/younger/more attractive women with rich/older/not so attractive men looking for a mature relationship-slash-good times, has come out with a new study titled "Fastest Growing Sugar Baby Colleges of 2012." (We're guessing these occasional "studies" lend an air of legitimacy to the site, perhaps as a safeguard against the very obvious charge that their service promotes online prostitution and Internet solicitation services.)

While the list is topped by Southern schools, we want to preemptively apologize to parents of NYU and Columbia students.

From the press release:

Last year,
college student memberships increased by 58% on the mutually beneficial
relationship website, with more students from the South joining than any
other region. The average co-ed Sugar Baby receives approximately $3000 a
month in allowances and gifts from her Sugar Daddy, enough to cover
tuition and living expenses at most schools.

The following is the list of the Top 20 Fastest Growing Sugar Baby
Schools, by new sign ups in 2012:

1. Georgia State University 292
2. New York University 285
3. Temple University 268
4. University of Central Florida 221
5. University of Southern Florida 212
6. Arizona State University 204
7. Florida International University 187
8. University of Georgia 148
9. Indiana University 131
10. Texas State 128
11. Kent State University 123
12. Penn State 121
13. University of North Texas 112
14. Florida State University 111
15.Tulane University 109
16. Michigan State University 108
17. University of Ohio 103
18. Columbia University 100
19. University of Alabama 96
20. University of California Los Angeles 91

³It¹s tough. The South went from being the epitome of success and money
to faring the worst in terms of well-being,² says Founder and CEO,
Brandon Wade. ³Even if NYU is still our biggest Sugar Baby university,
the growth of southern female coeds seeking the Sugar Lifestyle is a move
in the right direction to bring back Southern charm.²

Last year, NYU was the top school for new sign ups, coming in second this
year with 1.5x more students joining the website than in 2011. Columbia
is the only Ivy league school to make the Top 20, but Cornell also showed
a significant increase in students looking for a Sugar Daddy.

New York Sugar Schools by new sign-ups and increase in memberships in
2012:

New York University 285 sign-ups 154% increase in sign
ups
Columbia University 100 sign-ups 69% increase in sign ups
Cornell University 40 sign-ups 85% increase in
sign ups
Syracuse University 48 sign-ups 123% increase in sign
ups

The study claims that young women in college enter "mutually beneficial" relationships so they can pay for tuition, which is  a pretty large leap in logic to say the least. (It's also unoriginal, the whole "I'm only turning tricks to pay for my books" line.) SeekingArrangement has no idea what these women are spending their money on, or if they are even getting any money, since their list is comprised merely of women who have signed up for the free service, not those who have officially entered into an agreement or received payment.

Still, this is a great little tool for finagling a couple more bucks at out of your parents next semester. Just leave this article out around the house and wait for the wallets to come out.

A Conversio Virium member after a caning demonstration at Columbia University.

“Sometimes my friends and I stop each other mid-sentence and say, ‘Oh my god, you guys. We go to Harvard. This is so weird,’” Maria, a junior, said recently over Skype chat.

Harvard had been Maria’s dream school for years. (She requested a pseudonym, but not because she’s not proud of her alma mater.) A valedictorian of her New England public high school, she got in on the basis of a 4.0 GPA and started working toward an English major. Last year, she began looking around for some extracurricular activities to enrich her college experience. There were more than 400 student groups to choose from. Maria chose a group called Munch. Her goal was to meet new people, to explore something new, maybe to release some of the pressure that comes with trying to compete in an intimidating hothouse of rampant overachievement.

Maria is petite, with honey-blonde hair and brown eyes. They widened as she ticked off a few of the areas she hoped to explore in her free time: “Bondage, handcuffs, ice play...”

Maria is, she said, less a masochist than a submissive. “So a lot of taking orders and stuff like that,” she explained. “I’m really into the whole exhibitionist thing, semi-public places, mirrors...” In addition to educational meetings on campus, Munch members have occasionally gotten together in private to “play.” Since joining, Maria’s had a chance to explore some of her fantasies. “I’ve been hit with a riding crop, a belt, a paddle, canes, a flogger ... floggers are my favorite.”

