Scraps from Day Two. Fresh-people, keep sending us those tips: tips@bwog.com!

One freshman writes: John Jay was completely packed, with freshmen spilling out onto every available seat outside, especially the lawn. This was a prime moment for Housing to turn on the sprinklers and completely hose everyone. Also in attendance were WKCR volunteers, first trying to drum up support, and then frantically scrambling to save their records from water damage.

Another SEAS fresh-person sent us a picture of the SEAS 2014 beanies, and expressed her pride that SEAS kids could sport their new hats while they studied for the Chem placement exam (and their CC counterparts took their first Lit Hum class in Roone.)

If you don’t have a fake ID today and plan on going to a bar in New York City that isn’t a teen club you should get one tomorrow morning. Below, tales of stories of Bwoggers’ first fakes. Hi, Mom!

• I got my first fake ID in the parking lot of a Ross Department Store in downtown Los Angeles, it said I had “blonde” eyes. A merciless club bouncer took it away in Savannah, Georgia.

• I got my first fake when I was vising my sister at Columbia when she was a freshman. It worked beautifully for three years until one day on a skiing trip to Hunter, I lost my wallet and someone turned it in to the Lost & Found. Before giving my wallet back to me, the security guy asked me when my birthday was, so I told him. He then took out my fake and told me that I was committing a felony. He said he’d call the cops on me if he let me have it back.

• Toronto’s Yonge Street presents, for a few blocks, a slew of greasy basement shops cramped underneath the strip clubs and sports bars at street level. Several of these advertise: “$25! Best Fake ID In Town!” I picked my first up during Toronto LGBTQ Pride 2009. It’s perfect, although it looks only about as good as you could expect for the cost: in Toronto they see that it’s a Quebec ID and ask me only si je parle français (I do), while in New York they see that it’s in French and give up trying to read it.

• I (wisely) skipped my Frontiers lecture winter of freshman year to get my fake. It was freezing cold and raining/snowing, and when my friend and I first got to [we're redacting the name in case it's still open], the place was closed for lunch. We wandered around in the cold for hours, but the first ID they made misspelled my last name. Identity-fraud wary and proud of my semi-anglo last name, I insisted the guy make me another one with my name properly spelled. Two Maine IDs for the price of one.

• I went to International to pick up a party-size bottle of Smirnoff, feeling like I knew what was up and how to play it cool – I mean I grew up in Brooklyn and I had my fake for like almost a whole year. When I got to the front of the line, said bottle of sminoroff in hand, the guy asked to see my id, so I – cool as cucumber – pulled out my trusty Delaware State id card – a non scan-able piece of junk I bought for $65 on Eighth Street in NYU land two summers previous. The back of the card actually read “THIS IS NOT A TRANSFERABLE ID CARD.” But hey, it worked – I mean most of the time. And I never even learned my address in Delaware.
  Things continued to go smoothly, the guy did the usual glance at the card, glance at you thing, handed it back and began to ring up the vodka. I pulled out my credit card and handed to him. He looked at it.
  “This isn’t the name on your id.” My fake id had my first and last name on it and the credit card had my mother’s first and maiden name on it. “What is this?”
  “It’s my mom’s credit card! I promise!”
  “It doesn’t matter whose it is –it’s illegal to use someone else’s credit card, did you know that? Be careful next time,” He said handing back the credit card.
  “Crestfallen, humiliated and sure my night was ruined, I re-opened my wallet. “Hey, um, can I pay with cash then?”
  He paused for a half second, then shrugged “Sure.”
  So an early lesson in Morningside: International is tough on credit cards, lax on ids.

Bwog spent thirteen hours at Orientation yesterday. Here’s some of what we found. (Hey Housing! We love you very much, wanna let us move in early?)

Hot fire!

Dear Bwog,

~Sweat Bead

Dearest Sweat Bead,

Bwog suffers from an acute case of back of the knee sweat. Every step feels sticky. So, we feel your pain. The good news is that NYC cools off by the end of the month. In the meantime, put your refrigerator to good use. Girls, refrigerate your bras. It really minimizes your cleavage sweat problem. If you don’t want your undergarments to smell like 40s, try freezing a spoon. Press it on your eyelids and the underside of your wrists to cool off. And finally, wear fewer clothes. It’s NSOP so they’re going to come off soon anyway.

