With midterms madness, Bwog sometimes forgets it’s a national citizen. A few months ago we tried to sort through the lame duck congress that soared, and now we’re back covering the craziness on Capitol Hill. Bwog probs shouldn’t be your go-to source for national news, but things are happening in the world outside of Morningside Heights! Over the past two weeks, the House has erupted in debate over federal funding for Planned Parenthood, America’s largest sexual and reproductive healthcare provider. Planned Parenthood receives funds under Title X, a federal grant program dedicated to providing family planning and preventative care services, particularly for low-income women. We offer a very brief summary of the controversy.

• On February 1, a group called Live Action (a self-described “youth led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending abortion” according to their website bio) posted video of an undercover operation in a New Jersey Planned Parenthood. The video features a man posing as a pimp, asking the manager for advice about STD testing, abortions, and contraception on behalf of his prostitutes. The manager appears to give advice freely. He was subsequently fired.
• The same operation was repeated at other centers. In the other cases, those who spoke to the “pimp” reported him to their superiors.
• Obama has defended Planned Parenthood, despite the negative reaction to the undercover video.
• Just over two weeks later, on February 18, the House approved Republican Rep. Mike Pence‘s amendment on a budget bill to completely strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood under Title X. The federal family planning program for low-income women offers birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other reproductive health services. By law, no Title X funds—no federal money— can be spent on abortions.
• The 240-185 vote to defund Planned Parenthood, mostly split on party lines, ignited fierce debate between liberals and conservatives. Read more…

And the winner is......

Exciting news from our friends at Bacchanal. On April 15th, they’re teaming up with CU Records to hold a battle of the bands competition in order to select the opening act for this year’s spring concert. You have until midnight on March 18th to submit a recorded track, or arrange to audition live. The only stipulation is that at least half of the band members have to be Columbia students. All the details are here. You could be these guys! Happy music making!

Disco via Wikimedia

This could be you!:

Doubts about your summer plans making your tummy tremble? Post up in 502 Lerner tonight at 9 pm for free cookies, cupcakes and milk at an info session for Ivy Summer Management Program hosted by Jeremy Slawin CC ’11 and Shelly Xu CC ’13.

Then, head over to the Relay For Life Kickoff in 101 Diana Center, inside Liz’s Place Cafe at 9:30 pm to decorate free freshly baked cupcakes with colored frosting, sprinkles, and white chocolate chips and a chance to sign up for Relay For Life.

Cupcake prince via wikimedia.

Six weeks ago, JJ’s place introduced an a la carte option for those who wanted to buy a quick snack without using a meal. JJ’s aimed to have 250 customers and/or $1500 in sales per week. However, over the 6 weeks it has been open, the new service has attracted only 91 customers and $625.77 in total sales. The bottom line: A la carte is in danger! If nothing changes before spring break, the dutch door at JJ’s will close for good. If you want to keep the a la carte option at JJ’s, go buy something!

Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Business School, and David Schizer, Dean of the Law School, have issued public statements in favor of ROTC’s return. These are the highest level University administrators to have taken a stance on this topic. We expect Dean Hubbard’s statement to be posted on the BSchool website shortly, and Dean Schizer’s e-mail to the USenate Task Force (posted to their website in the last batch of e-mails), is reproduced below.

Update: Find Dean Hubbard’s email to the Task Force below as well.

Read more…

BwogSex, two intrepid students take SGO from a place for business to a place for business time. Don’t forget to send in your sexy questions, sultry comments and erotic (mis)adventures to our annoymous submission box.”>

Taken in the SGO *wink wink*

In the latest installment of BwogSex, two intrepid students take SGO from a place for business to a place for business time. Don’t forget to send in your sexy questions, sultry comments and erotic (mis)adventures to our annoymous submission box.

