NYU’s Daily Student Newspaper
WASHINGTON SQUARE NEWS Vol. 41, No. 82
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2013
MTA proposes to join subway cars By PATRICK ANKER
Subway cars may become less crowded in the future. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Capital Needs Assessment for 2015 to 2034, released this month, describes future plans of the company, including the purchasing of trains with open gangways. Open gangways, like MTA’s articulated buses, unify all the cars within a train, creating one single car. “The open gangway model is something we are looking at to improve traffic flow in and out of subway to reduce loading times and even out available space in the cars,” MTA director of external communications Adam Lisberg said. Thomas Prendergast, CEO and chairman of the MTA, said at a New York State tourism campaign unveiling on Monday that this future improvement is seriously being considered.
“The systems that are purchasing cars now are buying what they call ‘articulated cars’ that have open gangways,” Prendergast said at the event. “It’s not the entire length of the train. It’s generally three or four cars, and they’ll have two of those units put together, which is what the [Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation] had back in the thirties.” Urban planning and transportation professor at NYU Wagner Zhan Guo said the gangway could alleviate some of the congestion in many subway cars. “Think about the space between the two passenger cars,” Guo said. “If that space could be used for the passenger capacity instead of not used, I think that could increase the capacity of the subway, even with the same kinds of platforms [used today] and of course the
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Globally Queer? series analyzes queerness in Japanese society By KAVISH HARJAI
The NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Department of East Asian Studies co-hosted an event titled Queer Japan as part of the Globally Queer? series on Oct. 23. Social and cultural analysis professor Lisa Duggan, who started this series in the
fall 2012 semester, said the purpose is to show that queerness has a different meaning depending on where one lives. “I think the important thing is the question mark,” Duggan said. She said the question mark denotes the question of what queerness could mean in other countries. Robert Campbell, associate direc-
tor of the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, said the first event in the series was Queer Asia: Performing Global Diaspora. Since then, the series has also featured Cuba and Africa, and Queer Canada will be held next spring. “[Globally Queer?] was chosen as
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Students work to help Australian band Tigertown find its big break By NICOLE DEL MAURO
nyunews.com
class, they are no longer students — they are music executives trying to help a band break out into the public eye. Village Records, a class for juniors and seniors in the Music Production Program at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development class, is designed for music business students looking for hands-on experience in the music industry. Each semester, students vote to select a band, promote it and help it break into the music indus-
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FELIPE DE LA HOZ FOR WSN
Professors, journalists discuss National Security Agency’s surveillance programs In a panel titled The State of Surveillance: Legal, Cultural and Technological Perspectives, panelists spoke about the controversy concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA, as well as took questions from audience members.
STORY ON PAGE 3
Snicket discusses latest book series By JEREMY GROSSMAN
Daniel Handler has been depressing children since at least 1999, when he released “The Bad Beginning,” the first in the successful “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books. Although he also writes for adults, Handler is better known by his pseudonym, Lemony Snicket, which he uses for his children’s books. In an exclusive interview with WSN, Handler discussed his new children’s series, “All The Wrong Questions,” and the second install-
ment, “When Did You See Her Last?” which was released last week. Although “Unfortunate Events” officially ended in 2006, this new prequel series exists in the same universe, replacing Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire with a young Lemony Snicket, as he steps into the shoes of a noir detective and looks for missing people in the grim town of Stain’d-By-The-Sea. While readers may initially miss the Baudelaires, “Questions” has everything they’ve come to love
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COURTESY OF MEREDITH HEUER
Handler uses his pen name Lemony Snicket for his children books.