Bikini-and-Taurine Correspondent Sean Zimmerman notes that the John Jay 13 lounge has been taken over by Monster Energy Drink’s campus rep.

“Well, I wasn’t considering this free sample, but the posters show I can undress multiple chicks with it…”

-Via Time Out New York

It’s our last pre-finals weekend of the school year. Make it count!

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

The Generational: Younger than Jesus

Friday 12-9; Saturday & Sunday 12-6 at the New Museum, 235 Bowery

At the New Museum, 50 artists, all under the age of 33 are being showcased. There are 145 pieces of various mediums, all on the cutting edge.

Price: $12, $8 for students



Friday

Road Recovery Benefit

Friday 8pm at Nokia Theatre Times Square

Come see musicians Perry Farrell, Iggy Pop, Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Wayne Kramer, Don Was, Billy Bragg and more. They’re bringing their ‘A’ game to support Road Recovery, a non-profit organization that works to help young people flourish and find their way to a healthy future.

Price: $25-$500

675 Bar Goes Casual

Friday 6pm-2am, 675 Hudson Street at W. 13th (212-699-2410)

This normally high-end Meatpacking District bar temporarily transforms itself into a more democratic place, with foosball, billiards, and other hallmarks of the laid-back bar experience. 

Price: Reduced, varies by drink Read more…

Everyone’s favorite collegiate journal of East Asia, the Columbia East Asia Review, just dropped its hottest volume yet (apply rap jargon to academic journals, check). These articles expand the boundaries of East Asia…if that’s possible.

Fujian leads Chinese immigrants all over the globe.

Defective Chinese products are going everywhere too.

Let’s research the Burmese…in New York!

American-esque Pop art, now made in China.

Are you a freshman freaking out about finals? The 2012 Class Council has taken heed of your mania, setting up a new study buddy finding system called FAC, Freshman Academic Connection.

Students input their courses and areas of expertise, and the Council will compile a list of participating students and send it to RAs. Freshmen, both in SEAS and CC, will then be able to access the list and get in contact with potential study partners. So, if your friends refuse human contact for fear of illness, you can phone a stranger to prepare for finals!

 It is good to know that Columbians can now find all the important people in their lives online. FAC email after the jump. Read more…

-The Uptown Local Team

Columbia’s Ultimate Frisbee (the sport is also called Ultimate) team Uptown Local gained some national cred this past weekend, finishing an impressive fourth in regional competition.

The team‘s meteoric rise began the weekend of April 18th when they surprised the competition in Sectionals. Though the team was the 8th seed out of 15 competitors, they won six straight games, losing to first-place Vassar by only two points. But if you think about it, Ultimate Frisbee must be to hippie Vassar kids what cynicism is to Columbians, so it was an understandable loss. Rebounding from the Vassar game, the Columbia team beat the College of New Jersey, which, as our governor knows, loses because its in New Jersey, to place second. Vassar and Columbia then headed to Regionals, beating out NYU and Princeton, which aside from outdoing Yale, are the best things a Columbia team can do. Read more…

Bwog “Newspaper-Reads-You” Expert Valerie Sapozhnikova joined a tiny audience at the Harriman Institute to learn about media in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Sitting amongst an audience of about 15, and listening to the moderator become bored with herself as she droned on about each speaker’s accomplishments, I almost started to regret my decision to attend the Harriman Institute Lecture on the Role of Media in the Former Yugoslavia and the Former Soviet Union.  When I heard what the three speakers had to say, I quickly changed my mind. All of the panelists were journalists who had worked with Communist dominated media in Eastern Europe. The three had clearly seen more than their share, and had a nuanced take on journalism that is rarely encountered in the United States.  

Nikola Krastev, a quiet and confident Bulgarian native, who reports for Radio Free Europe, brought up an intriguing topic—self-censorship. He told the audience how during his years as a young journalist in Bulgaria, he was not allowed to cover politics. Apparently, his ability to censor his own thoughts was not as well-conditioned as it ought to have been. For a lecture having to do with Communism, this was hardly a shocking story. What did surprise me was his discussion of how he self-censors now that he’s a writer in the US. Krastev made the point that, in order to be objective, one must censor some ideas. In hard-news reportage, emotions and personal biases are hardly appropriate. The difference between the two types of self-censorship, he told the audience, is the level of consciousness present when each is performed. Read more…

Those final Gateway project due dates may be looming, but there is always time for popsicles. The 2011 SEAS class council will be handing out free sticks of icy, sugary goodness today from 2PM to 4PM on College Walk, so make sure to get yours.

Bwog has been told that there will be “upwards of 300 popsicles,” but, given the weather, they will probably run out quickly. The free food is open to everyone, not just those stressing in SEAS, though if you are in an engineering mood, maybe you can build something out of the leftover sticks…

-Via employmentguide.com

Because the most important thing about your internship is what you wear…

…not what you do.

Good luck getting involved with journalism this summer…

…or trying to cope with living in Europe (the horror!)

-Layout of Bloomingdale asylum via shorpy.com

Yeah, it seems like there’s this weird bug going around…

Your professors aren’t the only crazy people in Morningside.