Publications and student government groups, please forgive me: I had sex in SGO. “Why? How?” you may ask, and I shall explain. Butler sex, albeit just as exciting and risky, is so cliché. The Butler Sex Badge of Honor just isn’t as big and shiny as this one. Late one Friday night, when most Columbians were heading to Campo, the Heights, or 1020, my accomplice and I stayed on Lerner 5, innocently studying and conversing about academics—at least that’s what any onlookers may have thought. Once SGO had been dead for about 15 or 20 minutes, it was time. A moment later, I was bent over a table wearing nothing but my skirt. I made sure not to breathe one breath too loud, keeping my eyes pealed for any innocent overachievers passing through SGO on a Friday night. Once the deed was done, we dressed frantically, surprised we had actually gotten away with it. Smug, we exited SGO and then Lerner. As we headed towards the Carman Gate sporting glasses and stuffed backpacks, we received looks of pity from girls leaving Carman Hall in too-high heels. If only they knew.

Bucket List represents the unbelievable intellectual privilege and luxury we enjoy as Columbia students. We do our very best to bring to your attention important guest lecturers and special events on campus that will hopefully make you realize how lucky we are to be here. Our recommendations for this week are below and the full list is after the jump. Bwog sincerely hopes that you indulge in some self-edification.

Recommended:

• “Sustaining Life, Securing Our Future: A Symposium Celebrating the Diversity of Life on Earth” Faculty House, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm, Featuring ‘leaders in biodiversity research, conservation, and education to present on the extraordinary diversity of the natural world and its role in securing a sustainable future‘ which of course includes JSachs, but also lots of other cool people! (Tuesday)
• The State of American Higher Education, 5th floor Kraft Center, 8 – 9:30, Andrew Delbanco (who wrote this great article on this topic several years ago) and Roger Lehecka
• “Is China Evolving into a Mafia State?” 918 IAB, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, John Garnaut (Wednesday)
• “Religious Fundamentalisms and Politics: A Clash about What?” 602 Hamilton, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm, Olivier Roy, acclaimed scholar of Islam, most recently the author of ‘Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways‘ (Friday)
• “The Unending Search for a New Global Monetary and Financial Architecture” Garden Room 2, Faculty House, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm, Gerardo della Paolera, President of the Global Development Network (Friday)
• “Committee to Protect Journalists at 30: From the Frontlines to Online” 1501 IAB, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Dan Rather, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Terry Anderson, Maria Teresa Ronderos, Michael Kamber, Jacob Weisberg, Rebecca MacKinnon, Sheila Coronel, Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Nazila Fathi, Ahmed and Shihab-Eldin (Friday) Read more…

CCSC met. Brian Wagner reports:

"The Gold Line"

• Learned started the meeting with a “REALLY CRITICAL VOTE” on which movie should win the Oscar for Best Picture. The results: “Okay, there were 10 votes for Inception and 8 votes for Black Swan, so Black Swan wins!”

• Casino Night is this Friday. Bwog urges you to learn how to card count and cock your eye brow. Lerner Pub is this Thursday. The Council passed the amended resolution on the Joint Co-Sponsorship Committee.

• University Senator Alex Frouman gave an update on the ROTC debate. The Task Force on Military Engagement will make its formal presentation this Friday. They will present all of the information that they have gathered so far (via surveys, polls, hearing, etc) to the Senate. The Task Force has no decision-making power and is simply providing information to the Senate in order to inform the Senate’s decision. Read more…

How's it hangin'?

Finding out who won last night’s Oscars is interesting and all, but ogling who crashed and burned is a blast. (USMagazine, E!, Fox)

In upstate New York a “Cold-War era plane with a dragon’s face painted on its nose” crashed into the Hudson. Bwog continues to remind you to neither swim in nor pilot your antiques into the Hudson. (NYTimes)

Scientists have discovered an “exotic superfluid” in the core of the collapsed star Cassiopia A. (Wired)

The interim prime minister of Tunisia Mohammed Ghannouchi has resigned under pressure from protestors. Meanwhile, the UN declared a humanitarian emergency as thousands of Libyan refuges seek refuge in Tunisia. (BBC, ABC, LATimes)

Fallen bridges via wikimedia.

These passages are excerpted from an editorial published in The Harvard Crimson last week. The anonymous essay, “I Am Fine,” resonated with us, and we thought you might find it interesting too.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“OhmygodIamsoooobusyIhavethreepsetsandtwopaperstowritetonightbutitistotallyfine.”

