By Carol Tannenhauser
February 21, 2022 Weather: Generally clear, high of 47 degrees.
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A year-long, 17-member task force at the prestigious and elite private school Collegiate on W. 61st between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive produced a 413-page report meant to address the school’s “problems with racism and intolerance.” It resulted in the redesign of the school’s 400-year-old mascot, The New York Times reported. “A main objection to the mascot was that it was known to many as ‘Peg Leg Pete’ and widely believed to represent Peter Stuyvesant, the wooden-legged 17th-century Dutch leader of New Amsterdam whose legacy has come under growing criticism because of his ownership of slaves, support for slavery and antisemitic policies.” It also presented “a crude depiction of a disability.”
“An Upper West Side middle school is facing a tempest from parents after staging a play that warned that unvaccinated kids would not have friends,” the New York Post reported. “The show at MS 243 Center School on 84th Street and Columbus Avenue featured around 10 fifth-to eighth-graders swaying back and forth while belting out lyrics to the tune of ’80s hit ‘The Safety Dance,’ including: ‘It’s safe to vax/and if your friends don’t vax/ then they ain’t no friends of mine.'”…An angry parent called it “discrimination and bullying.”
Perhaps spurred by the deadly fire in the Bronx last month, “the City took action against Jacob Weinreb, the landlord of seven buildings on the UWS [with] over 200 building violations, nearly two dozen issued by the Fire Department,” The Real Deal reported. “‘At 51 West 86th Street, the owner put up scaffolding 15 years ago to fix the building’s hazardous facade, according to CBS. “But in all that time, residents said, the repairs had not been done.” Weinreb also made news in 2013, when he was sued for refusing to put both names of a gay married couple on a lease,” the Daily News added.
In another real estate lawsuit, developer Miki Naftali is suing the lone remaining tenant of a penthouse apartment at 215 West 84th Street (Amsterdam and Broadway), which Naftali bought last summer for around $70 million, planning to convert it to condominiums. He claims the tenant is refusing to leave “’for the sole purpose of delaying the project to cause financial harm’ to Naftali,” The Real Deal wrote. “The developer said the delays have cost it $25 million in lost rent and profits.” The holdout tenant has lived there since 2007, on a month-to-month lease since 2017.
Happy Presidents Day!
The middle school lyrics are fascist. Disgusting.
They are *fascist*? …what? They are very close to the song they were parodying. The complaining parents (and you, I guess) are weirdly sensitive about public health measures.
The parents are too sensitive when their children are marginalised?!
They should follow public health measures then. It’s like publicly insisting that you don’t need to wash your hands or brush your teeth because *something something* natural whatever and then being shocked (!) that people don’t want to spend time with you. For the rare children who have legitimate medical reasons for not being vaccinated, I have a lot of sympathy, but you and I both know that’s not what is going on here.
No, we don’t.
Even if it is the parents fault, children should not be ridiculed.
Don’t people realize yet that when you refer to everything as “fascist”, or compare everything to the Nazis, that you are just making yourself look silly and alarmist.
Personally I am offended at the name of the band more…Men Without Hats? What’s wrong with hats? I remember when men always wore hats back in the old days. Not only are they practical but they looked very distinguished.
Enough of this anti-hat propaganda. Very sad!
I don’t think you understand fascism.
It’s like when Trump supporters refer to Democrats as “Marxists”.
They have absolutely no idea what Marxism is.
What is disgusting are anti-vaxers who put us all, including health care workers and those who are not eligible for vaccinations,in danger —and revel in doing that.
No, it’s disgraceful that people are being forced to put something in their body that might kill them. One of my students died from a vaccine injury which cause mirccordistis, and on teacher dropped dead 15 minutes after taking the vaccine,where’s the news headlines about the people who are dying from this vaccine. Check VARS if you do not believe. Where is the sadness for the people in this city losing their jobs because they can not medically take the vaccine.
Come on… we all know this isn’t true
Add Collegiate to the list of schools going off the deep end. While some of the complaints might have merit, this seems like a vast overreaction and not an optimal use of resources.
About Stuyvesant’s anti-semitism:
YES, ’tis true. According to the “History Central” website, in 1654 some 23 Jewish refugees (forced out of Recife, Brazil when Portugal captured it from the Dutch) arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant wanted to expel them, but he was forbidden to do so by The Dutch East India Company, his employers.