The popularity of 50 Shades of Grey has accelerated a mainstreaming of the BDSM subculture already underway—the initials stand for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism—and the trend has been especially pronounced in our more elite institutions of higher learning. Columbia has a BDSM group. So do Tufts, MIT, Yale and the University of Chicago. Brown, UPenn and Cornell have hosted BDSM educators for on-campus seminars entitled “The Freedom of Kink” and “Kink for All.” It looks like conservatives who have long viewed the Ivy League a bastion of depravity may have a point after all.

But some young members of such groups are finding the subculture is offering them more of an education than they expected, confronting them with serious issues involving consent, disclosure, anonymity, sexual violence, guilt and innocence, crime and punishment.

While the scene’s mantra—“safe, sane and consensual”—is heard so often it might as well be translated into needlepoint, violations of these maxims are common. In the last year, hundreds of people have come forward to describe the abuse they’ve suffered within the scene. The victims are mostly women, and like 50 Shades’ fictional 22-year-old Anastasia Steele, many are also young, submissive and uncertain about their boundaries.

In December, Victoria (not her real name), a 20-year-old English major at an Ivy League school, had decided to skip reading period, apply more makeup than usual and venture on her own to a kinky meet-upshe had read about on FetLife, a social networking service for fetishists. Victoria didn’t have any experience with submissive sex, but she had been drawn to it for years; she sometimes had fantasies about dungeons or about being restrained or embarrassed, and she recalled family trips to Medieval Times having given her an unusual erotic charge.

The meeting was fun. Victoria had interesting conversations about neurobiology and religion and, of course, about kinky sex. It was near the end of the evening when a man walked in whom she recognized; he had tried to form an S&M club on her campus a few years before. Eric had a doughy, impish face and slicked-back hair, and he wore his cell phone in a carrier on his hip.

A week later the two went to a “play-party.” After some reluctance, Victoria agreed to negotiate some tentative participation, defining safe words and off-limits actions. But once the two were alone in a corner, she said, Eric put a knife to her throat and began groping her. Victoria was shaken, but she couldn’t help doubting herself. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, she figured.

The next day, when Eric asked her to send him an email stating what had happened and describing it as consensual, she complied. “At the time, I felt like this must be normal,” she said. “Now it seems obvious he was just building up a defense.”

The BDSM scene can be violent by nature. Physical and psychological power, and the lack thereof, are at the heart of the erotic experience. As a result, sexual assault can be harder to define and harder to prove. But that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. Indeed, awareness of the problem seems to be growing, and controversies around the issue have been roiling the tight-knit fetish community all year.

Kitty Stryker and Maggie Mayhem were up late one night, chatting online. Both are known as sex-positive activists and celebrities within the sadomasochism world. That night, they began to swap sexual-assault stories and realized the experience was more common than either had known. The pair began collecting similar tales online, and it wasn’t long before they had amassed more than 300 anecdotes. The stories ranged from more benign assaults (unwanted groping) to tales of being drugged and raped. Many of the victims described abusers who were well-known members of the community, people who hosted parties or helped to organize the scene.

“What we found is that the abuse was systematic,” said Ms. Stryker, who regularly goes by a pseudonym. “People had these stories, but when they went to report them to community leaders, they were dismissed as drama. Not only that, but people were ostracized for reporting. It becomes clear how easy it is for an abuser to swoop in on a newbie.”

Meanwhile, Andy, a 24-year-old law student who lives in New York City, also began collecting abuse stories, publishing them directly on FetLife. Andy is something of a New York scene fixture, known for throwing massive BDSM galas that include such attractions as “glitter bathtubs” and fake-blood tableaux modeled on the TV series Dexter. A transgendered male, he quickly collected hundreds of anecdotes, many from fellow New Yorkers, some of which called out abusers by FetLife username. “I knew the people they were naming,” Andy said. “There were party organizers and influential people that users were saying had done horrible things to them,” he said. Publishing these accounts on the social network had a galvanizing effect. Every time someone “loved” a post it showed up on their feed. Soon, everyone on the site knew who was being accused of what—though they didn’t always know the identities of the accusers.

