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The results came in on Friday. After announcing his candidacy the day the Cooper Union administration stated it would begin charging tuition starting with the class of 2014, Kevin Slavin, tech entrepreneur and assistant professor at MIT's MediaLab, won as a write-in candidate for alumni trustee to the Cooper Union board.

Slavin, who had been critical of the previous trustees' lack of transparency in decision-making, had been running on a platform of renewed trust. At a Free Cooper Union Community Summit presentation in December of 2011, Slavin brought a $10,000 check to the podium, and asked Cooper Union leadership to use it to find "sustainable resources-- transparency, communication, trust, and integrity.

"If anything, the acquisition of money these days doesn't provide trust--it demands trust," Slavin said.

At that time, Slavin also shared that he had a team of forensic accountants take a look at Cooper Union's 990s, who told him that "they haven't seen anything this fucked up from anyone who wasn't being deliberately obstructive."

The announcement arrived in the heat of criticism directed at the Board of Trustees for--among other things--making large, questionable investments in hedge funds right up until the fiscal crash, and then directing the blame for money woes at lack of alumni giving.

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As the Benghazi prosecution appears to fizzle, rightbloggers have sought to replace it with a pair of new scandalettes involving the IRS and the Associated Press.

We think this shows a disappointing lack of imagination. In the far-flung meth labs of the right, fresher outrages are cooking that Americans can better understand: Outrages that involve the humiliation of American servicemen by a racial minority, and the President's admission of what rightbloggers have been saying all along: That he's a Socialist. Hunt where the ducks are, fellas!

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Thank god for Marty Markowitz, possibly the only lovable politician left in New York. Today, the Brooklyn borough president released a soundtrack to rebuilding a Sandy-shattered Coney Island on Spotify. It's got Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," Brooklynite synth-addicts Matt and Kim, and the Beastie Boys. Markowitz's playlist even includes a shout-out to Jay-Z, though last month he told the Post that he went to a Jay-Z concert and "did not understand most of it."

Send story ideas to sbrownstone@villagevoice.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Once-powerful Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez has agreed to step down from his longtime post as his support collapsed this week on the heels of the Staten Island District Attorney's damning report which disclosed the unethical lengths that the legislature's leadership went in trying to hush-up his sexual harassment of staffers.

It is yet another embarrassing turn-of-events in a year that has seen a half-dozen state legislators indicted on a range of corruption charges.

Insisting on his innocence, Lopez said today he would step down at the end of the legislative session, June 20. Lopez claimed he was just pursing a plan to step down at the end of his most recent term in office to run for City Council.

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"This has now truly become a regional, if not national, effort."

Thus spoke City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a press conference yesterday. Former-governor-turned-state-senator Richard Codey and New Jersey Assemblyman Ruben Ramos came to City Hall to join her in previewing their own version of a bill announced in New York City less than a month ago: a measure to boost the age at which you can buy cigarettes to 21. Quinn is a forerunner of the bill that has placed her directly in front of an issue Bloomberg has championed--a position that could injure her campaign more than help it.

"Less than a month after our initial announcement, our great neighboring state of New Jersey is planning to introduce legislation to do exactly the same thing: raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21," Quinn said. The provision has also been introduced in Albany to apply on a statewide level.

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Everyone's worst public pool fears are true, and just in time for summer. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study showing that 58 percent of public pool samples taken from around Atlanta yielded E. coli (not the bad kind), which live in the gut. The frequency of E. coli shows that swimmers "frequently contaminate pool water when they have a fecal incident" or forget to scrub their tuchuses in the shower.

The takeaway? Chlorine alone can't protect you, so don't swallow the water when you submerge yourself in Hamilton Fish Pool. Also, from now on, no one is ever allowed to poop again, only deliver "fecal incidents."

Send story ideas to sbrownstone@villagevoice.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

CS Muncy

ICYMI: After Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha met students for a surprise discussion in his office earlier this week, on Wednesday morning Democracy Now! hosted a rare, moderated forum with Victoria Sobel, a Cooper Union student organizer, Mark Epstein, the chair of trustees, and Felix Salmon, a Reuters blogger.

Much of the discussion dealt with Cooper's decision to charge tuition after what appears to be a series of bad financial decisions--by 2008, the school had invested $103 million in hedge funds, which demanded $2 million in annual management fees, and in 2006, the school took out a $175 million loan from MetLife, on which it has to pay roughly $10 million in annual interest. Meanwhile, the administration is scrambling to find a way to make it to 2018, when rent on the Chrysler building, the land under which Cooper owns, will jump.

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The race for Brooklyn District Attorney is becoming a bit of a slugfest. First, there was word that longtime Democratic incumbent Charles Hynes' office was getting a reality show right in the middle of the race. Then, Democratic opponent Abe George filed a lawsuit to block the show from airing. Then Hynes' office disclosed a review of 50 old Brooklyn homicide convictions tied to a particular NYPD detective, since retired.

And now, another Democratic candidate, Ken Thompson, wants Governor Andrew Cuomo to name a special prosecutor to do that review instead. "It has become clear that, considering this troubling pattern of prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions, District Attorney Hynes is not capable of overseeing a truly independent review of his own cases," Thompson said in a statement.

