You won't have trouble remembering this character!

Dear Bwog,

I’m the Forgetful Jones of names. Help!

Love,
Elephant Envy

Dear Elephant Envy,

You’re meeting hundreds of people, so it’s natural to forget some names. One Bwogger recalls a ten minute long conversation with a complete stranger, who slightly resembled someone she had met earlier.  Oops. Bwog finds that facial hair can be helpful with name recognition (“that’s Sergio with the ‘stache”). Usually, it’s okay just to ask for a name refresher. But, there’s the rare moment when you’ve been hanging out with someone for a few hours, you start to introduce your new pal, and you blank. Bwog recommends stuffing (free) food in your mouth and gesticulating. One subtle motion says it all: “I suddenly decided to take a large bite of something and, now that I’m chewing, I can’t properly introduce you, so I’ll just gesture until you introduce yourself.” This and all the Natty will start your Freshman 15 off right. Battle that budding blubber by vigorously dancing with the people whose names you learn.

Love,
Bwog

Freud doesn't wanna do this stuff, either

Orientation can be fun, provided you’re drunk or Kenneth the page. Columbia is very nice to you during NSOP (relish it!) and rents out the Met and everyone smiles and tells you where Pupin is when you ask them. There is, however, the underlying problem that you don’t know any of these people, and there’s only so many times you can ask someone where they’re from. While NSOP at Columbia has its rough moments (never-ending ice-breakers, your first John Jay breakfast), it could be much worse. Feel better about everything as you discover what people at other schools are forced to do.

At Wesleyan, the delights are endless: there’s a play called Booze and Lose: “find out what happens when a group of students get together for a party. See how quickly common sense, good judgment, and emotional control evaporate when mixed with alcohol.” The program promises to provide impressionable young-things with a sense of “how to make better choices or face the consequences.” Zoinks!

There’s also a square dance, and a “Bend It At Beckham Dance”– “come prepared to bend the gender binary in fun and fashion.” A change of pace from the same-old, same-old Orientation activities at Beck University, certainly.

Brown has a truly baffling pre-Orientation program called The Third World Transition Program. Brown says we can call it TWTP for short. Thanks, guy. Heaven knows why we’re surprised to find out about the existence of a Third World Center at Brown, but surprised we are all the same. TWTP will help people who have, presumably, lived in a wolf pack, or perhaps a far-off ring of Saturn for their first 18 years, make sense of all the big bag “-isms” out there. Under1Roof is looking better everyday, right?

Yale clearly doesn’t have time for this shit: the first day of their “Opening Days of College” (that’s we’re-better-than-everyone-else slang for “Orientation”) program contains little besides a $10 “Express Lunch”, a $20 dinner in the Dining Hall, and a 4.5 hour immunization program for everything from measles to German measles. There is also a performance showcases Yale’s diversity called “Kaleidoscope,” a title we could not have anticipated.

UPenn also shuns subtlety with an event titled “Laws Related to Alcohol In the United States.” There’s also a toga dance party at the Archaeology Museum. Best toga gets a $50 giftcard to the bookstore!

Johns Hopkins had a “Beer Goggle Challenge” obstacle course last year. This time around, they’ve decided to be a little more obtuse: all we know about the “Playfair” is that it’ll be a night of “insane fun,” but “we can’t give you any more details.” There’s also a “Pimp Your T-Shirt” event, and a play called Sexcapades about a boy who travels into the future from the 1950′s and learns about “STIs and the best places to have sex on campus.” Those attending HorrorFest are asked to come in costume. Later, Tom DeLuca, the Corporate Hypnotist, will do a Hypnosis show.

Being asked to dance with a thousand strangers who you will eventually become friends with and have sex with seems to be the theme this Orientation season. Cornell will host its first-ever (!) Hoe Down, with music from a local bluegrass band. Bizarrest of all: the Class of 2014′s Official Ice Cream Flavor (!!) will be unveiled at the event.

