City College of New York
The City College of New York (CCNY) is an organ of CUNY just a few blocks north of Morningside Heights. In the 1930s it was known as the "Poor Man's Ivy," as intelligent but poverty stricken New Yorkers excluded from Columbia by the social preferences pursued by Nicholas Murray Butler went there. Many of them transferred to Columbia after one year in order to take advantage of Columbia's fast-tracking program that allowed undergrads automatic enrollment in the Business School or Law School.
The most famous gathered in the main building's "Alcove #1" and became a group of Trotskyite Marxists known as the "New York Intellectuals". Later, many of these people, most notably Daniel Bell, became famous Columbia professors. Vanguards of the "old left," they quarrelled with students who participated in the 1968 protests.
In more recent times, CCNY was known to embarrass Columbia by garnering a more impressive annual Rhodes Scholarship count.
Lately, CCNY has begun to build dormitories, giving neighborhood people another institutional expansion to bitch about.
