A tale of two campuses: Adding more momentum to the community’s push for New York University to conduct its future growth at satellite campuses outside of the Village, the East Village/Lower East Side’s Community Board 3 at its Feb. 28 full board meeting voted unanimously to support the proposal. C.B. 3 thus joins C.B. 2 — which represents Greenwich Village, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square and Little Italy — in backing the initiative, which is being promoted by a coalition of seven community groups, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Bob Cohen of N.Y.U.’s Office of Government and Community Affairs scolded us the other night for The Villager’s recent editorial backing the two-campus plan. However, Susan Stetzer, C.B. 3 district manager, said of N.Y.U., “It’s not an institution unto itself. It’s part of the community. And we need to find ways for them to grow that won’t hurt the community.”
V.A. on life support: While at the kickoff of a new diabetes-prevention campaign for veterans at the Veterans Affairs building on W. Houston St. last Friday, Mayor Bloomberg and V.A. Secretary James Nicholson were asked about the status of the V.A. hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Nicholson said that after World War II, former V.A. Director General Omar Bradley built hospitals in areas where troops were returning in large numbers. Due to population shifts, the Department of Veterans Affairs now is set to open new hospitals in Orlando, Las Vegas and Denver, Nicholson said. Meanwhile, downsizing or consolidating the Manhattan and Brooklyn hospitals is being studied by the department under its CARES review. The Bronx V.A. is not facing closure, partly because of its spinal-injury facility. Said Bloomberg, “I will try to make the case to the secretary and CARES that the number of veterans requiring services will be growing — and wanting to retire here.” On another note, Nicholson, a former G.O.P. national chairperson, was asked if he thought the mayor had the right stuff to run for higher office. “We need leadership in the Republican Party,” he said, speaking approvingly of Bloomberg’s record running the city.
Wicked Wiki edits: The Washington Square News, N.Y.U.’s undergraduate newspaper, reports that New York University’s graduate assistants union labor dispute has reached university president John Sexton’s Wikipedia page, which is said to be “under fire.” Internet users who support the Graduate Student Organizing Committee have made 100 edits to Sexton’s bio on Wikipedia, saying under him the administration has been anti-union and making direct attacks on Sexton. Wikipedia allows users to make edits, as well as to review the editing history and compare past revisions of its postings. One of the edits went as far as to call Sexton’s trademark hugs “obnoxiously patronizing and demagogic.”
Plea for support: Jessica Delfino, Christopher Brodeur’s campaign manager and fiancée, last week was asking reporters to write letters to the judge sitting on Brodeur’s harassment case vouching that Brodeur is not a violent guy. The gadfly, who ran for mayor as a write-in candidate last year, and got more votes in the Bronx than Gifford Miller, was to face sentencing on Wednesday morning and Delfino said he feared he was looking at possibly two years in the slammer. Brodeur made menacing phone calls to Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler when Skyler was Bloomberg’s spokesperson and also to the rent collector of his former landlord, Paul Stallings. All we can say is that when we met Brodeur or spoke to him on the phone he never threatened to slit our throat or chop us up and set us on fire — which he admits he said in a “nonthreatening” way to Skyler and Stallings’s rent collector, respectively. Should he maybe just have a restraining order prohibiting him from using the telephone?
Correction: The editorial in last week’s Villager stated that Luke Son, the Critical Mass biker and E.M.T. who assisted two fallen police officers at the January Critical Mass ride, was arrested at the February Critical Mass ride. In fact, Son was not arrested, but was stopped by police and given a ticket and allowed to continue on.
