Now, I’m not trying to make light out of all on-campus crime—certain kinds of crime aren’t funny at all, obviously—but some of these cases are begging for more coverage. Why, just yesterday, “two NYU students were arrested by the NYPD for disorderly conduct on the corner of 8th Street and MacDougall [sic] Street.” What could they have possibly been doing that was more disorderly than every other student’s behavior on MacDougal on Thirsty Thursday?

Also, drugs: a student on the 6th floor of Rubin was caught possessing “what is believed to be cocaine.” I’m glad our public safety officers can only maybe guess that something is an illicit substance.

In Florence, meanwhile, public safety learned that “an NYU student had been threatened with bodily harm by her roommate on November 14th.” What the hell were they fighting about? The weather’s been sunny in the sixties over there! Settle down, ladies.

Going back a little further in the week,  on the 17th, “a patient and her husband were verbally abusive to a Doctor in a clinic on the 5th floor” of the Kriser Dental Center. I have no punch line to make this mental image funnier than it already is.

The day before that, “a student residing in the [Carlyle dorm] building states that when she went to retrieve a bath mat from the clothes dryer on November 15th at 5:30pm, it was missing.” The case is currently under investigation. If the thief is reading this: come on, give it back. Not only is it a dick move to take other people’s ish from the laundry room, but it’s kind of disgusting that you’d want someone else’s bath mat.

The most heinous crime this month was committed on the 8th, in the Third North dormitory. At 8:50 pm, “a Public Safety officer found a bag containing marijuana in the lobby of the building which was then confiscated.” Dude, seriously, you dropped a bag of weed? You really should be ticketed for that.

Highlights from October include: 

• Oct. 27, 7:41 pm, Fairchild Building (the place you get NYUCards): “On date and time of report, a non NYU affiliated individual was observed on the loading dock. When approached, individual indicated he was unemployed and looking for cans for recycling. NYPD was notified and after being properly identified, released.” Sad.
• October 28, 1:14 am, Carlyle Court: “At time and date of report, a non NYU affiliated individual attempted to gain access into the dorm by using a friend’s NYU ID card. Denied access/card confiscated.” Seriously? Dude tried the pass-back in a dorm?
• October 29, 1:34 pm, Hayden: “A student states that unknown person(s) drew an obscene image on her room door located on the 16th floor. It is unknown when this occurred. NYPD notified and a police report was filed.” Does anyone know what the image depicted? If so, please share.
• October 20, 11:00 am, Kriser Dental Center: “On the above date and time, Public Safety was apprised by a Dr. that at 12 noon on October 15, 2009, a bottle containing $1,500 worth of precious metal was discovered missing from a lab on the 4th floor. NYPD notified and a police report was filed.” This sounds like the backstory to a superhero movie. I swear, if Alfred Molina tries to blow up our school, I’m gonna be pissed.
• October 9, 12:30 pm, Third North: “A representative for food services states that sometime between August 2009 and October 9th 2009, unknown person(s) removed a white Huffman refrigerator, Model #GS2M5272, (Unknown value) from a cafeteria store room.” I don’t know what’s funnier: that someone actually stole a refrigerator, or the fact that it took NYU three months to figure this out.

Seriously, a bag of weed?

My questions include: why would Jude Law be so stupid as to hurl citrus at students? That’s bad press, dude! (Dude, Jude.) Why did Jude Law move to the park in the first place? And from the looks of that picture, Law wears yoga pants tucked into tube socks. Did he have to fire his stylist or something?! 

Jude Law, quit being a rotten apple (fruit joke) and accept the fact that if you live among fans—especially fans who came to the city partially to see people just like you—you’re gonna attract attention. Whether or not you think the students’ behavior is appropriate, I imagine that his real estate agent mentioned the presence of thousands of college students, right? For now, though, I guess you could say that students fought the Law, and the Law is probably just expressing frustration that he hasn’t gotten any good work in a while.

Washington Square News got a great quote from a student: 

LSP freshman Bryan Hall said he feels bad for Law.
He said: “He moved in next to a freshmen dorm, so he’ll always be ogled by freshmen girls.”

He says that like it’s a bad thing!

Here’s the thing though: the “unit for student bikes behind Tisch Hall” that “the university plans to create… once the construction behind the building comes to a close” actually already exists. And it’s currently fully functional. (That is a real picture of bikes locked there on the left). All you have to do to get access to the glorious bicycle habitat is contact card services (212-443-2273) and ask them to activate your NYU ID to open the rather imposing swipe gate.

