Name, School: Rob Trump, CC ’09

Claim to fame: I co-wrote a couple Varsity Shows (113 and 114) and have done various other campus comedy things. Also, I am the reason for the existence of my admittedly vastly superior arch-nemesis, anti-rjt.

Post-grad plans: I’m moving to L.A. to try to write sitcoms. Those are pretty easy jobs to come by, right? I’ll probably have one in a month or two.

What are three things you learned at Columbia?

1. The people who are happiest here are the ones who find something they like doing more than they like sleeping. I like sleeping a lot, so this was hard for me, but I found it. Even better: find something you like more than either sleeping or partying.

2. Whiskey goes with everything, tonic goes with everything, but whiskey and tonic together are disgusting. It’s like gray and khaki. I learned this one really recently.

3. You can’t do anything without offending someone.

Justify your existence in 30 words or less.

I’m majoring in English and concentrating in Math. I literally studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. I am a student from a 50s PSA. Read more…

Name, School: Tina Musa, CC

Claim to fame: Being a Peer Counselor/Advocate at the Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center (Consent is sexy!). Living in the IRC. Being a part of Filasteen, SPEaK and the Ethnic Studies Suite while they were around.

Post-grad plans: Going to medical school, liberating Palestine, and traveling to New Zealand to find the Shire.

Favorite study spot? My bed! Also my favorite sleeping spot coincidentally…

What are three things you learned at Columbia?

1) Everything is a social construction. Even icecream.

2) The best dumpstering spots are outside of Milano and Absolute Bagels.

3) Butler Library has comic books. Look up “The Boondocks” on CLIO…

Justify your existence in 30 words or less. I can cook pretty well – I’d say that covers it. Read more…

If you prefer free ice-cream to slightly-overpriced-but-it’s-for-a-good cause cookies, Häagen Dazs is giving away free scoops of all its “Bee Built” flavors (i.e. the ones with honey ingredients that require bees pollinating). Promo runs until 8 p.m. so get in line. Then, you can enjoy it on the J-School’s newly opened patio! The girl below is already dancing at the news.

- Photo by AB

We’ve received multiple tips about filming at 121st and Amsterdam for Sarah Michelle Gellar’s new HBO show, The Wonderful Maladys. Also there is her husband Freddie Prinze Jr., and the requisite paparazzi. If you can’t get out of exams to catch them, though, don’t worry: the show, which also stars Studio 60‘s Nate Corddry and Deadwood‘s Molly Parker, is set in New York, so chances on it returning for more shoots are pretty good (photo via Wikimedia Commons).

Normally, Bwog sticks to free food, but we thought we’d make one cute exception: the Girl Scouts will be selling their famous cookies on Lerner Ramps starting at 4:00 p.m. They’ll be selling all of the most well-known flavors, including Thin Mints, Samoas, and Tagalongs. No word on how many boxes the troops will have, but we’re sure they’ll be delicious.

Try Teachers College’s Library, where the second floor has a “collaboration room” with flatscreens and, for your dozing, a large, soft teddy bear.

The man on the screen won’t judge you, we promise (photo by ACM).

Name, School: Sherif Farrag, CC

Claim to fame: National and international fencing, Co-captain Varsity Fencing, Turath VP, MSA OCM

Post-grad plans: I hope to live my ambitions, conquer my dreams.

What are three things you learned at Columbia?

1) I will not work on an assignment or study for an exam until the last possible minute. The subsequent pressure makes up for the lost time, and everything works out fine, except that I might not remember what I argued in that essay the next day.

2) We’re all the same in a lot of ways, and our differences are only different shades of the same color.

3) No matter how much you wish that night’s John Jay dinner might be good this time around, it will always disappoint. It’s so bad.

Justify your existence in 30 words or less. I am one of billions of people on earth, and that’s humbling. Read more…

Available right now on Lerner ramps: free Red Bull as part of a promotion for the new Sam Raimi horror flick, Drag Me to Hell (stylized poster at right). Hey, it’s got to be better than Spiderman 3.

Whilst you sit in Butler wishing for a perfect storm to disrupt your finals, take comfort in the fact that such miracles can occur.

This morning, the final exam for Physics V1202 (the second required semester of non-engineering general physics) was interrupted by a real live fire alarm in Pupin.

 Or was it?  A prankster was responsible, reports the FDNY, and security is busy examining grainy camera footage trying to find the culprit.  According to our tipster, the plaza outside Pupin turned into a “circus of cheating,” so upon reentrance, the proctors passed out a “backup midterm” to be completed in the remaining time.

Physics department chair Andrew Millis informed the students that due to the “unusual circumstances,” the final would be weighted less heavily in the final course grades.

It all goes to show that studying doesn’t pay.  Full email after the jump.