B/T/W: those 23 founded Shearith Israel, which in 1897 opened the synagogue that still stands on W.70th & C.P.W.
Stuyvesant was a tyrant his whole life, and the the residents of Nieuw Amsterdam were not among his fans, if he had any. They were only too happy for the British to take over. They wouldn’t have objected to removing his image.
If you start changing names, many, if not most, of the downtown street names and landmarks would have to have name changes since a large number of early NYer owned slaves and/or traded in the products of their labors. I believe it is important not to erase history but to learn from it and do better going forward.
On Nieuw Amsterdam, I suggest everyone who has not already read Russell Shorto’s “The Island at the Center of the World” do so. It’s a well-written, researched, enjoyable book.
A ‘third’ for the Shorto book. He also narrated the Audible version and it was great fun to wander the streets of New York listening to the story of this island (and some surrounding areas).
Another Shorto fan here! Shorto writes that Stuyvesant, in opposing the Jews putting down stakes in New Amsterdam, argued that if the Jews were allowed in Lutherans and Papists would also have to be admitted. Don’t know if that makes Stuyvesant less of an anti-Semite or more of a generalized bigot.
As a descendant of Wolfert Gerritsen van Cowenhoven, one of the founders of New Netherland, I wholeheartedly endorse the Shorto book.
As a descendant of Wolfert Gerritse van Couwenhoven, who came to New Amsterdamn in 1625 and who founded the first European settlement on Long Island, I wholeheartedly endorse the Shorto book.
Cities like NYC are becoming so obsessive with some fleeting, intolerant sense of propriety that the town’s economic future is all but guaranteed to decline. Make sure your kids are fluent in Mandarin, folks!
Well, well, well.
Wayne Z. with another prediction that liberalism will lead to the downfall of New York City.
Meanwhile – Rents: all-time high. Real estate values: all-time high. Foreign oligarchs are buying everything they can because we’re in decline?
Seems like a lot of people disagree with you, Wayne. Maybe you should move? Do you even live here?
Nelson Mandela’s Ghost: property values on the UWS are definitely not at an “all time high.” As far as foreign oligarchs’ buying NYC property, maybe that was true a few years ago but no longer.
It’s Riverside Blvd, not Drive
“An angry parent called it “discrimination and bullying.””
I’m not going to mince words.
That “angry parent” (whose name is given in other stories, but as WSR didn’t post it I won’t either), is a delusional, bioterrorist enabler whose selfish actions put her, her family (including her kids), and the rest of us at greater risk.
I have NO sympathy whatsoever for her, and wish the school officials had called her out.
“delusional, bioterrorist enabler” — hysterics that have no basis in scientific fact.
Do you have the slightest idea how many people died because of the pandemic?
Tell you what. Just tell us where to send the cash and we’ll spot you the bus ticket to Waco.
You or anyone else, have no right to demand a parent inject his child with fluids that have not been given the standard safety test of ten years, for long term side effects.
Polio vaccine was tested for “just” one year before it became required. And no massive citizen uprising.
There is no “standard” 10-year safety test for vaccines. You’re confused or making things up.
And you don’t have the right to play Typhoid Mary in a neighborhood with many susceptible people.
Your rights don’t outweigh public health or safety
They call us fascists, we call them terrorists…
Do both of you really think this is appropriate (or accurate)??
Can we please just tone it down a little and try to act like adults?? That would be great.
Thanks in advance.:)
I happen to agree with you 100% I just don’t think the inflammatory language is helpful here.
Let’s try to keep the high ground here.
“Adults” have a sense of social responsibility. “Adults” have an understanding they need to look after the health and safety of their own children.
The ranting parent fails both tests and it’s way beyond time to call her out on it.
With war breaking out in Europe we sure are concerned about a lot of nonsense.
Talk about a red herring—you must make anglers jealous.
Bullying is bullying. Encouraging children to shun based on other’s beliefs can not be tolerated. In an age where anti Semitic and anti Asian sentiment is very present on the UWS, one has to question why this indoctrination of hatred is allowed.
Promotion of bullying and intolerance of any kind can not be tolerated. Who is with me? Or are you in favor of it only when it doesn’t apply to you?