I filled my schedule with clubs, activities, and classes to avoid the isolation I felt when I was idle. When you’re running from one meeting to the next, it becomes easy to forget how alone you really are…. Even at school I was surrounded by thousands of other students—all of them able to manage the same difficulties that had rendered me hopeless. They wrote papers, chaired activities, networked, partied, all with an air of ease. Effortless perfection. I was the exception. I was the one who was incapable of handling all the wonderful opportunities that Harvard presented me with.

At least that’s what I thought.

One day, I decided to talk to someone… Instead of joking about lack of sleep and 20-page papers, I opened up. For the first time, I discussed what was really going wrong in my life. I told her about what had happened, the constant physical pressure that I felt on every inch of my body, the apathy with which I now looked at every aspect of my life. I told her I wanted to die…In turn, she opened up to me.

[College] is not always a place where conversations about mental health are necessarily encouraged. On a campus where the need for assistance is too often perceived as a flaw, the student body has a tendency to rely on variations of “I’m fine.” And, at a college where so many students already have far too much on their plate, it’s understandable that most don’t press the question further.

I’ve learned the importance of doing just that. I have also learned to cut back—on friendships, on extracurriculars, on classes. By concentrating my energy on the people and activities that I care most about, I have gradually begun to get past all Harvard has taken and realized just how much it can give. The most important opportunity I’ve found here is the opportunity for happiness, though the place that lies between night and Brochure Harvard holds a happiness that can be hard to find.

It’s certainly not emphasized enough how difficult it is to be a college student, especially when everyone’s telling you how great it is that you’re here. We’re given endless opportunities and urged to do anything. Somehow, many interpret this as a mandate to do and be everything. Please know, you deserve to feel like your best self, and there are people here to help:

Counseling and Psychological Services (Columbia): 212-854-2878
Rosemary Furman Counseling Center (Barnard): 212-854-2092
Nightline Peer Counseling: 212-854-7777
Office of the University Chaplain: 212-854-1493

And don’t underestimate the compassion, even empathy, of your friends.

This over a Bwog meeting? Psssh.

What do Colin Firth, Natalie Portman and Emma Watson have in common?

They won’t be getting free food at Bwog’s meeting tonight.

You can! Come to Bwog’s meeting before you watch the Oscars at the SGO in Lerner at 7 p.m.!

A sign of the Abacchalypse?

A study break fit for the Academy Awards?

Sip sparkling cider and munch on hors d’oeuvres at this afternoon’s Broadway block party from 3 to 4.30 p.m. today in the Broadway Lobby

Then celebrate the Academy awards ceremony tonight at 8 p.m. in the Broadway 4th Floor Lounge with free popcorn, sweets, and movie clapper picture frame keychains.

It may be midterm season, but that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the Oscars in style–ish.

When they’re not rocking out or helping the community, Columbia faculty enjoy getting dirty in the lab. Bwog takes a moment to look back on this week in science. Headlines were compiled by our Northside Correspondent Ricky Raudales.

Just your everyday elementary aerodynamics

• David Helfand, co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, was recently featured in a Canadian magazine for his lesser-known role as Prezbo to up-and-coming Quest University. The school’s unique curriculum immerses its students “in the works of Homer, Plato and Thucydides for one month.” And you thought the Greek stereotype was bad at Columbia?
• According to a study conducted by the School of Public Health, global warming has increased the length of the pollen season in northern parts of the country. In spite of the recent warming trend, we could all use more free hot chocolate. Are you listening, Business School students?
• A Columbia University ecologist helped found the new science of telecoupling at the recent conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). On that note, we remind you that you can find a piece of your own coupling right on campus (and remember to share your literotica with Bwog Sex, afterwards).
• Medical researchers uptown have traced the hormone osteocalcin, an enhancer for testosterone in males, to the bones of rats, suggesting for the first time a regulatory function to the mammal skeleton. For the quick of wit, or just the bawdy, there’s bound to be a Foner reference somewhere.

Attention assassins— Uma Thurman aspirants and the less ambitious, college student variety—CU Assassins starts today! Happy hunting! Here’s a little inspiration from The Bride herself. (Bwog also stands for bloody wall of gore…viewer discretion advised).

Update: Registration for Assassins will indeed still be open during Closing Ceremonies. It’s your last chance!