It’s listening time, kids. The Blue & White bestows more gems of wisdom:

• So you’ve arrived on campus, and you’re eager to find that work-study job that pays ten dollars an hour to sit on your derriere and do homework. Well, oh most Francophilic freshman, the B&W has some advice for you: avoid the Butler Reserves. It might look like a desk job, but you’ll soon find yourself leaving the desk, trudging through the labyrinthine shelves for some patron whom you desperately want to patronize. Instead of Butler, the B&W suggests you try finding employment at the Physics library. Do you know where the Physics library is? Do your fellow freshmen? Exactly. [Ed note: The Physics Library is now closed, but the Geology and Music Libraries also do the trick].
• Remember that you’re the smartest student in your Literature Humanities section. If, however, some insidious usurper poses a threat to your status, casually remind your professor of where the real brains are by citing only sources in Church Slavonic penned by scholars with names like Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite.

You, as a Kenneth Cole Scholar

In July, we wrote about Kenneth Cole’s new and somewhat surprising friendship with Columbia. The details were slightly murky, but we knew that it was something to do with community service and a summer internship. Today, Deans Moody-Adams and Peña-Mora sent around an email officially announcing the Kenneth Cole Community Engagement Program. Prospective Kenneth Cole fellows should consult this list of course requirements; CC and SEAS prospies will have to select two courses from separate lists of four. The courses focus on community building, taking the form of Sociology, Urban Studies/Planning, Poli Sci, Science and Society, Engineering for Developing Communities, and so on. You’ll also get a summer internship and summer housing. And unlimited sleek black clothing—because you’re a real New Yorker now!

PrezBo is teaching a new class this fall, but you probably can’t take it. The course is A Free Press for a Global Society, and it sounds awesome, at least to Bwog. The course description:

A Free Press for a Global Society examines both the U.S. experience in developing a system of freedom of the press and the international experience as well.  The course will then consider how a more integrated system might evolve over the coming decades.  This is a pressing issue, for individual nations and for the worldwide community, because the increased interconnectedness of the global economy, the rise of global problems (such as climate change and financial regulation), and the emergence of technologies that make global communication possible all depend upon a free flow of information and ideas.  Students will undertake in depth examinations of First Amendment law, international treaties and principles, public policies affecting the press, and a range of perspectives on these issues.  Miklós Haraszti, former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, will co-teach the course with President Lee C. Bollinger.  Guest speakers will be invited to address the class.  Students are invited to participate in a variety of ways in the conference of the same name held in November.

Unfortunately, only Poli Sci majors/concentrations were forwarded an email about how to sign up for the waiting list for the class… since only 10 undergrads are allowed in the class and you can’t register online. If you feel like begging, contact the people on this list. Just don’t take our waiting list spot.

Where the magic happens

Five years ago, in The Blue & White, Chris Beam, CC ’06, answered all the questions anyone has ever had, past present and future, about Butler Sex. It remains one of the great masterpieces of our time. If you don’t know, now you know.

When it comes to self-aggrandizing myths, Columbia rivals the Greeks. The owl, 1968, Kerouac and Ginsberg at The West End: they all supposedly comprise Columbia’s collective unconscious. But despite what the tour guides tell you, these legends are dead to the average student. Only one myth still matters, as proven by the hush that descends when an anecdote begins—and ends—with “So we got off on level nine…”

“When you get to school, one of the first things people say about [the stacks] is, did you know Ghostbusters was filmed there?” said Andrew, a recent Columbia graduate who preferred to withhold his real name. “The second thing is, did you have sex in the stacks?”

Butler sex is our generation’s equivalent of panty raids the tales emerge late in the party, after all other conversation topics have been exhausted. One person in the room has done it, five people have friends who did, and everyone else has thought about it but never acted on the urge.

It is one of Columbia’s few unacknowledged subcultures, and perhaps its most universal—an extracurricular that unites students of all political bents, racial make-ups, and religious persuasions. We all know the regular Butler cliques: the smokers, the boho-chic grad students who pound fists outside Room 301, the bearded men who sip tea in the lounge and loudly quote Heidegger. But the Butler sex community has no identifying mark. No secret handshake, no pinky ring. Most Butler lovers show scruples in revealing their secrets, and then only in hushed tones. The movement’s existence may be universal, but its stories have gone untold. Until now. Read more…

From our Mapril issue of The Blue & White, Maddy Kloss charts a map of where to find Morningside Heights’ best-known fictional characters.

