It was this man’s vision to lead SEAS, of all things.

Columbia grads spawn from the east coast to represent the entire country around the world.

Green monkeys.  Chalfie’s dream finally comes to pass.

We’re far too busy cleaning up to fix the problem.

Back in the day, anti-Semitism was endemic.

It’s Ebola, but it’s not ebola.

This school may not have decent sports, but it offers solace to those who picked champion institutions.

If you’re still in the neighborhood, you have approximate five hours to say goodbye to Morningside Books, which closes tonight at midnight. The New York Times spent some time at the store recently, and yesterday detailed both the store’s lively final days, and its financial struggles, along with a slideshow.

Many neighborhood residents talked about their disappointment over the store’s closure – one resident said, “it’s not like losing a finger. It’s like losing an arm.” Apparently, the store owners received over $60,000 in donations to pay the store’s rent (approximate $9,000 a month, according to the Times).

But the story also notes just how fiscally untenable the store’s position was: $158,000 owed in rent, and the owners finally threw in the proverbial towel in April, after several revenue-increasing options (including opening a coffee shop inside the store) fell through. It’s unclear what the space’s future will be–the owner of Book Culture has entered a proposal to buy it, continuing the fifty-year streak of it being an independent bookstore–but for now, we are just sad it had to end.

Several New York blogs have picked up on an Obsessed TV interview with “Real Housewife of New York” Kelly Killoren Bensimon, and all seem to agree the best quote is about how she got into the School of General Studies:

“A friend of mine said you should really go to Columbia, they have an amazing journalism department there. And so I actually went to the school and I said to them, I said, ‘You know, if you take me, I, you know, you just gotta give me a chance, and if you take me, then I will be the best student, I will do whatever it is, whatever you need whenever you need it. I promise you, you know, I will not be a mistake.’ And this man, the dean, was like, ‘Who are you? Like, what? No, no, no. We have a process here. You have to fill out an application.’ And I was like, ‘No no no, It’s nice you have an application, I’ve already sent that in, but I want to go here, and I really really wanted to go there.’ And he let me in.”

Combined with the allegations against her for assaulting her boyfriend and stealing jewelry ideas, GS students everywhere haven’t been this embarrassed since the last time they had to…oh screw it, the Varsity Show beat those jokes into the ground.

But perhaps GS can claim Bensimon is simply dumber with age. In April 1996, she talked about balancing her studying, modeling, and charity work to the now-defunct Columbia Observer, saying “Columbia is like just one of my fingers. But being part of my body I treat it with the same respect that I do my work or charity or whatever I’m doing.” Then again, maybe not.

It’s an old trick that saves both trees and money: printing flyers and rough drafts on already-used paper (by feeding the blank side in). Now, CUIT and campus group Green Umbrella have brought that technique to campus printers, converting one of the printers in Mudd’s Engineering Terrace to used paper.

According to Green Umbrella’s Hannah Perls, the project began in April, and “the one-sided paper will be collected with the help of CUIT, SEEJ and Eco Reps as well as volunteers from other Umbrella organizations.” They are particularly hoping that campus groups will use the printer for flyering, “to reduce paper waste on campus.” As for expansion, Perls said, “We would definitely love to either expand or move the printer to a more high-traffic area if the printer sees a lot of activity.”

- JCD

Hey, recent graduates, still having trouble finding a job? You’re not alone. This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition, CC ’09′s Emma Jacobs got four minutes to tell the nation about her struggles finding a job.

The big problem, according to Jacobs, is her major: “A history major like me doesn’t come with many specialized skills besides research. These days, it’s difficult to convince people to take a chance on an entry-level hire,” especially when the competition has “master’s degrees and years of work experience.”  

She admits that the process, including getting three rejections in one week, has been frustrating. “I’m not questioning my abilities,” she says, ”but I have been questioning my choices, knowing students with engineering degrees are still finding jobs. And many of the positions I am equipped to fill are disappearing.” Score one for SEAS.

The free-speech-on-campus group FIRE has released its new report on free speech at Columbia, giving the university a “red light” rating. FIRE took issue with the broad wording of the policy, which “defines ‘sexual harassment’ as ‘any unwanted sexual attention.’ Sexual harassment can also include a “hostile environment,” which includes “love letters,” “sexist jokes” and “sexual innuendos.” Sexual innuendos? Somebody tell the Varsity Show!

It’s not the first time FIRE and Columbia administration have clashed over sexual harassment policy: eight years ago, a rewritten policy came under attack from FIRE and numerous other groups, who claimed that it did not provide for any due process for the accused. The fight eventually led to the resignation of Charlene Allan, the administrator in charge of the Office of Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Education, an office that has since been replaced by the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Program

Although FIRE said that the Health Services policy “is solely responsible for the university’s red-light rating,” they also expressed concern over the university’s spam guidelines, calling them “dangerously broad.” Columbia joins Brown, Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton in the “red light” catergory, while Yale has stayed in the “yellow light” category and Penn and Dartmouth remain in the “green light” category.

The architecture firm behind the new geochemistry building at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has won three design awards at the 2009 Sustainable Design Awards (building pictured at right). 

Xerox’s new CEO, the first African American women CEO of a Fortune 500 company, is also a Columbia graduate. Her degree? Master’s in engineering.

Three more Columbia faculty members have been named to the National Academy of Sciences.