I don’t necessarily condone the lyrics of the song, but at the same time, someone who doesn’t get vaccinated is showing no concern for the people around them – it is a selfish act (for 99% of those who don’t get vaccinated). I don’t like to hang out with people who are selfish and do not care about me. So I don’t totally disagree.
It has become obvious from the past year that vaccinated transmit virus as much as unvaccinated, if not more. They may have a milder form of disease, but that’s about it. And the long term side effects will not be known for many years to come until proper clinical trials are completed and evaluated. You must be behind the latest scientific findings, if you still call unvaccinated Typhoid Mary. Time to change your rhetoric. And calling each other fascists and racists certainly does not help. Just shows how thin the veneer of civility and culture is on the privileged UWSiders.
“It has become obvious from the past year that vaccinated transmit virus as much as unvaccinated, if not more”
That claim is 100 percent garbage. Do you get your science/medical info from RFK, Jr.?
“someone who doesn’t get vaccinated” — CHILDREN. We’re talking about kids.
Then join the chorus and ridicule the innocent kids.
I read the NY Post article and what the WSR fails to mention is that they also made “fun” of the religious and medically exempt. When we make fun of the physically weak and religiously observant we get onto shaky ground. This was a free country and when people can no longer be free you know what comes next. We must always protect freedom regardless of your agreement with others viewpoint
Even without religious and medically exempt, making fun of kids and threaten them with loss of friendship for whatever reason is unacceptable.
I was at the so-called play, which is actually a show with many different skits, songs, performances etc…, and it was one song, and there was no ridiculing of medically exempt children. So now Post articles are fact? If that outraged parent does not like the Center School, where my daughter attends, then they should not have APPLIED. The Center School is very diligent about public health, and if this parent is an anti-vaxer, then they should consider other, less liberal, progressive, science-based schools. I guess the “concerned parent’s” feelings are paramount to others’ health and welfare.
The tide is turning, and based on the vitriolic comments of my neighbors, it seems the progressive UWS cannot handle their freedoms. Eg- 6 months ago, had a parent asked whether their 6 year old should be masked at school all day, she’d be labeled a kook. 6 months from now, if your typical UWS parent demands that all the kids at school be masked basically forever, this parent will be the kook.
Yeah, weird how people with brains change their thinking as conditions change. It’s almost like they’re adapting to new circumstances in real time instead of holding on to the same tired positions they’ve held for 100 years. Astonishing.
As far as I know (having lived on the UWS for all of my 71 years), Riverside Drive ends (or begins) at 72nd Street.
I’m in the medical field and am 100% pro-vaccine, but I do think that school could have chosen a more appropriate song to promote vaccination. Saying “ain’t no friends of mine” about unvaccinated kids is wrong and unfair. It’s not like the kids get to choose, right? Their parents make the choice and then they suffer the consequences of being labeled as unvaccinated? Not cool. You can promote the vaccine without making the kids into targets for judgment.
I agree, a pro-vaccination message could have been better communicated without “shunning” a child. But why is it ok for a parent to make a decision to hurt the health and welfare of their child and others, but not ok for a few hurt feelings? I have the right to ensure my Center School child’s safety since the mother of this student went public. Decisions have consequences for all of us.
Peter Stuyvesant also was no friend to Quakers. You may wish to check out the Flushing Remonstrance and The John Bowne House.
A new logo!?!? Not since the transformation of Time Warner Cable to Spectrum has such a legacy of insult and inequity been smoothed over, uh, I mean cleansed so quickly.
Remember the famous quote, “branding changes everything”. – Some dead account exec.
If you don’t want to participate in society by getting vaccinated during a pandemic then homeschool. Keep your kid away from others.
What is neglectful parent . Unvaccinated children should be ashamed they’re dangerous to everyone else as we take off our masks.
it’s not exactly discrimination to tell a kid they are wrong for not getting vaccinated.
the word “bullying” is rapidly losing meaning because of over-use. Absent a sound medical reason (which is vanishingly rare) there is no excuse for anyone eligible not to be vaccinated (and thereby to endanger others, including the vaccinated who may have improved, but imperfect immunity, and preventing maximum immunity in the school). The skit sounds like harmless — if pointed — fun to me.