Oops.*Thanks to Jack, a reader of the internet’s totally under-researched content, for the tip.

And guess what?! The edition comes with deleted chapters, Creationist preaching and a very special 50 page introduction that illuminates “Adolf Hitler’s undeniable connection” to Darwin’s theory of evolution!

As college students, we are amongst the most vulnerable to be “brainwashed by Atheistic evolution” and our Atheist professors with their evil ways and deep-seated desire to destroy American moral fiber. But it’s not too late to save ourselves! Just pick up a copy of Darwin’s totally butchered book today.

Unfortunately, we swung by to grab one and marvel at the ridiculousness only to find that we’d missed our opportunity for salvation. If you managed to get your hands on a copy, leave your favorite quotes in the comments.

Effective November 30, 2009, Route E service – which runs from Washington Square to the Medical Center with stops along 3rd Avenue — in both northbound and southbound directions will be provided on weekdays between 3 PM and Midnight to the bus stop at Third Avenue and 14th Street.

Effective November 30, 2009, Route C service – which runs from Washington Square to Stuyvesant Town — will be provided on weekday mornings southbound from the perimeter of Stuyvesant Town to Washington Square, and these trolleys will also stop at Third Avenue and 14th Street to pick up passengers.

During the summer 2010 semesters, limited morning and afternoon service will be provided on Route E at times and frequencies similar to summer 2009.

The other day, Jess illuminated the financial gloriousness of being a part time student. This  week, let’s talk about saving a few thousand dollars a year without even changing your enrollment status.  (I know we go to NYU, so I apologize for the whole math thing that’s going to happen after the jump.)

What you’re probably doing:
Cost of full time enrollment/semester (Gallatin): $19,382.50
Credits required to graduate from this fine institution: 128
Credits a typical student takes/semester: 16
(so cost/credit is $19,382.50/16=$1,211.41)
128 required credits/16 credits per semester= 8 semesters of schooling x $19,382.50 per semester= $155,060 (vomit)

What you should be doing:
Cost of full time enrollment/semester (Gallatin): still $19,382.50
Credits required to graduate from this fine institution: still 128
Credits taken/semester= 18
(so cost/credit is $19,382.50/18=$1,076.81)
128 required credits/18 credits per semester= 7 semesters of schooling x $19,382.50 per semester= $135,677.50 (puke somewhat less) PLUS the 2 final credits required to graduate (see below), which will run you between $2,200 and about $3,200 (total), dependent on how/when you take them.

Savings: $155,060-$135,677.50=$19,382.50 (minus what you spend on your final two credits)

For those of you who aren’t really straight up “number people,” here’s what it means:

Full time students pay a flat tuition rate plus registration fee. I’m in Gallatin, so I fork over a rather arbitrary $18,293 and an additional $1,089.50 because apparently $18,293 just isn’t enough. So me and my Gallatin brethren are paying $19,382.50 per semester and typically taking 16 credits at $1,211.41 each.

The thing is, we’re paying for up to 18 credits. And if you actually start taking those extra two credits, you’ll only be paying $1,076.81, thus saving $134.60 per credit. That means saving $538.40 for every four credit class and, instead of feeling guilty every time you start to nod off, you might start feeling guilty only some of the time!

It also means that taking 18 credits per semester from freshman year onward will leave you with 126 credits for the price of 112 by the end of Fall semester of your senior year. So while your classmates are paying another $19,382.50 for a final semester at NYU, you are only 2 credits away from graduation. Obviously, it would be ideal to get those two credits out of the way in advance either through high school transfer credits, a Summer course or a Winter session class (which probably won’t seem as tragic when you’re saving about $17,000).

If you got that crap out of the way in high school, congratulations, you’re home free having paid $135,677 for your credits at NYU instead of $155,060. (Home free has, by the way, never sounded so terrifying). If you came to college with no credits (like those of us who had pneumonia during APs and, umm, didn’t do the make up test), you’ll have to spend another $2,200 or so to complete your final credits. That said, you’re saving about $17,000 and graduating a semester early, so you still win.

Three NYU students describe what it’s like to be going into a rapidly changing music industry.

Tomorrow’s Soundtrack from Kaela Rae Jensen on Vimeo.

Having said that, we do support Cooley and Sexton’s decision not to penalize Varadarajan. We believe that every viewpoint from students, faculty and administration is just as valid as any other. We wrote as much two months ago in discussing prospective law professor Thio Li-ann, whose stance on gay rights drew considerable opposition among NYU students: “Intellectual discourse is rooted in conflicting opinions, and for this to happen, people of disagreeing perspectives and paradigms must come together to engage one another … No viewpoint will ever satisfy all sides, but each belief is as valid as any other.”

Way to quote yourself, guys; that argument was so awesome it needs to be heard twice!

Except I can’t get my head around the idea that anyone at WSN really believes that. Each belief is valid? Really? On one side, you’ve got, “Muslims should be banned from the military because it’s reasonable to assume that any given Muslim person is probably a cleverly disguised murderous psychopath,” and on the other side you’ve got, “No, that’s not true, and you’re a dick,” and Washington Square News thinks that both of those views are equally valid?

Time to grow up, guys. “Everyone’s opinion is equally valid” is something we tell to fourth graders to keep them from getting into fistfights over whether or not Batman is cooler than Superman (he is), but I figured by college everyone had abandoned that view. Sure something like your favorite flavor of ice cream is entirely subjective, but the statement “America would be safer if we banned all Muslims from the military” is not. There are good arguments and bad arguments, good views and bad views. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other, but here’s a hint: if your argument involves portraying over 1.5 billion people worldwide as unhinged lunatics because of the actions of a small band of radicals, it’s probably a bad argument. And WSN knows this! You can tell, because earlier in the editorial they wrote, in characteristically tortured language, that Vadajaran’s column “stereotypes an entire culture and paints negative connotations to its beliefs.”

That’s not to say that I think Vadajaran should get fired. Nor did I think Purdue’s librarian or Ward Churchill should have gotten sacked. Sure, in each of these situations, I think the views expressed were reprehensible (or as WSN would say: “paint negative connotations to something something”). But there are issues of academic freedom to consider. If there’s no preexisting policy of conduct, then randomly shitcanning a professor sets an ugly precedent. And if you want to create a preexisting policy that prevents professors from publicly discriminating, I don’t know what kind of rule you could come up with that wouldn’t be too broad and could possibly stifle legitimate debate elsewhere.

Which isn’t to say that the NYU administration should do nothing. NYU prides itself on being a multicultural school, and if they want to paint positive connotations on whatever the fuck it is connotations are painted on, then it’s important for Sexton to repudiate Varadarajan’s column. And despite what WSN says, he actually did do that. Perhaps the editorial board would have noticed that if they got they bothered to read their own newspaper.

In a statement, Sexton said that although he found Varadarajan’s column to be offensive and disagrees with it, he values civil discourse. Sexton said he will not impose a sanction against Varadarajan.

Here’s the exact wording from the statement:

So where do we find ourselves today? A journalist and NYU clinical faculty member has written a piece for Forbes that many Muslims find offensive. I understand how they feel — I found it offensive, too. I am teaching Muslim students now, and I have taught them in the past; the portrayal of Muslims in the Forbes piece bears no resemblance to my experience; I disagree with the Forbes piece and think it is wrong.

That certainly reads a lot like repudiation to me. But I’m not going to insist that WSN messed and should issue a correction, because, hey, their take on this is equally valid!

But once again, NYU trails only USC, which has nearly 7,500 international students on campus. At least we beat Columbia (6,685), albeit by less than one hundred foreigners. Phew, that’s one crowded Bobst Lower Level from being No. 3.

The survey also notes that there are about 75,000 foreign students studying in the state of New York — an increase of 7.3% from 2008 — which is second only to California (again). The top three countries of origin for students are all Asian: India, China, and South Korea. Together, all three countries produce nearly 50% of all international students in the U.S. (and approximately 75% of late-night Bobst dwellers).

In case you haven’t passed Gould Plaza lately, 20.6% of foreign students are studying Business and Management. Engineering, Physical Science, Social Science and Computer Science round out the top five majors.

Open Doors also delves into trends of American students studying abroad. Unsurprisingly, the top destination sites are United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain. Of course, these rankings are only temporary until J-Sex and NYU Abu Dhabi takeover international education.

Despite continuous increase in foreign student populations, the LA Times also notes that the rate of growth might have slowed this semester “conditions and concerns about the H1N1 virus. A related but separate survey of 700 schools by the institute and seven other education organizations showed that 45% of those campuses reported an increase in foreign students this fall, compared to 56% last year.”