Hynes' campaign blasted back with this rejoinder from spokesman George Arzt: "Mr. Thompson's bombast is irresponsible and clearly politically motivated devoid of any knowledge of the facts."

The cases in question involve the work of Detective Louis Scarcella, who has been retired for many years. Previous news reports alleged that the cases included fabricated confessions, improper interrogations, and the use of a prostitute as a key witness in six cases. The conviction in one of those cases, involving a man named David Ranta, has already been set aside, and Ranta has been freed after 20 years in prison. He has alleged that he raised repeated question about the facts of the case and the conduct of prosecutors, but Hynes office ignored him.

Not a huge case, just kind of amusing: Drug dealers went back to the future with a scheme revealed yesterday to deliver cocaine through a pizza delivery service, special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan says. Let's hear it for synergy!

Just kidding. Brennan says there were two dealers arrested, one of whom worked as a delivery man for a Papa John's outlet in Brooklyn. That guy, dressed in his delivery uniform, sold coke to undercover cops some 19 times, including Wednesday night, when he handed over a kilo worth $27,500 to authorities, along with a pizza and chicken nuggets.

Between 2009 and 2011, approximately 450 people died crossing the street in New York City. Whether to reckless driving, not looking both ways, or sheer confusion, the city lost 450 residents. And that's not counting bicycle fatalities. Needless to say, like subway deaths, it's become a problem that demands fixing ASAP, especially with the advent of CitiBike next weekend.

Enter Christine Quinn.

In a statement released yesterday, the City Council speaker and mayoral frontrunner laid out her platform on the issue of ground-level urban planning. Her goal is straightforward: By 2021, Quinn wants to cut New York City's street fatalities in half.

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Over the past month, a group of people who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy have been waging a battle with the city. They came from the most traumatized areas, and from the poorest economic backgrounds. The city had given 3,132 evacuees temporary housing in hotels in the aftermath of the storm, but then suddenly delivered April, then May deadlines to make them leave--isolating 156 Sandy victims who had nowhere to go, and no housing program to help them get there.

Read more: Homeless Hurricane Sandy Victims to Be Kicked Out of Hotels, Nowhere to Go

On Wednesday, a state supreme court judge granted members of this group's request for injunctive relief, allowing them time to stay in the hotels until the city helps them find permanent housing.

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With the primaries in four months, this is probably a good idea.

By now, the controversy over John Liu's run for comptroller in 2010 is an old wives' tale in recent New York City scandal history. His campaign's treasurer and one of its fundraisers set up straw donors--which is when a person illegally taps into another person's cash funds and makes donations in their name. By doing so, they paid themselves thousands in fraudulent kickbacks. But don't worry: Kustice was served earlier this month when the two were found guilty of campaign fraud in federal court.

As damage control, Liu has been trying to distance himself from that story since it happened, stating time and time again that he had no part in the scheme and could not have known about it. Naturally, the mayoral race has kicked that PR effort into high gear. According to his most recent campaign filings, it's been discovered that Liu refunded every cent in his fundraising treasure chest left over from the scandal.

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On Wednesday, state ethics regulators unleashed a 68-page document detailing young, female staffers' allegations of sexual harassment from Assemblyman Vito Lopez. One complainant described Lopez's attempts to force his hands up her inner thighs on car trips. He asked another to wear heels and short skirts. Another began to cry when Lopez pressured her to massage his hand, during which she told him his behavior made her uncomfortable because she was raped in college, according to the report.

The details are shocking, but not uncommon. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in 2011 found that one in four American women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Still, few women report the sexual harassment they experience for fear of retribution--though we're guaranteed the right to a safe work environment, and the Supreme Court has recognized that the psychological damage caused by sexual harassment can violate the law, according to Suzanne B. Goldberg, a director and professor at Columbia University's Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Translation: No one should ever have to fucking stand for that shit, because getting sexually harassed is absurd and not OK. But what do you do in those circumstances? We spoke to two experts to find out what you can do if you find yourself struggling in a threatening workplace environment.

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In an act of desperation, the city of New York has used the media to launch a "despicable" attack on the federal judge presiding over a landmark stop-and-frisk trial, attorneys for the plaintiffs say.

Early Wednesday morning, the New York Daily News published a story describing an internal report compiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's staff that purports to show that judge Shira Scheindlin is "biased against law enforcement."

By lunchtime, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs, had fired off a response, calling the report an "inappropriate stunt."

Following court yesterday afternoon, Darius Charney, one of CCR's lead attorneys on the case, said the allegations achieved a level of absurdity he has never encountered before.

"I've heard some ridiculous, outrageous accusations thrown out by the city over the years," Charney said. "But this is the most ridiculous one I've ever heard, and I actually find it despicable."

The report's emergence coincides with the final week of testimony in the trial. From 2004 to 2012 the department reported 4.4 million stops; nearly nine out of 10 the subjects, the vast majority of whom were black or Latino, were released without an arrest or summons. Plaintiffs in the case say the stops have amounted to widespread constitutional rights violations, including unlawful search and seizure and racial profiling.