Love,
Bwog

Joan Rivers at last night's Barnard candle ceremony

Nino Rekhviashvili, BC ’14, participated in a large and fire-hazardous ceremony at Barnard Convocation last night. She reports here. If you’d like to contribute to Bwog, please email us at contribute@bwog.com!

At 7:00 PM, hundreds of freshly moved-in first year Barnard women wearily congregated in Barnard Hall for Convocation.

DSpar, maestro of ceremonies, reminded fresh-faced Barnardians of Millicent McIntosh’s 1950 mantra, “You can have it all.” Then DSpar channeled her inner Spiderman, noting that with great power [of choice], comes great responsibility. “You can have anything, but not everything,” she said.

We were entertained next by a slideshow of celebrity alum (Miranda! Soon-t0-be graduated Kim Possible! Joan Rivers! The omnipresent Anna Quindlen!) Soon after, candles were distributed and the entire room was glowing as students passed candles around. Cheers, and congratulations ladies!

ROLM PHONE!

For CC ’14er Gabby Beans, last night’s Class Act was a welcome opportunity to, as the 75-page NSOP manual put it, “sit back, relax, and enjoy.” But she found that difficult to do with a thousand little kazoos buzzing in her ears, and the sounds of Michael Bublé inexplicably wafting over the freshpeople-packed room. Her report follows. PS: Write for us! Go to events and tell us what you see! Take pictures, help us with layout, hang out with us, do anything you’re good at. contribute@bwog.com.

After being herded in to Roone Arledge Auditorium like the bright-eyed freshman cattle we undoubtedly are, I encountered, alongside he more conventional event program, and a sporting event calendar, a miniature kazoo. That little kazoo foreshadowed the surreality of what lay ahead.

The performance began with a slideshow featuring a quiz about Columbia and Barnard’s history: SEAS was the “School of Mines”, etc.. Next they dimmed the lights for another slideshow filled with more of that “important” information. I think it’s safe to say that maybe two of our class of over 1,600 actually read this info, as the combination of Michael Buble and the incessant cheering of OLs was not conducive to attentiveness.

The program continued with a skit involving Alma Mater on the phone with Dean Shollenberger. Next followed a surprisingly enjoyable and well-made 50’s style NSOP PSA video. In addition to providing “real talk” about what we new kids can expect from our NSOP experience filtered through a kitschy, “Leave it to Beaver”-esque lens, there was excellent use of the word “willikers.” Things only got stranger from then on. (New!) Basketball Coach Kyle Smith performed what he called “a little 1989 diddy from Public Enemy” and Justin Ifill, CC’06 and Vice President of the Columbia College Young Alumni, beatboxed with alarming proficiency.

However, the highlight of the event, the Varsity Show presentation, truly engaged the audience. Highlights included the opening dance-number replete with admissions letter envelopes and a skit about RAs. Although enjoyable, I found the number involving the boy in love with his phone slightly foreboding (Editor’s note: ROLM phone skit– a Class Act favorite for years! Columbia’s ROLM phones were also featured on This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass). Hopefully in the next week, none of us will be so lonely as to look to an automated voice messaging system for love and attention.

The program concluded with a presentation of the class banners and a procession of the new students down Broadway through the 116th street Gates. The procession meant parading past manic OLs, disgruntled Morningside Heights residents, CUMB, and an especially spirited dude with a killer Jamaican accent.

Even though the OLs seemed genuinely psychotic, I would be lying if I said that it didn’t make me happy to see people so excited for our entry to Columbia. Mr. Ifill said that “before the cyclone begins [we should] make time for some fun.” Class Act was bizarre, but it was most definitely fun. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be one of those orange clad-maniacs.

The gentlemen of the Blue & White, in 2003

This morning, your Blue & White advice comes from the 19th century.

• “In conclusion let a word of warning be given to all who are about to begin their work in the School of Mines. Whatever course you may select, stick to it. Every one is good, and if you desire success after graduation remember that ‘ability is the measure of success and salary.’” —From “Advice to Mines Freshmen,” The Blue and White, Vol. III No. I (1892)

• “Our advice to newcomers and those of old who may need it, is to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the system now established here. If they are unfamiliar with the best manner of doing this, the instructors will only be too glad to put them in the way of it. To all who will act in reasonable accordance with these principles The Blue and White extends a welcome free from foreboding.”—From “Advice to Freshmen,” The Blue and White, Vol. III No. I (1892)

Bacchus smiles favorably upon you tonight! May all your parties look like this.