When FetLife employees caught wind of the posts, they began removing usernames. Employees warned that lodging criminal accusations against users violated the site’s terms of service. CEO John Baku then got involved, stating that he was sorry for everyone who’d experienced abuse and suggesting that victims go to the police. (Mr. Baku declined to comment for this article.) The CEO’s involvement spurred hundreds of comments from users, many siding with the site’s administrators and warning of an epidemic of false accusations. Others backed Andy, arguing that the community should police itself and support victims. BDSM is illegal in some states, and many practitioners do not feel comfortable going to the police.

“The types of abuse that happen when you are new and vulnerable are happening to us now,” Andy said. It was a fall afternoon, and he was sitting in an East Village cafe, wearing a fedora, white suspenders and a black Janelle Monae shirt. “There are people in the New York scene that everyone knows are bad news, and people tell you but no one does anything about it. Since FetLife has emerged, we’ve had this giant influx of young people coming into the scene who haven’t been around long enough to hear the whispers.”

As word spread about the multiple accounts of consent violation, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) launched a survey. “We haven’t closed it yet, but so far we have 5,000 responses, and over 30 percent of them had have their previously negotiated limit violated, which I think is horrific,” said spokesperson Susan Wright. “There is still confusion between consensual BDSM and assault.”

As the debate around naming abusers wore on, FetLife stuck to its policy.

Things got more complicated when Mr. Baku himself was accused. The story came to light on the personal blog of a woman named called SinShine Love. “Let it be clear,” she wrote, “the reason John sees no problem with any of this rape apologist bullshit is because he has a foggy ass notion of consent and acceptable behavior himself. And because he personally benefits from people like me staying silent.”

Mr. Baku issued an apology for his behavior on FetLife, stating that he was drunk the night in question, though he didn’t specifically admit to abuse.

“We enforce the idea that you can say no to anything,” said Holli, a leader of Columbia University’s BDSM group, Conversio Virium. “There are a lot of young, inexperienced people that come to us for guidance and an introduction to the scene. A lot of them become easy targets for people to prey on at play parties. Sometimes young people like to say ‘Yes, yes, yes’ to everyone they encounter at a fetish party or event, but if you say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘I’m not so sure about this,’ the lines about whether actual consent was given start to blur.”

Samantha Berstler, a student at Harvard who had studied the scene, supports Conversio Virium but questions the group’s willingness to admit non-students. “Why not just put a big neon sign on the door that says, ‘Vulnerable young nubile college students, many without strong support networks in the city yet, please come take advantage of them?’” she wondered.

Every time she logs into FetLife she sees the same story, Ms. Berstler added. “Someone else I know is writing that a relationship was completely abusive, and of course she was young and a college student and pretty and new.”

Consent is paramount at Harvard’s BDSM group, Munch, said the group’s leader, who asked to be identified as Michael. Right now, the university is considering giving the group its official backing, provided it adopts specific policies to educate members on how to deal with abuse. “We are working on developing standardized policies,” he said. “Right now that mostly exists with the function of an email list—anyone who joins the list gets a spiel.”

Victoria could have used the support of a good student group. After she and Eric broke up, she told her friends about the darker elements of their relationship—how he would repeatedly threaten to rape her and how maybe sometimes what he did actually seemed like rape, and how he once casually suggested he might be a serial killer. She said she had sometimes felt forced into sex acts, including electrocution and “fire play.”

Everyone agreed that this was abuse, but when she talked about reporting it, they waffled.

The NCSF has been working on new community guidelines about what constitutes consent and what doesn’t. Ms. Wright says she’s also been developing an app with FetLife that will direct members who have been abused to the authorities, as well as a new program that helps victims report to the police in general.

Meanwhile, despite FetLife’s best efforts, alleged abusers are still being publicly identified. A tech-savvy member of the BDSM community named MayMay recently developed an app that puts a yellow square around the profile photo of anyone who has been accused of abuse, along with a description of their alleged misdeeds. The yellow square can only be seen within the app, a free download.

After her breakup with Eric, Victoria sought out the help of a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD. Eventually, she decided to press charges.