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Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson is slamming a judge who dropped charges against a police officer in the fatal February 2012 shooting of an unarmed teenager. Meanwhile, the judge blamed the prosecutors for screwing up their grand jury instructions.

"It cannot be said more forcefully that we disagree with the court," Johnson said in a statement. He added he was weighing whether to bring the case to another grand jury or to appeal the decision to a higher court.

Judge Steven Barrett dismissed manslaughter charges against Police Officer Richard Haste yesterday for killing Ramarley Graham, saying that prosecutors erred in their presentation to the grand jury.

Graham's mother, Constance Malcolm, screamed, "They killed my child," as the judge moved toward his ruling from the bench.

After ejecting Malcolm from the courtroom Barrett said, "I regret that there are people who are hurt by this." He said he was required under the law to dismiss the case, but noted that prosecutors could re-file the case with another grand jury.

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There's a new fence cutting off access to much of a decades-old children's garden on the Lower East Side.

Backed by police, a team of construction workers entered the Children's Magical Garden on the Lower East Side this morning, stepping over fresh plantings to erect a chain-link fence through the middle of the garden.

The history of the Children's Magical Garden stretches back more than 30 years, to when neighborhood residents transformed a vacant lot used by drug dealers into a garden for children. But the garden, on the corner of Stanton and Norfolk Streets, has never had a secure legal footing. Part of the parcel is owned by the city's Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development, but a sizable portion is privately owned by Norfolk Development, a company thought to be controlled by Serge Hoyda, a partner at S&H Equities.

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Aaron Swartz speaking at a protest against SOPA and PIPA bills in New York City.

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It's at once terribly exciting and infinitely sad: This morning, the New Yorker announced the arrival of Strongbox, a new tool for receiving sensitive documents and messages from readers. Commissioned by Kevin Poulsen, the investigations editor at Wired, Strongbox was one of the projects that Aaron Swartz had developed before he committed suicide in January.

Swartz and Poulsen met in 2006, when Swartz, along with the other co-founders of Reddit, sold the online platform to Condé Nast and took root in a conference room at Wired's headquarters. Swartz wrote a piece for Poulsen about Kahle v. Gonzales, one of Lawrence Lessig's legal battles in the larger fight for copyright freedom, after which Poulsen asked Swartz to develop a secure-submission tool.

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James Gulliver Hancock, among art.

Fiona Maazel and Peter Trachtenberg
Pete's Candy Store
Thursday, May 16, 7:30 p.m., free
In reality we've already got G-, Facebook-, Skype-, and every other type of non-synchronous chat option imaginable, but Fiona Maazel's new novel explores a more extreme quick-fix remedy for feeling alone. The protagonist in Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf) founds a cult that promises to cure loneliness for good through a program of low-risk speed-dating and hyper-managed socializing. But as with all cults, things start going south when hostages and Kim Jong-il get involved. Hear Maazel read excerpts from her alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story tonight. She'll be joined by Trachtenberg, author of the memoir Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons (Da Capo Press), who recounts the mildly crazy but genuine affections of a "Cat Lady," or in this case a "Cat Gentleman." Is there such a thing as commiserative loneliness? We think so.

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The good people at the Union Square Partnership are bringing Wi-Fi to the masses. Well, at least they're expanding Union Square's Wi-Fi, which currently only serves a meager 250 people. By mid-June, though, 3,000 people in and around Union Square Park will be able to hook up to the Internet for free.

According to Jennifer Falk, executive director at the Union Square Partnership, increased use of iPhones and the like put pressure on the network they set up in 2008. So, USP contracted with Sky-Packets, which partners with the Bryant Park Restoration Group, to revamp the system. Sponsored by Beth Israel Medical Center, USP will be adding new technology to two existing antennae at the north and south ends of the park, as well as adding a third antenna at 18th and Broadway.

"This will be a 1,001 percent increase over the old system," Falk said.

People eating at outdoor cafes around the square should be able to log onto "USP Park Wifi," too. The only downside we can think of is faster video upload times for Union Square's notorious peeper population. Dammit.

[@sydbrownstone][sbrownstone@villagevoice.com]

"I'm trying to gauge not only what's right and what feels comfortable right this second, but I'm also thinking, How will I feel in a year or two years or five years? Is this the time that I should be doing it? And then there's the other side of the coin, which is, am I still the same person who I thought would make a good mayor?"

These were the questions Anthony Weiner asked himself in a New York Times Magazine profile published last month that sparked widespread interest in the former Congressman's future political aspirations. The hints came two years after the sexting scandal that brought down Weiner's congressional career. And, since then, the politician from Queens has played his cards strategically.

His admissions on television interviews have painted him as a man begging to look past the scandal that rocked him and his family a year ago. He reactivated his Twitter. His hypothetical polling in the race has given him good reason to take himself seriously. So who cares about the Clintons? This is a candidate with the potential to change everything.

And, if indications are what we're going on here, that shift might come as soon as next week.

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