Tonight is the most important night of your life, the first night of college. You’ll probably do something sort of fun. Here’s what some of your elders did their first nights at Columbia. It gets much better from here. Don’t throw up! NB: Not every Bwog post has bullet points.

• When I got here I was alone and I hadn’t slept in something like 72 hours, and hadn’t eaten in just under a day, so I stumbled around for quite a bit, going through check-in, unpacked, and then spent the next ten hours walking these huge circuits around Morningside Heights, coming back up the John Jay stairs to the 9th floor and back down in the heat maybe twenty times, before finally tiring myself out and passing out for half a day.

• My first night of college I got drunk in Carman then went downtown and got high. I could have skipped the first part.

• An international student, I moved in a day early. A number of us—students from Canada and Kenya and China—went for a long walk in the summer evening down Broadway, up Amsterdam. We talked about politics and America and things we hadn’t expected to happen in the past seven hours, and travels and family and what languages we spoke and what languages we wished we spoke back home and. (Home, no matter where you come from, feels very far away if the people around you are not using the metric system, and say, ‘zee,’ and correct you if you ask for the “washroom.”) Later that night I sat out by myself on the balcony of my John Jay room (I found out the night afterwards I wasn’t supposed to), looking northwards to campus and southwards to the city. I fell asleep in a strange bed.

• I spent the first night talking to one of the girls on my floor—she’s been my roommate and/or suitemate every year following. Some other floor members wandered in and out, and at one point someone told us they were going to a party and promised beer if we attended. We both declined, and as rising seniors neither of us has been to a frat party yet.

• I went to school with Mono and Lyme Disease, so not only could I not drink, but I was so exhausted that I slept through most of NSOP. I remember few things from that week. Word of advice to freshmen: beer pong is an evil, disease-spreading game. Although my beer pong skills may have been at their prime for my entry into college life, I could not use them and thus lost them. However, I was unaware of this, and bragged about how skilled I was. Imagine how unimpressed my highly skilled friends were when I played for the first time in months! Embarassing. Haven’t touched the pong ball since.

• My 18th birthday fell on the second day of orientation and I had this brilliant idea to take a shot for every year of my life. Then I went to a COOP party and danced like a hooligan. I think this was the night my RA dubbed me and my friend The Mischevious Ones. Don’t remember much else.

• I went to a frat (pretty sure it was Beta) party my first night. The few college parties I’ve been to before that were strict on letting guys in without girls so I went with this one NSOP friend who I convinced to drag along like a good chunk of her Carman floor with me. I remember going up to the steps being like “hey, I’ve got GIRLS!” or something. They didn’t care. Probably cared more about guys actually, for recruiting. Anyways, afterwards I went with a few NSOP friends and walked (walked!) all the way down to 90th St. or so and back drunkenly. Needless to say, I hardly interacted with anybody in this story again. Shows how far NSOP goes.

• We started the night by using the beer pong table we stole from campus the night before. Stealing that table was a story all in itself because we ended up walking into Carman around 3 at night, bloodied up and hammered. God knows how we got by the security guard. That story, however, will not be explained because the current story ends much worse. So back to beer pong. I had filled up a camel-bak with around 8 shots, 2 monsters and some gatorade. With that gone, I was pretty drunk but wanted to play beer pong anyway. Many patrons from our floor and floor 12 came in to to compete in the awesomeness known as beer pong. A few games and Bon Jovi songs later, we got written up. I poured out most of the booze, but then tried denying the giant plastic jug of vodka behind my back that I was trying (read: badly trying) to hide. Upset with Sgt. Buzzkill of the 12th floor, we decided to go to Pike’s beach party. I don’t really remember much of the short trip there, but next thing I know I have a drink in my hand and I’m ready to go. The next memory is me allowing people to line up and five-star my back as hard as they could. From there on out, there is nothing that I remember though it has been told to me from multiple people. I was apparently launched from Pike by the frat boys because I lined up in a corner and bull charged (with my head down) the whole crowd of people. My next memory is the wake up the next day. I awoke in my bed in quite an unusual state: still drunk, swimsuit only, broken phone, bed soaked in some kind of liquid and a peeled banana smashed all over my ass crack. Apparently my roommate’s friend thought it would be funny to peel a banana and smash it under my suit.

Deans marched, ice was broken. PrezBo close-up alert!

