I’ve begun reporting for City Limits’ new Brooklyn Bureau. Here’s my first story, an education piece about Medgar Evers College’s challenges in improving its performance and its brand.

“Science and Politics Collide in Medgar Evers Faculty Split”

The story about Republican students doing bake sales on various campuses is trending this week but it’s been done before, by me. So I’ve dug up the story I did back in March 2004 on this exact same topic when the idea had caught on at various campuses including Columbia University. My piece was posted on the now defunct Africana.com so all I still possess is a PDF version of it. Toward the end of it I speak with David Johns, a student active in Columbia’s Black Studies department:

According to Johns… very qualified people are admitted over other very qualified people, but the university still only admits “qualified” people based on GPA, test scores, extracurricular activities, recommendations, and an essay… “I think a diverse campus just challenges some people’s sense of entitlement,” Johns says, adding that he missed the whole bake sale. “Fortunately, I was in class earning my grades.”

I led a team of great people over the course of two days as we worked to initiate my app idea. From left to right we are me, Abhay Saxena, Mallie Mickens, Ida Benedetto and Jay Finch. I heard about this hackathon from my friend Tahir because he was working with Eyebeam at the time and he knew I’d be interested. This was also my introduction to Hack/Hackers and I’ve been an active member of the NYC group ever since. Read more about the hackathon event.