That’s Too Bad Because Latin American Student Organization Functions Are Quite Exciting

This just in — Baruch is not a party school:

Nancy Ventura, a senior, said, “I’ve heard that Laso-Lay-Pride parties are good, but I’ve never been. I’m too focused on my studies.” And, like her, many students don’t attend social functions at the school at all, due to other priorities outside of school. Furthermore, in dorms it is easier for students to sneak things like alcohol and drugs in then it is to actually bring them to a college campus. Allassane Toure, a sophomore, agrees that parties are non-existent at Baruch. “Everyone has too much to do and there are too many rules since most parties end by 11 p.m.”

NYU Fat Admirers Discover America’s Obsession With Fat Porn

We had no clue gender studies survived the millennium:

At 5-foot-3 inches and 430 pounds, Bigcuties.com webmaster Heather Boyle is on a mission: To tell the truth about being fat.

To a group of about 70 students, Boyle openly discussed fat sexuality, the movement behind it and its implications in today’s society.

“We’re somehow social outcasts,” said Boyle, who spoke last night at the Silver Center. “Diets are society’s way of telling you what you should look like, but 64 percent of America is overweight. If we’re the majority, then whey are we being treated like the minority?”

Since she was 18, Boyle has modeled for various magazines and now runs Bigcuties.com, a subscription-based fat porn website, which currently has 16 models that pose both nude and clothed and star in soft core and hard core films.

“Fat sells,” she said, describing the pornography on her website as identical to any other type of porn.

But Boyle’s appearance almost didn’t happen:

Boyle’s own reception at the Silver Center spoke to these concerns about the treatment of overweight people like herself.

Professor Don Kulick, director of NYU’s Center of Gender and Sexuality, said his department was met difficulty when accomodating Boyle for the event. When he asked the Silver Center building maintenance crew to move a couch from the first to the seventh floor so Boyle could sit in that instead of a chair, the building maintenance did not respond.

After Kulick and the center’s administrator, Robert Campbell, appealed numerous times over the course of two weeks, school administrators still denied the request. Their only response was that the couch was too heavy to move, Kulick said.

It May Get Stanky Around Here Real Soon . . .

Workers in the private waste-hauling industry — which collects everything that is not municipal residential trash, including garbage from businesses, hotels and, well, basically everything — may go on strike April 1. The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins has more details:

Back on December 19, just as New Yorkers were about to confront a 72-hour pre-Christmas nightmare called the Transit Strike of 2005, another major city employer was prodding its workers with a sharp stick and daring them to walk off the job. Waste Management Inc., the Houston-based mega-corporation that last year did $12 billion worth of business earning some $900 million in profits, told 123 of its employees who drive the city’s streets all night collecting trash from private businesses that it couldn’t afford their health coverage any longer. . . .

After several meetings with leaders of Local 813 of the Teamsters, which represents the workers, the company went ahead and imposed its plan on the workforce. Normally, unions view that kind of action as sufficient provocation for a strike. There was little question the company expected one. Union members watched as Waste Management imported some 80 to 100 potential replacement workers, apparently ready to take over their jobs at a moment’s notice. No effort was made to hide them. “They drove behind the [garbage] trucks all night in pickups, watching the men do their collections,” said Local 813 president Sylvester Needham. “They had them in motels in Queens, just waiting for us to walk out so they could bring them in.”

Faced with that scenario, as well as with a city already in the grip of a mass transit strike, the Teamsters opted to hold their fire and keep working. To keep his members covered in the meantime, Needham had his union benefit fund pay the $305 per month in contributions needed to keep the Waste Management employees covered, while continuing to try to negotiate a new contract. A federal mediator was brought in to try and work things out. No dice.

Three months later, with no progress in the talks, the Teamsters say New York is headed for a garbage strike, its first in more than 15 years. Barring a last-minute reprieve, the Local 813 members expect to hit the bricks on April 1. “That is D-day for us,” said Needham, “We have got to the point of do-or-die.”

There’s some solid trash-hauling history in there if you’re interested in reading the whole article . . .

Reggie Jackson Can Surely Explain The Convoluted Parkland Exchange And Why The Team Feels It Needs To Build More Parking

What, the Yankees think they can trot out Reggie Jackson and then all of the sudden everyone will want to sink millions into infrastructure improvements? Yes, yes they do:

Reggie Jackson was Mr. March for the Yankees yesterday as he helped pitch the Bombers’ planned new ballpark at a City Council hearing — but the proposal got a Bronx cheer from opponents.

The Yankees want a new $800 million stadium on parkland near their current home but the plan has drawn fire from Bronx residents and officials upset over the loss of green space.

“I am first a minority,” said Jackson. “The Yankees weren’t always really a good partner in the Bronx.”

But Jackson, a paid adviser to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, argued the team is now reaching out to the community — and urged Council members to forge a “partnership” agreement with the Boss.

Mr. October was told his sales pitch before the planning subcommittee was “a day late and a dollar short” by Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx), who has been a sharp critic of aspects of the stadium plan.

George Fucking Mason!

The Advance checks in on the Island bar with the $1.5 million NCAA pool:

The two signs posted on the mirrors behind the bar at Jody’s Club Forest indicate what only those in the know need to know — 537 lines are left in the West Brighton tavern’s March Madness Pool.

The nondescript black writing on plain white papers reveals:

123 people picked the fourth-seeded LSU Tigers to win it all.

240 people think the second-seeded UCLA Bruins are going to hoist the trophy.

173 people believe the third-seeded Florida Gators will cut down the nets.

. . .

With more than 150,000 entries submitted in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament betting bonanza, the pot is reportedly worth upward of $1.5 million.

It costs $10 to enter a line and each submission must include a prediction of the Final Four teams, plus the NCAA champion and the score of the title game, which will be played Monday night in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

And you may be wondering if anyone penciled in the surprising 11th-seeded George Mason team — apparently, yes:

Only one person took a giant leap of faith and selected the longest of long shots, George Mason’s Patriots, the giant-killers who entered the tourney seeded 11th in their 16-team region.

. . .

Since no one this side of Nostradamus could have predicted this year’s Final Four, insiders say the rules of the pool have been slightly altered.

Those remaining have three of the Final Four correct — the fourth pick having been knocked out during this past weekend’s Elite 8 games — and the winning pick still alive.

Rumors are circulating that one fellow was one team shy of walking away with the all the cash. He supposedly had the top-seeded Villanova Wildcats instead of their opponent, and eventual vanquisher, Florida.

But that same man is still in the pool because he was the only one to take a flier on George Mason doing the Cinderella dance.

Backstory: Shh . . . Don’t Tell The IRS!