And on the first day, He created PrezBo's hair

Orientation Day One is hardly over yet—there’s still Class Act to see, Gates to run through, and high fives not to give. Here are some scenes from the first eight hours of this long trek of a day. 2014, you kids look good out there. Welcome!

Pictures and video of Day One to come. Send us your first night stories and pictures!

• We caught up with some Sex is Sexy coordinators, who showed us their shirts (black and red!) and their badges. Each Sex is Sexy group has a name. Some of our favorites: Consent Builders, No Means No, Yes Means Yes, (VAMPIRE WEEKEND) and Consensual Seduction.
• Convocation was what it always is: hot, too long, and actually pretty sweet. Kevin “Kev” Shollenberger began his speech by telling the audience they should “be grateful you don’t have to wear a black polyester robe today.”
• We learned that there were 159 flags represented at the Convocation march, and that the Class of 2014 comes from 48 different states, and 52 different countries.
• Cliff Massey Kevin Magos, CC ’12 and NSOP maestro, took the stage next, and talked about Columbia as home. Borrowing our favorite 7th grade strategy for rushed papers, he quoted the Merriam Webster dictionary’s definition of home to give us a better sense of what Columbia as home means. Then he quoted Ms. Frizzle and redeemed himself: “it’s time to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.”
• The alum speaker, president of the SEAS Alumni Foundation, brandished his original Columbia ID card during his speech.
• Feniosky Peña-Mora and MiMoo were both truly adorable as usual. Peña-Mora introducing MiMoo: “you might say this marks the beginning of our sophomore year together.”
• MiMoo and PrezBo both gave genuinely good speeches, rare for Convocation. It’s the first time Bwog has heard Columbia administrators talk about ideas like learning for the simple joy of learning, and using college as a time, as PrezBo said, when you can be “single-minded about learning.” Another PrezBo gem, speaking for the old folk: “For us, it’s not ‘been there, done that,’ it’s been there, and would do it again in a heartbeat.”
• Overheard on the line to the cookout on Low Plaza: An OL to his group: “Do you want to keep consent sexy?” Fresh-person with foreign accent: “Oh, I’m bringing sexy back!”
• A parent asked an OL if there were bedbugs in Columbia dorms, because she read it about it “in the news.”

Dear Bwog,

Is it acceptable to hang my super hot poster of Jenna Haze’s ass crack on my wall?

~Bro

Dear Bro,

Please, no naked chicks. There’s really no need to splash your horniness all over your walls. It’s college! Go tap the real thing.

But this isn’t just a heteronormative gendered issue. (Fun fact: the default answer in all University Writing discussions is “gender is a social construct!”) Edward pics are off limits too. Those tear-out Cosmo Girl posters were acceptable at sleep away camp, but you’re a Cosmopolitan woman now.

Orientation has begun! A few highlights from the morning:

• An OL helping a freshman move pulled a taxidermied rodent out of the trunk of a car.
• Overheard at the Chastity Belt gate at Barnard, mother to daughter: “stand in front of the gate! Smile! Pretend you’re happy!”
• An OL opened the door to a car, activating the ceiling light. However, a strange mixture of heat and whatever science powers such devices contrived to explode the light, sending sparks down onto a memory foam pillow. Apparently these are highly flammable. And the stench of burning memory foam is the most horrible thing known to NSOP. The burning memory foam was then dumped in one of the Low Plaza fountains. Most people we’ve talked to today have heard of the incident; one mom said it smelled like chicken.
• Another OL reports that she saw Steven Spielberg loitering outside John Jay.
• DSpar was hanging out outside Barnard Hall, wearing white jeans, cork heels and hugging people.
• Dean Blank (Dean of Studies at Barnard) was heard telling a group of OLs: “Orientation is a time of rebirth and renewal.”
• At the same meeting, another dean told the OLs to cross their arms. They did. Then he told them to switch arms and fold them again. “See how uncomfortable that is?” he asked the group, “that’s how new students feel.”
• Reprimand your OL if you see her (or him! Hey, we’ve got all kinds!) wearing a skirt shorter than where her fingers fall when she puts her hands at her sides. Also, no rolling of the NSOP tshirt.
• A frat boy approached his friend, an OL and fellow member of his frat. “Have you seen any handsome ones?” Frat boy #1 whispered to Frat boy #2.
• An OL unpacked four large boxes filled with individual Cheetos bags and Chex Mix bags.
• There’s a Fairway booth at the registration tent with snack packs and Sour Patch Kids.
• There’s a food spread in Van Am Quad (i.e. in front of Hartley and Wallach) with three different kinds of apples.
• There’s a incredibly strange playlist booming from College Walk for all to hear. Some of the strangest: A Schoolhouse Rock ditty: “The Tale of Mr. Morton,” Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke,” some classical Chinese music, some Uzbek (we believe) folk music from the Steppe, a Moby song. At 12:23, they started playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” then cut it off, then all the music stopped.
• At a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday, the bus was so crammed with goods that the smallest OL in the group was asked to crawl into the cargo space at the bottom of the bus and pass out rugs, lamps, and such.
• We caught up with an award-winning RA (seriously) who told us he was avoiding parents today. His advice to RAs: your job is to make sure the residents are having fun safely, not to get them in trouble. Amen! He recounted his first day of NSOP three years ago: he and his father got in a big fight about a mini-fridge, and then accused his dad of dropping him on his head as a child.
• We heard a freshman complain to another freshman: “I’m so annoyed that the Orientation theme is the Odyssey. I’m in SEAS!”
• An OL accidentally rolled a moving bin over her toe. She lost her entire toenail. Moving is dangerous.

