If Hawkma could fly off campus, so can you

It’s the first full weekend in the city for all you new students, and we know you’re excited to start exploring, eat some non-dining hall food, and try out your fakes somewhere besides 1020. Even NSOP wants you to get off campus – none of today’s activities are required, and half of them are Neighborhood Tours. So grab a water bottle, a metro card, and a few friends, and break that Columbia bubble! (Just remember to send stories of your adventures to tips@bwog.com.)

Saturday’s Highlights:

• Neigborhood Tours. These OL-led tours designed to give freshmen who may be nervous about venturing into the city on their own more familiarity with Manhattan, include a Local Farmer’s Market and Thrift Shops tour (meeting at noon in the Lerner Broadway Room), a Museum Mile tour (meeting at noon in Diana LL104), a Lower Manhattan and Film Locations Tour (meeting at 2pm in Diana LL103), a Famous Skyscrapers tour (meeting at 2pm in the Broadway Room), a Harlem and El Barrio tour (meeting at 4pm in Diana LL103), a Central Park Photography tour (meeting in Diana 504), and a Chinatown and Little Italy tour (meeting at 4pm in Diana LL104). Look in your NSOP schedule for more detailed descriptions!
• Meet and Greet with Fraternity and Sorority Life, 5 to 7pm, Low Plaza. Whether the press is positive or negative, Columbia’s growing Greek life is often in the news. Find out what the frats and sororities themselves have to say at this event, which promises music, games, and light refreshments.
• Open Mic, 9 to 11:30pm, Roone Auditorium (Lerner Hall). This event is one of the highlights of NSOP every year, as the incoming class’s musicians, artists, and performers show off talents not reflected in their GPAs or SAT scores. The auditorium will be packed, but even if you don’t get a great seat, you’ll still be wowed by your classmates. If you want to perform, sign-ups are first-come, first-serve from 6 to 7pm in the auditorium lobby. (And by first-come, first-serve, they really mean first-come, first-serve.)

One Thing To Do Before Graduating: Rent a bike (you can get one with the bike sharing service Zagster, which has locations on campus at Lerner, Hartley, and Wien) and ride along the Hudson River. Through Riverside, you can get to a bike path that extends all the way from the Lower West Side to the George Washington Bridge. Pick a direction and find out how far you can go!

From The Archives: Check out the tragically no-longer-continuing adventures of Hawkma, a magnificent hawk that frequented Columbia’s campus and Bwog’s overseen tag in 2011 and 2012.

Ruler of all she surveys via 2010 Bwog