The groundbreaking for a $259 million City University building near Ground Zero was disrupted yesterday by an extraordinary shouting match between Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron and a university trustee.
Barron accused Mayor Bloomberg and others of “disrespecting” him and the students who had fought for a new building.
“The mayor gets up here and doesn’t even respect us enough to even mention that students were even involved in it at all,” Barron said during the groundbreaking for Fiterman Hall at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
At that point, CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld rose from his front-row seat and said, “When was the last time you respected somebody? You’re a disgrace!”
“You be quiet. No one’s talking to you,” shot back Barron, chairman of the council’s Higher Education Committee, as a couple of hundred invited guests looked on in wonderment. “You’re a sickening racist, so you can go to hell!”
When Wiesenfeld told Barron to await his turn to speak, the councilman retorted: “Whether you like it or not, I’m here and I’m not going nowhere.”
Twice Barron denounced Wiesenfeld as a racist — once as “an ignorant racist” and once as a “sickening racist.”
“Coming from you, that’s a badge of honor,” retorted Wiesenfeld.
“Well, you wear it well,” came back Barron.
The exchange took place just minutes after Bloomberg had left the event under a large white tent at the corner of Greenwich and Barclay streets.
“Everyone was falling asleep [from all the speeches] and then it was, ‘What is this?’ ” recalled one person in the audience.
The new 14-story structure, scheduled to open in 2012, will help relieve overcrowding at the CUNY branch, which is operating at twice its 10,000-stu- dent capacity.
Some of those students were in the audience when Barron, a former Black Panther with a reputation as the council’s most radical member, got into a three-minute verbal battle with Wiesenfeld, an aide to both former Gov. George Pataki and former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato.
Wiesenfeld said afterward that he couldn’t allow Barron’s remarks to go unchallenged, especially because members of the family that originally donated the land to the university were in attendance.
“He demeaned the ceremony,” said Wiesenfeld. “He belittled the efforts of those who financed and worked gratis to bring this to fruition.”
The fireworks ended when Councilman Alan Gerson, who represents lower Manhattan, announced, “So this is in keeping with good American tradition” of free speech and urged Barron to get back to the program.