A Columbia University football player has been charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime after he allegedly threatened another student with racial slurs, NBC News reports.

Chad Washington, 19, allegedly followed a 19-year-old Asian student early Sunday morning, called him ethnic slurs and then grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against a wall.

The victim told police that he was walking with two female friends when Washington and his friends began heckling the women, according to NBC News. When the victim tried to defend his friends, Washington started calling him slurs and following him.

According to the Columbia University Athletics Department’s website, Washington is a junior and defensive lineman from Oakland, Calif.

Police are investigating whether Washington’s friends were involved in the harassment.

Columbia released the following statement regarding the incident: “We can only say that Columbia is widely recognized for the core values long defining us as an urban university community: the multicultural diversity of our students, faculty and staff; our openness to people and ideas; and tolerance for our differences. And we will continue to be guided by these essential values.”

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As the next hurricane season approaches, East Coast officials are learning to protect themselves from nature’s wrath.

Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast last October, destroying houses and shutting down power and transit systems.

In response, local officials began brainstorming how to better protect East Coast cities.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed using $171 million of federal Sandy aid to buy properties at risk for repeated flooding. He would keep that waterfront land uninhabited.

With fewer people in vulnerable areas, saving lives would be easier, said David Abramson, deputy director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “We didn’t evacuate enough people,” he told Metro. “Obviously people still stayed in harm’s way.”

In another effort, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer reaffirmed his East River Blueways project to curb flooding on the island.

The $3.5 million project would extend wetlands along the southeastern shore to provide recreational areas and a buffer to floodwaters, especially for the coastal 14th Street Con Edison power plant, which exploded during Sandy and left lower Manhattan in the dark for days.

Scientists suggest that power loss and fuel shortage could be mitigated through microgrids and alternative energy sources.

“Solar [energy] itself pays itself off in eight to 10 years,” said Mark Jacobson, director of Stanford University’s Atmosphere and Energy department. “At least with the solar, you can generate some energy, and especially with wind you can generate energy at night.”

Although cars faced long gas lines and fuel rationing in New York, buses ran within 24 hours after the storm.

“What Sandy showed us is that part of the reason New York did so well afterwards was that we had so many modes of transportation,” said Sarah Kaufman, research associate at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation.

But in face of the unknown, Kaufman said cooperation and sharing ideas are key to preparedness.

“[Boston was] the head of the inspiration for shutting down their transit systems before a storm,” she said. “The MTA learned from Boston after 2010.”

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Police identified the young woman found dead in a Columbia dorm room on Sunday morning as Jessica Fingers, a Columbia student and star athlete.

Fingers was on medical leave from school after having a major stroke, according to her father, Robert Bellamy. Her parents were told by a neurologist that the stroke was caused by birth control.

Her father said she was planning on returning to school in the Fall, though, and was recovering well.

“She was a vibrant, happy person,” Bellamy said. “She was the type of person that you’d want to be around.”

Bellamy said he spoke to his daughter on Saturday, and she was planning on coming home for Easter.

Jessica Fingers, 21, a student and runner at Columbia University was found dead inside a dorm room on Sunday. (Credit: Columbia University Athletics.)

Cause of death may have been overdose

The Medical Examiner reported that Fingers had brain swelling consistent with a Methadone overdose and mixing alcohol and Xanax.

The ME did not find physical trauma or signs of foul play and authorities believe that pending a toxicology report, the death will be ruled an overdose.

Fingers’ father, Robert Bellamy, said that she was “the type of daughter every parent would love to have.”

“She just made a mistake and it killed her,” Bellamy said. “We all make poor choices in our lives, but most of the time we don’t die from them.”

Bellamy confirmed that she died from an overdose, but insisted that she did not use drugs regularly.

“I know that for a fact,” her father said. “This was experimental.”

‘Just an incredible daughter’

Fingers was from Monticello, NY, and received a full scholarship to attend Columbia University. She was apparently recruited by many schools because of her achievements as a runner. In her senior year in high school, she finished second among Section Nine Class A cross-country runners, and sixth statewide, according to area newspaper The River Reporter.

Fingers’ father pointed out that Columbia does not give athletic scholarships, so even though she was already accepting into their track athletics program, their offer was based on her academic merits. Fingers was in the top nine percent of her high school class.

Bellamy said his daughter moved down to the city in the last three months to work in a restaurant. He said the thing she wanted most was to be a chef.

“She was almost a professional,” Bellamy recounted. “The last four or five years all she wanted was professional cooking supplies; she was an amazing pastry chef.”

He said she had just picked up running again as well.

“She was doing some running on her own, going back to competitive running would’ve been a stretch at this point,” he explained. “But it was something she loved, and she was one of the best in the country at it.”

Her father also expressed pride in Fingers academically, saying she was “brilliant and focused.”

“She was the most focused young woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “She was hard-working, she made her own money.”

“She was just an incredible daughter,” he added.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Jessica Fingers, a Columbia University student who was on leave, has been identified as the woman who was found dead in a dorm room at the school’s East Campus building over the weekend, cops said.

Fingers, 21, from Monticello, NY, was part of the class of 2013 before she took a leave of absence in the spring of 2012, according to the Columbia Spectator.

She was a sociology major and member of the cross country team.

The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death, but officials said it may have been an overdose.

Metro’s original story is below.

A 21-year-old woman was found dead in a dorm room in the East Campus building at Columbia University, according to reports from the NYPD.

The woman was found at approximately 11:48 a.m. Sunday morning.

Police said they discovered her unconscious and unresponsive on the floor, lying face up.

Emergency medical service personnel pronounced her dead at the scene.

The deceased was not a student, a law enforcement source said, though she was visiting a student.

Police suspect an overdose, but the Medical Examiner will the cause of death.

Cops said no arrests have been made, and there is an ongoing investigation.

The identity of the deceased is being withheld as her family has not yet been notified, police reported.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Police are searching for a man on crutches who they say stole a bag containing a laptop from a Columbia University building.

The suspect targeted a student inside the School of International and Public Affairs at 420 W. 118th St. about 2:10 p.m. March 6. He removed the victim’s bag and then fled the scene using his crutches.

He is described as a white male. The same suspect stole a wallet in another Columbia building in February, the New York Post reports. He may have used the crutches as a prop to appear less suspicious, a law enforcement source told the Post.

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Students say the class hadn’t yet started when the lights went out, and a spotlight appeared with professor Emlyn Hughes in the center of it.

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  Columbia University Bwog: FroSci Gone Wild

A strange combination of music started to play, including Lil’ Wayne’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and the professor stripped, put on a hoodie and sunglasses, and then curled up into a fetal position in his chair.

People dressed as ninjas appeared and smashed puppets on stage, while images of 9/11 and Nazi Germany were projected behind them.

According to student reports (and the audio recorded on the Bwog video), “the Core’s most infamous class went wild.”

As far as Bwog is concerned, however, “none of this was as offensive as the fact hat he processed to display a Big Bang Theory clip in a ‘Science’ class.”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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New York had 419 homicides in 2012, or 3.8 murders for every 100,00 residents, but murder rates for some individual neighborhoods in the city are comparable to murder rates in some of the world’s most crime-ridden countries, according to a study by Columbia University’s The New York World, the NY Post reports.

East Harlem’s rate of 21 murders per 100,000 residents was similar to Brazil’s rates.

Neighborhoods in The Bronx had some of the highest numbers. Hunts Point had a similar rate as West African country Benin with 15.3 murders per 100,000 residents. And Mott Haven-Melrose in The Bronx had 13.1 per 100,000 residents, same as Nicaragua.

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