What!? Middle East politics controversial at Columbia?

Students ‘redefine‘ classical music. Proposal for new definition: rabid puppies with mustaches.

Instead of making for the nearest bar in order to forget the impending doom with your fellow seniors, the organizers of Senior Night ask you tonight to switch it up a bit, and head to a specific bar based on where you will be moving after graduation. 

If you’ll be staying in the Northeast, head to Havana; future Californians head to The Heights; anyone going abroad should drink together at Campo, and the undecideds among you can soak in your indecision at 1020. Oh, and if you’re going anywhere in the entire United States that isn’t the Northeast or California, you should all go to Pourhouse and talk about what you’ll all have in common. But actually, unless you’ll be going (somewhere) abroad or you’ll be going (somewhere) in between the two important parts of the country, you could potentially find to talk to about your specific post-grad destination.

So face your future, and uh, drink just as much as you normally would, but with people that you actually might see after May 20th. There’ll also be specials of various sorts at every one of these bars tonight. A special one at Havana will be sponsored by Red Bull (they’ll be making a drink called a Drag Me To Hell). There’s the negative outlook on graduation in a glass, if you were looking for it.

Full details from the Senior Night email after the jump. Read more…

Screen shot of “Wilma’s Anthem”

“To the left, to the left. When your omelet’s done it’ll be to the left” rings the creative chorus of “Wilma’s Anthem,” a YouTube music video made by two Columbia students to celebrate their John Jay dining experience. 

Though there’s no way to be sure, Bwog assumes this video and three other celebrations of dining joy would never have seen the light of the world wide web if it weren’t for Dining’s facebook-based video contest, going on right now on the Dining Services facebook group. The lure of the grand prize for the best (50 free John Jay meals for each contributor) has prompted four groups of students to create their own new, special way to say “I heart John Jay.”

Though all of the submissions make use of a popular song, not every group produced such a masterpiece of coordinated dancing and karaoke-esque singing as “Wilma’s Anthem.” “Addiction” is more of a short film, where in the darkness of the gated alley between Hartley and Wallach an angry kid with a flashlight confronts his friend about a dangerous addiction… to John Jay.

Read more…

Columbia (or at least the Butler computer lab staff) has deployed the giant sanitary bottles!

“Mexican” flu stands no chance. 

- Photo by AMP

In case you haven’t noticed, there is some sort of free food thing going on out on South Lawn. That line that snakes all the way around the lawn and past the J-School? Yeah, it might take a while, but once you’ve given them your ID you are free to gorge yourself on delectables from a half dozen different food carts serving up grilled meat and other unhealthy things.

If you miss out on the Big Apple BBQ or don’t want to wait on the line, there is another unfortunately scheduled event going on in Lerner from 6-8 that will have a ton of free pizza. Vegetarians and lazy people might want to hit up Lerner East Ramp Lounge to be fed and see a short documentary presented by an urban studies seminar. The documentary, directed by best selling author and rock star professor Sudhir Venkatesh, is about the destruction of public housing in the South Side of Chicago. Academics watching a video about the urban poor and eating pizza, what fun!

News that swine flu may be “linked” to a TC student has put Columbia’s email systems in overdrive, as administrators have made various “community-wide” announcements about the flu. Executive VP for Student and Administrative Services Jeff Scott announced yesterday to faculty and staff that “Currently, there are no changes to University operations or activities based on these public health recommendations.” Students will be receiving a similar email from Health Services Assistant VP Samuel Seward later today, which will also include prevention tips.

UPDATE 8:05pm: Seward has officially issued the long awaited second email with a number of ingenious tips for keeping yourself swine flu free, like washing your hands, washing things your hands touch, and using a tissue instead of your sleeve. Full updated email with all the anti-sick tips you could ever want after the jump.

On the Barnard side of Broadway, Barnard Health Services has sent an email to all students outlining the symptoms of swine flu (“Runny nose, sneezing, fever, cough, sore throat, headache, body aches, occasionally vomiting and/or diarrhea”). Barnard’s email was all over the health tips in the first place – it suggests, along with more standard health tips, that you “avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth,” which sounds like a great party game.

As for the original possible case, TC Vice-Provost Iriada Torres told Bwog, “Unfortunately, we have no additional information regarding the type of influenza the student was infected with but we have been told that the student is recovering nicely.” Finally, earlier today President Barack Obama said that schools with confirmed or suspected cases should “strongly consider temporarily closing,” which we think is a great idea. Full Columbia and Barnard statements after the jump.

- JCD & CEE Read more…

Outgoing Dean of Columbia College Austin Quigley has just issued a goodbye letter to the students of Columbia College. He wants us to know what an impact we have all made, “individually and collectively,” on his life in the past fourteen years, and so he has copied and pasted his own statements from a previous interview published in Columbia College Today. To great effect, Bwog might add.

The self-plagiarism not withstanding, Quigley has been well-loved and his comments in the letter and interview certainly come straight from the bottom of his adorable little British heart. But who could have predicted he express them by quoting his own interview? Bwog congratulates the writers of the 115th Varsity Show on their incredible powers of divination.

Full email after the jump. Read more…