A few things of note happened on campus today.

First, a man named Bryan sat in a kiddie pool and splashed around outside Hamilton. Why’d ya do it, Bry?

Then, embattled Congressman Charlie Rangel provided the keynote speech at the NYC Economic Development Luncheon in Roone. His speech was entitled “The status of the National Small Business Legislation,” but he spoke mostly about Wall Street greed and about the controversy surrounding his 13 ethics violations. Robert Kasdin, Senior Vice President of Columbia, was there too, to talk to small business owners in Harlem about Manhattanville. The audience applauded with each statistic: 6,000 new University jobs, 1,200 construction jobs, and so on.

Next, a bunch of campers ran up and down the Lerner ramps sending orange paper airplanes to the lobby.

A tipster just wrote that he saw 10 cops handcuff a man outside Lerner and take him away. Apparently there were a lot of cops and Public Safety folk around. Bwog was outside Lerner a few minutes later, but found nothing- no cop cars, no Lerner personnel. We’ll update you as soon as we get more information, but if you saw or heard anything, please email tips@bwog.net or leave a comment.

Update: Public Safety confirms the arrest, and we’re waiting on details.

Update, 3 PM: Alright, here’s the lowdown from James McShane, VP for Public Safety. A man named Daisuke Mizouchi was arrested last night outside Lerner Hall. He was “engaged in a bogus theater ticket scam.” Basically, he would offer Broadway tickets for sale, take the money, and not deliever any tickets. “In at least five cases,” McShane wrote Bwog in an email, “he used Craigslist to promote his sales.” Last night the 26th Precinct of the NYPD (Columbia’s precinct) and CU Public Safety caught Mizouchi outside Lerner and arrested him “after a brief chase.” Bizarro!

In other news, Rangel will officially stand trial on ethics violations after a possible settlement fell through. He is accused of violating 13 counts of House rules. Not good news for your adopted Congressional District, good old reliable #1-5.

Update, 4 PM: Another tipster, Aryeh Hillman, CC’11, sends along this photo of the suspect being arrested, and recounts what he saw of the incident: on College Walk at about 9:15 an undercover police car started flashing its lights for students to get out of the way. The car then did a U-turn and parked on Broadway and 115th, outside Lerner. When Aryeh walked by the 115th gates, Mizouchi was pinned down by a plainclothes cop with his knee on the suspect. The suspect was then handcuffed. Another witness watched the chase and said Mizouchi looked like he was “flying” he was running so fast. As Mizouchi ran past Lerner, plainclothes cops ran out from multiple locations on campus. Mizouchi tripped and fell outside Lerner, where he was handcuffed. According to Aryeh it was all over very fast (which makes sense, as Bwog was on the scene just a few minutes after the arrest), the suspect was whisked away in an undercover police car, and the scence was clear. Also mysterious: the suspect has a Japanese name, but he didn’t look Asian, according to Aryeh and the photograph below. Curiouser and curiouser!

Photo by AH

O hai Charlie

Breaking news if you’re into this kind of thing:

New York’s 27th congressional district will likely find earmarks a lot harder to come by soon, as a House investigative committee has found that longtime congressman and lord of Harlem Charles Rangel “violated a range of ethics rules.”

The eighteen-month-long investigation was investigating whether the former Ways and Means chairman “improperly rented four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a price well below market value” and “improperly used his office to provide legislative favors for an oil-drilling company that pledged a $1 million donation for an academic center named for Mr. Rangel and improperly failed to report taxable income received from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.”

And if precedent’s any guide, Rangel won’t have a happy ending: the last congressman to face equivalent violations was expelled from the House. On the sort-of-bright-side, Rangel still looks better than his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, who not only had his own corruption scandal, but was also a homophobe. A step up!