“I met a lawyer and we just picked the three most obvious instances of rape,” she recalled. “He said it wouldn’t make sense to file a report of 20 instances. I was worried that if I made the report, Eric would come attack me or kill me, and I didn’t want to put my life in danger unless I was certain something would come of it.” Victoria’s lawyer went to a friend who was a DA and asked what he would do with such a case.

Victoria was sitting in the school library weeks later when she received the email from her lawyer. The DA said he would throw the case out. BDSM scenarios are just too complicated to prosecute, he said.

One afternoon, Michael again met with school administrators about Munch gaining official recognition as a student group. Michael and two other group leaders sat and waited for their turn to be seen. Other student group leaders had arrived late and were wearing shorts. Michael and the other Munch members had worn suits. They were nervous.

The meeting was tense, but Michael felt it went well. “One of the big concerns that they had were issues of consent, and I’m proud to say we did a good job of representing ourselves as a group that takes consent very seriously,” he said. He hopes that Munch can become a leader in larger discussions about sexual abuse on campus, taking its consent-is-paramount model to the “vanilla” world. Harvard will make a determination about the group’s official status at the end of November.

editorial@observer.com

On Monday morning, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported on the Thursday-night arrest of a young woman who had been attending classes and orientation events at Columbia under the name of Rhea Sen. Columbia news blog Bwog later reported that the woman, a 26-year-old whose real name is Briva Patel, has been charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass.

An NYPD spokesperson told The Observer that Ms. Patel was arrested again at Columbia University on Saturday and charged with criminal contempt for violating an order of protection barring her from the campus, as well as with a second criminal trespass charge. According to the District Attorney's office, Patel has been arraigned and released, with her next court date set for November 29.

According to Spectator and Bwog, Ms. Patel accessed orientation events for international and domestic students by saying that she had lost her ID. The Spectator reports that students and administrators were suspicious about her after she gave conflicting accounts of where she lived on campus.

It is unclear where Ms. Patel slept during her time pretending to be a student.

Ms. Butler has vocally criticized Israel and the equation of Jewishness and Zionism; in a 2003 London Review of Books piece, she advocated for the ability of Jews to dissent against Israel without facing retribution. "I am calling for a space for dissent for Jews, and non-Jews, who have criticisms of Israel to articulate," she wrote, "but I am also opposing anti-semitic reductions of Jewishness to Israeli interests."

In this video hosted by the European Graduate School, Ms. Butler discusses a boycott movement "in solidarity with the Palestinian community against Israeli occupation."

http://youtu.be/9qJaenaJbqk

Ms. Butler's advocacy of a new manner of framing the question of Israel has clearly made her unpopular among the Jewish scholarly community, though she herself is Jewish and attended Hebrew school as a child.

Ms. Butler, a professor at Berkeley, spent last semester as a visiting professor at Columbia.

Right-sized on Broadway. (DCP)

Back in 2007, in order to win his vote for Columbia's contentious Manhattanville rezoning, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer got the city to agree to rezone the blocks north of the new 17-acre campus as well, a stanch against over development. Today, the borough president gets to vote on the rezoning he requested for West Harlem, and he is touting it as a triumph of community planning.

"This rezoning reflects the input of thousands of stakeholders in West Harlem and five years of work toward crafting a community-based planning consensus that could be a model for the rest of our City," Mr. Stringer said in an email. "It is a promise kept to the residents of West Harlem—and a proud moment for all who are involved."

Like many parts of the city, the zoning has not been updated since 1961. The Department of City Planning has created, through a multi-year consultation with the community, a contextual zoning package that will largely maintain the same density of development in the neighborhood while imposing new height limits and street wall requirements to ensure that sliver buildings and other uncharacteristic buildings cannot be built.

The rezoning covers 90 blocks stretching from 126th Street up to 155th Street, running west from Edgecombe, Bradhurt, Amsterdam and St. Nicholas avenues to the river. Excluded from this area is the the campuses of City College and Columbia's Manhattanville project, which is south of 133rd Street.