Send us your NSOP pictures, overheards, and stories to tips@bwog.com.

Behold your dorm room. It’s—It’s—It’s—nice?? Don’t be too disappointed. You’ll stain it too and make it your own. (Fun fact: JJ11 has a tainted legacy. One past resident drunkenly shat on the floor.) Anywho, college may be your first time living on your own, so you probably have some questions. We’re here to help. In times of trouble, Bwog will be your proverbial Jewish Granny, feeding you sage wisdom and literally telling you where to find free food.

Dear Bwog,

How should I configure my John Jay room to maximize space and look pretty?

Sincerely,
Befuddled in the Bedroom

Dear Befuddled,

Your new JJ pad presents two options. First, you could position your bed against the window. This will open up your room, making it seem less like a narrow cell. However, you will lose about a foot of space. John Jay rooms have these awkward protruding corners that prevent your bed from lying flush against the back wall. But, this newly created gap between the window and your bed is not completely useless: it accommodates a narrow nightstand.

Another option is to arrange your bed against the right or left wall. Don’t put your bed under wall with shelves. “But I won’t hit my head,” you say. “And it’s partially hidden behind the closet diminishing the visual weight of the bed itself”…or maybe you don’t say that. The point is if you’re lucky enough to have someone else in your bed, he/ she will hit his/her head. So for the good of your one-night stand, don’t put your bed against the wall with shelves.

Go configure your crib!

Love,
Bwog

In October 2003 (before Bwog was even a word!), The Blue & White made a long list of advice for freshmen. We’ll give you slices of that advice every morning of NSOP, so you can start your day with confidence and finesse and one of those good chocolate chip muffins from John Jay, plus hash browns if yer reeeal lucky. Check back here every morning for our first offering of sage NSOP advice for the day, plus a bunch of other NSOP stuff. These words of wisdom are to be taken with several truckloads of salt. We’re here for you, 2014!

• Don’t go to Wien. Don’t ever go to Wien. Think of Wien as Columbia’s very own Third World country, a place infested with rodents (we assume), unreliable utilities (for certain), undrinkable water (don’t be fooled by the dorm room sinks), and inedible food (before Wien’s Taco Bell was condemned, botulism- flavored tortillas were the most popular item on the food court’s menu). Frankly, if you have to meet an friend who lives in Wien, please, for goodness sake, ask him or her to meet you somewhere else (and avoid shaking hands). In sum, don’t go to Wien… Don’t EVER go to Wien.

• Nighttime is indeed the right time. When you find out what for, let us know.

• Undoubtedly, freshman year presents a wonderful opportunity for first-years to make friends. However, it also happens to be a time when friends are lost. For example, shortly after winter break, there will be murmurings of an upcoming registration period for the housing lottery. Suddenly, all Columbia students, save for the seniors, are thrust into a state of panic, and lose sleep contemplating questions like, “Who will I live with next year?” and “Whose feelings are going to be hurt?” In this situation, the best advice the B&W can offer a young worrywart is to practice damage control. In other words, it’s never to early to start alienating certain friends and sucking up to others.

International and West Coast freshmen moved in today, campus was calm in the afternoon. Tomorrow, it will be 95 degrees and absolutely insane. Two scenes from the last quiet Sunday till winter break: