NYU’s Daily Student Newspaper
washington square news Vol. 40, No. 17
FRIDAY, february 17, 2012
nyunews.com
Parenting and obesity linked in NYU study
Tisch students reinvent ‘World’
By Eric Benson
By Nicola Pring
A talented group of Tisch students are bringing a new twist to Jason Robert Brown’s popular musical “Songs for a New World.” Brown’s show is a song-cycle production about people handling indecisive moments in their lives. The score takes the audience to times and places in both history and fantasy — from Columbus’s ship in 1492 to the North Pole to a ledge on the 57th floor of a New York City apartment building. Each actor in the small cast plays a range of characters. Personalities include a woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, a young man struggling to find his way out of the slums and a mother anxiously awaiting her son’s return from the Revolutionary War. The song cycle is usually staged simply, with little blocking or
R SONGS continued on PG. 4
Eric Hsieh/WSN
Energy and passion highlight the student-led recreation of Brown’s “Songs for a New World.”
Gary Carter, Mets legend, dies at 57 By Daniel Hinton
After undergoing months of chemotherapy for brain cancer, Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Gary Carter passed away Thursday afternoon. He was 57 years old. Carter, known as “The Kid,” was one of the greatest catchers in MLB history. Over the course of 19 seasons, Carter hit for a .292 batting average with 324 home runs and 1225 RBIs. He also made 11 All-Star game appearances and was inducted in Cooperstown in 2003. Carter played his first 11 seasons with the Montreal Expos and led them to the franchise’s only playoff berth in 1981. His most famous years, however, were with the Mets. Peter Sherman, a Brooklyn native and Mets fan for over 45 years, described
R CARTER continued on PG. 5
via Wikipedia
Carter managed the Orange County Flyers in 2008.
A new study has found a direct relationship between parenting and obesity prevention. “Early Childhood Family Intervention and Long-term Obesity Prevention Among High-risk Minority Youth,” a study by NYU Langone Medical Center, has found evidence linking the effects of better parenting for children at a young age to their overall health. “For young children and families living under stressful circumstances associated with urban poverty, behavioral family intervention that supports effective parenting and promotes child self-regulation appears to alter pathways to unhealthy outcomes,” said child psychiatrist Laurie Brotman, who spearheaded the report. Brotman and her team further focused their research on 186
R OBESITY continued on PG. 3
New website makes NYC apartment hunting fast, easy By Esha Ray
For many students in the city, a search for the perfect apartment does not begin until a month before school starts. This usually results in an extremely stressful experience. But creating guarantor agreements, checking credit scores and fighting rent division are hardly tasks to be completed last-minute. RentJolt.com is a new website that allows prospective tenants to search for available apartments up to eight months in advance and aims to ease the tensions for apartment hunters. Founded and launched by Avi Dofrman and Samuel Sheinin this year, the website is currently in testing. Dorfman, who used to work for McKinsey & Company, said he was inspired by similar websites like AirBnb.com, a hotel listing site that uses crowd sourcing to bring people together and get information out early. “I just saw the pain that students were going through with very high fees and all the complications around guarantors,” Dorfman said. “I realized that I really wanted to do something to automate the rental process.” If you are trying to rent out your place, posting the apartment is free.
Dorfman said the key is posting accurate pictures and information. Once the space is rented, RentJolt.com will pay rentees between $500 to $1000 depending on the price of their place. RentJolt helps close the deal quickly, and prospective tenants pay a reduced brokerage fee of about 5.75 percent. It is an appealing deal to students including Melanie Navre, a Steinhardt senior who remembers having trouble finding her current apartment and meeting fast deadlines. “When I was looking last summer there was a lot of, ‘Our deadline’s coming up in three days,’” Navre said. “People were moving out of apartments, so we couldn’t look at them yet, but theoretically they would be open when we wanted to move in. So it would be nice to have to information in front of me ahead of time.” Navre said the significantly reduced broker fee attracted her to the website. “If you lose [an apartment], there are hundreds of other options especially in a saturated city like NYC,” CAS junior Sidrah Syed said. “It usually takes people a few months to make a final
R RENT continued on PG. 4