NYU’s Daily Student Newspaper
washington square news Vol. 39, No. 43
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2011
nyunews.com
City upset with food trucks in SoHo
Senate votes to keep Chick-fil-A on campus
To many tourists, New York City food vendors are a must-try experience. But to members of Community Board 2, that customary trend has become less of a boon and more a burden. According to a resolution passed by Community Board 2, which represents Greenwich Village, SoHo and the surrounding neighborhoods, many food stands in SoHo violate parking rules, including being illegally close to crosswalks and subway entrances and impeding both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The resolution also asserts that prices of prevalent food vendors are unfairly competitive to established businesses in the area. “The proliferation of food carts and food trucks is a very big concern to area residents and the Com-
Largely in response to criticism over the on-campus presence of Chick-fil-A, the Student Senators Council passed its first resolution for university partnerships earlier this month. Albert Cotugno, the chair of the SSC, said the resolution is a set of principles that will help determine what to ban and what not to ban from the school. The resolution states that the SSC will “expressly denounce and propose a cessation of partnership with any third-party with a proven link to illegal activities, including labor rights violations.” A university partnership is defined as a group not affiliated with NYU that sells its products throughout the school. The resolution was passed with
By Tony Chau
By Elizabeth Maguire
DAVID LIN/WSN
Violets win third straight
Men’s basketball improved to 3-0 on the season, as junior Carl Yaffe led a balanced scoring attack. R FOOD continued on PG. 3
Childhood friends help fellow students land jobs By Aliza Katz With a persistently unpredictable job market, it is no shock that many students see a bleak future for their professional careers. But while some have chosen to protest, others are looking to create other means by which they can succeed. Childhood friends and NYU students Jason Bieber and Daniel Pessar are doing just that. In the summer of 2010, Bieber, now a Stern senior, and Pessar, who is working toward his master’s in real estate finance in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, decided to create a student-run consulting club called Ofek to provide students with hands on consulting jobs. “The purpose of Ofek is really ... to give students experience that they couldn’t learn in a classroom by working with real clients on
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real projects,” Bieber said. The club, which now has over 50 members, currently works with seven clients. These clients are all start-up companies based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and came from business contacts the duo had already established. Teams work with these companies — many of which are looking to break into the U.S. market — to build their marketing materials and their overall brand. “We help them compile all the necessary marketing materials and then go out and find new markets for them and build new business for them,” Pessar said. The success of a club like Ofek lies in the mutually beneficial nature of their efforts. For many start-up companies, Ofek might be their only consulting option. “We offer our consulting for
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NYC pushes for cleaner water By Brian Tam
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection recently created a $4 million grant for those who participate in individual environmental projects to reduce water pollution. Private property owner, businesses and not-for-profits around the five boroughs are eligible. This initiative is part of the 2010 NYC Green Infrastructure Plan to reduce sewage overflows by 40 percent over the next 20 years. It calls for an investment of $187 million in green infrastructure projects by 2015 and a total of $2.4 billion in public and private investments by 2030. Manhattan operates on a sewer system that collects storm and wastewater through a single pipe. The water is then brought to treatment plants where contaminants are filtered. But according to the DEP, water overflows into major rivers during heavy storms when sewage accumulates and exceeds
the system’s capacity. Traditionally, this problem is solved by constructing facilities that hold the water until storms pass. However, the construction for these projects can be costly. As an alternative, the Green Infrastructure Plan employs smaller-scale initiatives like bioswales, sloped low tracts of land filled with compost, and green rooftops that are covered with vegetation to absorb and retain the excess storm water. “The Green Infrastructure Plan proposes a more sustainable and adaptive approach to improve the water quality in New York Harbor,” New York City Environmental Protection Commissioner Carter Strickland said. Participants will make structural accommodations and add vegetated features of their choosing like porous pavement, rain gardens, tree pits, constructed wetlands and rain barrels to their private properties. Data will be collected to monitor the projects’ effectiveness. In June 2011, $3.8 million was
awarded to 13 recipients. Manhattan College, one of the participants, retrofitted two parking lots with porous concrete, which allowed running water to seep into underlying layers of gravel instead of running into the sewer system. GrowNYC, a local non-profit environmental organization, is one of many advocacy groups who have expressed support for the plan. Lenny Librizzi, assistant director of the Open Space Greening program, said the green initiative will help prevent future sewer overflows. “I have been promoting the use of rainwater harvesting and water conservation, so this is exactly what we have been looking for from the city,” she said. “Whatever we can do to clean our water bodies is a positive benefit.” “This is an excellent example of innovation in environmental policy, which moves beyond traditional, overly costly engineering
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