Queens College president paid to not live in school's mansion

From the NY Post:

Queens College has let a historic $2.5 million waterfront mansion with sweeping views of Little Neck Bay stand empty for three years after its current president chose to live in his Westchester home while getting a $5,000 monthly housing allowance.

While Felix Matos Rodriguez collects $60,000 a year to live in his own house, the CUNY-owned Douglaston manse collects dust, used only sporadically for college functions.

Here's something that doesn't happen every day...

From the Daily News:

The 153-year-old tombstone of famed abolitionist Wilson Rantus has mysteriously turned up in the backyard of a Queens College professor’s home, The News has learned.

Allan and Elaine Ludman returned from Peru last month to find the 200-pound marble slab in the backyard of their Flushing home — more than 150 years after the headstone was planted at Rantus’ one-time family estate a mile away.

“This is a piece of history that has to be preserved,” said Allan Ludman, a professor at the school’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science, who said he was puzzled why someone hauled the headstone over his 4-foot fence.

Rantus was buried in a family plot near Queens College until 1952, when his remains were moved to Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn after descendants sold the property.

Evergreens historian Donato Daddario said Rantus and his family appear to be buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery, but on Monday that plot had not been identified.

The Ludmans have been keeping the stone secure in their home while seeking out historians to help them restore it and return the slab to a proper, dignified burial site.

Queens College studying possible new rail line

From WPIX.

First year graduates return to Queens College

From the NY Times:

The nine college classmates adjusted their gowns and mortarboards and marched proudly out to the commencement ceremony on the quad of Queens College campus on Thursday morning.

“It’s like walking on the moon,” said Haskel Case, one of the classmates. “So much has changed.”

Mr. Case, 90, and the other eight classmates, were not graduating this day. They already did so, 70 years ago on this same spot as members of the the first graduating class from Queens College: the Class of ’41.

And now, none younger than 90, they were invited back to be honored during the college’s commencement.

They were among the college’s first 400 students when it opened in 1937. Of the handful still alive, nine showed up on Thursday. Most drove from nearby suburbs or flew in from other parts of the country.

One could understand Mr. Case’s disorientation. The campus he knew consisted of a modest horseshoe of six Spanish-style buildings surrounded by a sprawl of fields. Now there are more 40 buildings on campus, many of them modern constructions with so-called smart capabilities and wireless technology.

There were 197 students graduating Queens College in 1941, compared with the roughly 5,000 that earned degrees this year, of about 19,000 students currently enrolled in the college.

Meeks under investigation

From the NY Post:

Rep. Gregory Meeks is the subject of a congressional ethics probe centered on his financial-disclosure forms, which have been rife with omissions, The Post has learned.

The investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is ongoing even as the panel's leadership changed with the new Congress, a source told The Post.

The lapses in the Queens Democrat's annual financial filings include his failure to reveal at least one of his wife's sources of income -- a teaching job at Queens College, The Post has learned.

Another terrorist pleads guilty

From the NY Post:

An al Qaeda-controlled city cabby who became a subway bomb plotter went on a tirade of hate yesterday, blaming "Zionist Jews" for "destroying this country from within" during his guilty plea in Brooklyn federal court.

"I believe that real enemies of this country are the ones who destroy from within," railed Zarein Ahmedzay, sporting a short black beard and wrinkled blue prison scrubs over a long-sleeve shirt. "And I believe these are the special group, the Zionist Jews, I believe, who want a permanent shadow government within . . . the United States."

The 25-year-old Queens College dropout chillingly quoted a jihadist call to arms before telling the court how he and his al Qaeda-trained cohorts planned to carry out devastating, simultaneous suicide bombings on Manhattan subway trains.

"Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their wealth for the price of paradise, to fight in the way of Allah, to kill and get killed. It is the promise binding him on the truth the Torah, gospel and the Koran," he said.

Ahmedzay was charged with receiving training from terrorist operatives overseas in August 2008, then returning to the United States with cohort Najibullah Zazi -- the main American mastermind who has already pleaded guilty -- as well as an unnamed third person. That man is presumed to be co-defendant Adis Medunjanin.

The three, pals from Flushing HS, plotted with the help of al Qaeda trainers to use homemade acetone and peroxide bombs to blow up subway cars during rush hour to maximize the carnage, the feds have charged.

College students living in illegal conversions

NY1 VIDEO: Residents who live in Queens neighborhoods surrounding campuses such as St. John's University and Queens College say that a number of students are living in off-campus illegal apartments.

Shocking!

Queens College Muslims cause controversy

From the NY Post:

A controversial imam who authorities have called an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is scheduled to speak tonight to a Muslim student group at Queens College on the subject "How Islam Perfected Thanksgiving."

The appearance by Brooklyn mosque imam Siraj Wahhaj - who also testified for convicted terror plotter "blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman - and a recent nasty verbal altercation involving members of the Muslim Student Association that invited him, has spurred some other students to demand that Queens College cut off funding for that group.

Professor Tim Rosen said that at a screening of the anti-radical Muslim film "Fitna" two weeks ago, a MSA member was "laughing" and muttered "good" during footage showing American businessman Nicholas Berg being beheaded by terrorists in Iraq, and that the student was "giggling and saying 'good' " during footage of planes hitting the Twin Towers.

At a raucous post-screening debate with Queens College Republicans, who hosted the film, an MSA member said, "If I had enough money I would be part of the jihad army, I would kill all the Jews," recalled College Republicans treasurer Eli Karl.

"He said, 'When I get enough money, I'm going to do some pretty bad things . . . and he talked about getting a bomb," recalled Karl, who now supports de-funding MSA.

Girdusky said a female member of MSA "said something like, 'How could you show something like this [the movie] when we get attacked for denying the Holocaust? ' "

The MSA did not respond to requests for comment.

Queens College dorm almost done

From NY1:

As students are preparing to take their finals, Queens College officials are putting the final touches on the college's first-ever residence hall.

Yay! 500 more people are coming to Flushing!