West of Broadway, the buildings are the biggest, rising to 105 feet on the side streets and 120 feet on the avenues, but buildings have a required setback between 60 and 85 feet. They must now be built up to the sidewalk, as is the case in most of Manhattan, thus presenting developers from stepping back to build taller towers. East of Broadway, the same street wall requirements exist, though the buildings are lower, ranging from height limits of 70 to 80 feet, with setbacks between 40 and 60 feet. This is meant to reflect the rowhouse and walk-up scale of the area.

"This historic undertaking will protect the distinctive residential character of this neighborhood for decades to come," Mr. Stringer said.

Special districts have been carved out for 145th Street, the area's main commercial thoroughfare, and a pocket of manufacturing around 126th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Along 145th Street, a few select sites have been upzoned, to provide for new development, which will be part of the city's inclusionary housing program, which means that in exchange for a bonus to build bigger, developers must make 20 percent of their units affordable. These sites could rise as high as 170 feet with the inclusion of the affordable housing.

The 126th Street area had been traditionally used for manufacturing, but the plan calls for a new mixed use district that would allow housing, commercial and light manufacturing uses to coexist. This is not unlike the mix of uses just across the street in Columbia's new campus.

"We feel very comfortable that this plan will protect the neighborhood from some of the development we've seen elsewhere in the city," Reverend Georgiette Morgan-Thomas, chair of the local community board, told The Observer. She pointed to two projects in particular, Aerial East and Aerial West, hulking towers developed around 100th Street by Extell Development as the kind of egregious development the community wanted to avoid.

The board spent three years developing a model for the rezoning with the help of the Department of City Planning and the borough president. "Scott and City Planning have done an extraordinary job working with the community to craft this plan," Ms. Morgan-Thomas said.

"It's always a great place to be to know you've done something for the community, something that will truly protect it," she added. "When we're all gone, the zoning will still be in place, along with the buildings as they've always been."

(image via Flickr user sodapop81)

Over the weekend Barnard College bumped New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson from her spot as 2012 commencement speaker for a better offer—the trump card in the commencement bookings game, some might say: President Barack Obama.

It’s surprised no one that President Obama had zeroed in on the Manhattan women’s college for a spring speech. Facing a slate of pro-life GOP rivals and a Congress thrown into old school culture wars over his contraception-mandating health care bill, the President has publicly allied himself with women’s interests groups.

On Friday, he went so far as to personally call and thank Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student Rush Limbaugh called a “slut” and a “prostitute,” following her congressional testimony. (Eight advertisers, including AOL, have since fled Mr. Limbaugh’s show, and even “nappy-headed ho” spotter Don Imus risked hypocrisy to wag a finger.)

But the announcement came off as a particular slight to the co-eds across the street at Columbia College, with whom Barnard College shares professors, facilities, and the Columbia University umbrella. The Columbia commencement speaking gig is traditionally restricted to alumni, which President Obama actually happens to be.

“I find it both interesting and ironic that Obama, a so-called champion of ‘female empowerment’ has actively pushed aside Jill Abramson–one of the country’s most powerful women, and the FIRST woman to hold such an esteemed position–so that he can further his own political aims,” one Columbia student wrote on campus news blog Bwog. “No Barnard women take any issue with this? You’re all a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Get off my campus.”

Another powerful figure in journalism—Harper’s president John “Rick” MacArthur—is currently scheduled to deliver Columbia’s address. At least one senior was eager to get his or her fellow Lions behind him.

"We don’t want OUR once in a lifetime class day to be full of Obama’s election year campaign rhetoric! We want an AUTHENTIC and GENUINE class day speech from someone who actually has CC PRIDE!!!,” they wrote. “John MacArthur seems to be a cool dude with a long career in journalism. In a sense, MacArthur the writer can capture the essence of our COLUMBIA COLLEGE experience more than what Obama the politician can offer!"

Barnard president Debora L. Spar told The New York Times the apparent outburst of sibling rivalry was mostly just “19-year-olds writing at 4:30 in the morning.”

As for Ms. Abramson, when she was originally booked in early February, Ms. Spar said, “From her early days as a reporter to her current post as the paper’s executive editor, she has been unfailing in her convictions and a true inspiration.” Following Saturday’s White House announcement Ms. Spar added in statement that Ms. Abramson “would be happy to speak at Barnard in the future.”