—AB

Read more…

But only if you’re in the Law School or SIPA. Columbia’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs announced the complete list of Class Speakers today, and joining Attorney General Eric Holder are many other famous names to prop up the 22 various Class Day and Commencement ceremonies taking place between this Saturday (the B-School) and next Thursday (Law School and Dental School).

Among the big names: former California governor Gray Davis at the Law School graduation, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft at SIPA’s Commencement, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall at the J-School’s Class Day, New York Times medical correspondent Lawrence Altman at the Med School graduation, and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton Phillipe Reines at General Studies’s Class Day. Of course, some of the speechifying talent isn’t travelling very far: professors Jagdish Baghwati and Jeffrey Sachs will be speaking at the Ph.D. convocation and the Dental School graduation ceremonies, respectively.

Our favorite detail, though? Both J-School ceremonies are “closed to the media.” Full list after the jump. Read more…

Have you heard about this new movie? We think it’s called something like, “Star Trek”?

In case you missed the $50 million marketing campaign that has included everything from fast-food “Kingons” to Trek-themed Eggo waffles, the New York Times gave you another chance to join in the hype this weekend with an op-ed from Columbia Journalism School professor David Hajdu.

Hajdu, who is also the music critic for The New Republic, turns Star Trek apologist in the piece, calling the original 1960s TV show a pioneer of “cultural retro-activism.” Star Trek, he says, synthesized elements of American pop culture history into a format easily understood by the younger generation, transmitting cultural heritage. The crew of the Enterprise explored not the future of humanity but the archives of Hollywood.

Bwog admits to seeing the new Star Trek this weekend and can confidently say Hadju’s brand of Star Trek is dead. This reimagining, while still an engaging adventure, avoids ham-fistedly plumbing the depths of Americana to develop a storyline.

Some fans—perhaps even Hajdu—will lament this, but if the change means no more space hippies, space Yeti, or space Nazis, Bwog’s not complaining. 

A tipster passes along the work of a Lehman Library jokester.

At around 11:45, eager pillow-bearers began to congregate on the Butler lawn for the 4th annual Primal Scream/Pillow Fight, which this year featured over a hundred combatants. One claimed to have “stretched all day for this,” while several others wore capes. At about a minute before midnight, the two sides charged screaming towards each other, much to the amusement of the spectators who ventured from their campsites in Butler.

Though at first two sides charging at each other like some medieval melee, the fight quickly broke down to every man and woman for themselves. Warriors quickly adopted the language of the battlefield, including cries of “push him into the bushes and hit him,” “come and get me,” and “we don’t negotiate with terrorists!”

The fun did not begin to die down for almost twenty minutes, before many of the combatants slumped down on the grass. As one tired observer said, “I’ve never seen so many people willing to beat the shit out of each other.” Photo album after the jump. Read more…

The new issue of the Blue and White is on a Butler desk or newstand near you! Daniel Libeskind is one of the world’s most famous architects, having designed some of the most striking buildings of the past two decades, including Berlin’s Jewish Museum, the extension to the Denver Art Museum, and Toronto’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, which Condé Nast Traveler has called one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World.” Libeskind is also the master architect behind the new World Trade Center, a massive project that stands to revitalize lower Manhattan when its first stages are completed in the coming few years. Blue and White senior editor Jon Hill visited Libeskind at his Financial District studio to talk about the project, his career, and the future of modern architecture.

The Blue and White: What first sparked your interest in architecture?

Daniel Libeskind: It was not at first. I was a professional musician, in fact. But, I got interested in mathematics and the sciences, and I was always painting and drawing. I think I fell into architecture because, in a way, architecture combined all my interests. It’s visual music. It’s about proportions; it’s about geometries; it’s about precision and emotion. But it’s not as if I started at the beginning saying, “I want to be an architect.” I hardly even knew what an architect was. I had never met an architect until when I was in school.

B&W: And has that influenced your designs today?

DL: Oh yes, absolutely. I think for many years I didn’t build not because I was averse to building or because I was a theorist, but because I took a different path to architecture. I didn’t apprentice myself to architects because I didn’t like what they were doing. And I didn’t like the whole idea of the office, this kind of nine-to-five idea. So, I thought, “I’ll do architecture in another way,” and to support myself, I taught. Students are very creative, very different from the commercial world where people have a narrow view of what is good and what is not good. Read more…

As mentioned last night, tonight sees the newest tradition on this fair campus: the Spring Pillow Fight. Bring your finest goose down, and hope a quill doesn’t stick you in the eye. 

If hitting people without reprecussions is not your cup o’ tea, then you can vent your frustrations verbally by participating in the Primal Scream. The rules, reprinted:

1. If your clock’s not auto-synced to the NIST’s Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock (i.e. the Internet), make sure you’ve set it correctly.
   
2. At midnight, open your window or go outside.
3. . Loudly.
4. Keep it short. If you’re still screaming past 12:04, you’re a tool. Just stop.

Make yourselves heard.