Obama nominates a Mailman School professor to a Health and Human Services post.

Perhaps this will help him get an award: a Columbia pre-med student is featured in a Times article about web sites for cramming.

We’re a little late with this award, but congratulations to Michael W., the winner of the second-round of our commenting competition. Not only was his comment on our Pillow Fight photo album sufficiently epic, but he also showed great skill in actually leaving an email address, as per the rules.

For his wit and competent display of reading comprehension, Michael receives our grand prize package: a cotton t-shirt declaring his victory, and a used DVD of Dane Cook’s latest stand-up special (buying a second t-shirt has put us into chapter 11).

Didn’t make it this time? Stick around – the competition will resume during midterm week and finals in the fall.

Last night, Gawker posted about a strange petition circulating in the crowd at the J-School’s graduation ceremonies. The petition attacked professor Samuel Freedman (pictured at right, from his Columbia page) for giving a student an incomplete grade, preventing the student from graduating. The specifics behind the incomplete grade, though, were unclear, until the student’s original complaint surfaced this morning.

Apparently, the situation is all a big content-sharing mixup. The student, Erin Siegal, says that she had had an arrangement with her thesis adviser and Freedman to use an excerpt from her work for Freedman’s book seminar as her Master’s thesis. However, her adviser urged Siegal to turn in her whole body of work (16,000 words), leading Freedman to give her an incomplete. As of now, it’s still unclear if Siegal will be allowed to graduate, but hey, we’re sure that she can dig around in the couch cushions for another semester’s tuition.

Ethics, teary students, and smarmy professors – what’s not to love? You can check out the full letters over at Gawker. 

A student project at Temple reveals that our fearsome bird is now terrorizing Philadelphia.

For most of our readers, the graduation ceremonies have finished, and after watching all the webcasts, we still can’t tell them apart. They all have graduates throwing things/falling asleep/not paying attention, administrators reminding said graduates about the opportunities that await them, and lots of light blue and school pride. The one area that does have the potential to make a ceremony slightly worth your time (besides the diploma, of course, and the post-ceremony family gifts) is the speech. But did this year’s selection make people perk up their ears, or drop their heads? (photo from acordova on Flickr)

SEAS Class Day – James Albaugh, Executive Vice-President, Boeing: Allbaugh started off nonchalantly, joking about the absence of the West End, and his lack of academic success while at Columbia (Albaugh recieved a master’s from the engineering school in 1974). The first half of the speech focused on the problems Albaugh felt faced the new generation of engineers, including global warming, and he bemoaned how the United States is failing to keep pace in science education. The second half of the speech, however, could have been given to a new group of Boeing employees, as Albaugh moved through pieces of advice for anyone seeking a career in engineering. He even drew advice from how people become a “friend of Jim” at Boeing, and closed with a quote from a newspaper article about the first cross-country flight of a Boeing 707. In giving a thoroughly practical speech, Albaugh too often sounded like he was reading from a corporate memo. Grade: B- Read more…

The shadowy group only known as “Senior Underground” has sent Bwog a message (by carrier pigeon, of course) that there will be a senior class gathering tonight at the West End to celebrate “our last night at Columbia.” Join your friends, and try not to send any texts you’ll regret. 

Hot off the presses from City Hall and Albany: Governor David Paterson (CC ’77) and Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed their support again for the Manhattanville expansion, after the project was approved by the Public Authorities Control Board. 

Paterson said the expansion “will enhance the vitality of both the University and its neighboring community, while meeting the long-term needs of its residents.” Bloomberg added that it “will help solidify New York City as a world-renowned center for higher education and scientific research and enhance New York’s ability to attract highly-skilled talent.” Both noted the predicted benefits of the expansion, including “a projected 14,000 construction jobs over the course of the 25-year build-out and 6,000 permanent jobs, the expansion will provide nearly 100,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, enhance the area’s cultural activities, and activate the neighborhood’s street life with wide sidewalks and ground-floor retail uses.”

As for the PACB, its approval was the final level of state approval needed on the expansion (the PACB oversees the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, which made a final agreement with Columbia earlier this month). Barring a surpisingly successful lawsuit, Manhattanville may have crossed its last government hurdle. Full statements after the jump (image by the Associated Press). Read more…

After last year’s Social Security snafu and the weekend’s ID mixup, it’s safe to say that Columbia’s tech people can sometimes mess up. We weren’t automatically skeptical, then, when several Bwog staffers received an e-mail from a Columbia e-mail address with the subject line: “Please Update your COLUMBIA E-mail Account.” Then we noticed that the e-mail asked for our passwords and dates of birth.

Sadly, the efforts to disguise the spam fell flat beyond the subject line—Bwog thinks it has something to do with the return address being in the Netherlands. There were other subtle hints as well, such as the continued capitalization of “COLUMBIA,” the mention of a “COLUMBIA Support Desk – Information Technology” department, and the threat that “Account owner that refuse to send this information after One weeks of receiving this warning will lose his/her COLUMBIA Web-mail account permanently.” Somehow, we doubts that CUIT would does anythings so drastic.

As for the Columbia address, a quick directory search revealed it belongs to an associate professor in the Department of Child Psychiatry. The lesson here is clear: don’t trust Nigerian princes, overseas lotteries, and now, child psychiatrists. Full e-mail for your amusement after the jump.

-JCD & JYH Read more…