Until then, disappointed students can catch Ms. Abramson at Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit, hosted by Newsweek and The Daily Beast this week. On Friday, she’ll be providing her personal take on “the future of feminism” in a panel along side Ms. founder Gloria Steinem and Washington Post deputy politics editor Ann Kornblut, moderated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who addressed the Barnard class of 2011.

Helen and David. (Image via Hearst Corp.)

With the help of a $30 M. gift from longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Stanford University's School of Engineering have established the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the two universities and the Hearst Corporation announced today.

The Institute is inspired by David Brown, Ms. Brown's late husband, a former journalist, publisher, film and theater producer who graduated from both Stanford and Columbia Journalism School.

The collaboration is intended to connect "the best in West Coast technology with East Coast content," according to a joint press release, giving each school $12 M. to endow a professorship. The remaining $6 M. will go toward the construction of a "highly visible signature space at the eastern end of the J-School’s landmark building, featuring a state-of-the-art high-tech newsroom." It will also support graduate and post-graduate fellowships, as well as competitive "Magic Grants" to develop most promising ideas conceived of by Brown fellows. It is the largest gift in Columbia Journalism School's nearly 100-year history.

“David and I have long supported and encouraged bright young people to follow their passions and to create original content," Ms. Brown, who turns 90 next month, said in the announcement. "Great content needs useable technology. Sharing a language is where the magic happens. It’s time for two great American institutions on the East and West Coasts to build a bridge.”

“New York City, as the major center for the television, music, print media and advertising, is profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technology,” said Stanford engineering professor Bernd Girod, who is the Institute’s founding director until Columbia appoints his East Coast counterpart. “The Brown Institute will bring together creative innovators skilled in production and delivery of news and entertainment with the entrepreneurial researchers at Stanford working in multimedia technology.”

In December, Stanford withdrew its bid for Mayor Bloomberg’s Roosevelt Island tech campus. The $100 million grant went to Cornell to a 50-50 partnership between Cornell and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; Cornell announced $350 M. gift to back its proposal hours after Stanford dropped out. Carnegie Mellon, one of the rejected proposals, is still working on building an entertainment-tech campus in partnership with Steiner Studios in Brooklyn's Navy Yards.

This is not a still from 'Sex and the City.'

A Columbia student noshing in the Barnard cafe spotted an incongruous addition yesterday--Sarah Jessica Parker. Campus student centers are not known for their fine cuisine, and our source did not ask Ms. Parker what, exactly, she was doing so far uptown from Barneys. Whether Ms. Parker was researching a "college years" installment of The Carrie Diaries or whether she just really likes a $3 Chobani and that greasy-table ambience is now lost to history.

daddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Matthew Swaye "thanks" Police Commissioner Ray Kelly

Ray Kelly is not exactly a populist favorite right now, but then again, when are police commissioners ever considered to be working on behalf of the working class? (Besides Law & Order, and also Batman.) But Commissioner Kelly has it especially tough right now--particularly with students and journalists and civil rights groups.

That's probably why NYU student and activist Matthew Swaye took time out Tuesday night to honor Commissioner Kelly for all the hard work he's done with NYPD's new "stop-and-frisk anyone looking suspicious" policy. He was also shouting, "Thank you for keeping the city safe for white heterosexual males."


The video's description reads:

Activists from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network in NYC "present" NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly with the Bull Connor Award for his policer force's use of the unjust, I effective, and racist Stop and Frisk.

Commissioner Kelly was visiting the Columbia classroom of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, when his lecture was interrupted by "an NYU student" who put on a slide show of NYPD police brutality. The Commissioner ended up leaving the class a half hour early, trailed by Mr. Swaye.

The student screamed at Commissioner Kelly's back while the officer was leaving the school: "700,000 black and Latino males stopped and frisked every year! Thank you sir, we can do better! 1 million Black and Latino males next year."

In Mr. Kelly's defense, the majority of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested this year were Caucasian, and they were given no special treatment.