Click to enlarge in a popup window.

The Prince of Denmark, spotted lurking on Barnard’s campus! Observe. And freshmen, keep tipping! (tips@bwog.com)

Hey ladeeeeeeez!

Filed by Katheryn Thayer, BC ’14, from the Being a Student at Barnard event last night. Want to write for Bwog? contribute@bwog.com!

Early yesterday morning, hundreds of groggy Barnardians filed into LeFrak to discover what it means to be a Barnard woman.

The deans gathered to welcome incoming students and make them feel comfortable asking questions, seeking guidance, and working at their own pace in their new environment. Dean Blank encouraged girls to greet each other in the elevators and make eye contact in the hallways. But it wasn’t all feel-good-summercampy—she also very bluntly stated that “these will not be the best years of your lives”, and explained that there is a huge amount of adjustment and growth ahead.

Despite the misleading event title, this was not so much a girls’ finishing school lecture as it was an introduction to the supportive community BC students have available to them. Dean Young commented that Barnard is focused on individual attention and advising, and also hopes that students realize how many people are involved in helping them reach their full academic potential. Dean Hollibaugh assured nervous fresh-women that everyone is on their own timeline (ladies, thank God we don’t have to do the Core) and that no one should expect to fully embody the ideal Barnard Woman. She eloquently explained that there is no perfect Barnard prototype student; instead we work as a group to collectively represent a community of women with wide ranging talents and interests.

And this is about where the meeting could have ended.

In what is rapidly proving to be the NSOP standard procedure, all important information was cushioned by about 75% mundane droning. Today, this included a reenactment of a typical student-advisor meeting, a discussion with a panel of current BC students on their advisor experiences, and the same tired don’t plagiarize lecture we heard every fall in high school. To whoever is planning the deathly boring orientation meetings—cut it in half?

Dear Bwog,

I got locked out of my room after showering. Again. With running mascara rivaling the Corpse Bride, I trudged down to the Hospitality Desk. That’s the fifth time this week. This has got to stop.

Frustrated,

Tim Burton Extra

Dear Tim Burton Extra,

We promise the Hospitality folks are unfazed. They’ve probs seen everything from nip slips to Spiderman boxer briefs. Even so, getting locked out is fucking annoying. Two options:

Option A) The Counterfeit Key*

Step 1) Find a SEAS kid. Or someone mechanically skilled. Or someone mildly sketchy. These may overlap.

Step 2) Present your savior with an old gift card or credit card.

Step 3) Line up your VING key with the card and drill deftly and defiantly. Way to stick it to the man.

* Always keep this key in you shower caddy.

Option B) The Door Disabler

Step 1) Find a screwdriver.

Step 2) See that black triangular hinge at the upper corner of your door. It controls the force requires to open the door and how quickly it closes. Remember that time you went to check on that kid stumbling down the hall and, before you knew it, the door slammed behind you. If you’d dismantled that hinge, you would’ve caught the door.

Love,

Bwog

The star of the first Lit Hum lecture

When 2 o’clock rolled around today, it was finally time for the Class of 2014 to close the Iliad (or at the very least close the Sparknotes tab in their browsers), and trudge off to the Literature Humanities lecture with Professor Christia Mercer. Emma Stein, CC ’14, was on hand to share the fun with everyone left out by this CC-centrismfest.

During the non-stop fun that is NSOP (well, aside from those pesky “required” diversity seminars), students understandably were not thrilled with the prospect of sitting in a class of 1,400 for two hours, though some JJers expressed relief at the prospect of AC. Many came with cell phones brandished, ready to combat boredom with more force than Achilles used to desecrate Hektor’s corpse.

But these preparations were unnecessary. Mercer anticipated the freshmen’s need for humor (and in particular, humor induced through gratuitous amounts of nudity). This, she was willing to provide, grabbing the attention of the girls (and guys too), with photos of Orlando Bloom’s abs (when he played Paris in “Troy”) that she promised were “clearer on [her] computer.”

After finishing up her lecture on key points in the Iliad and some crucial questions, she moved on to a discussion phase that even she acknowledged might be a bad idea. Students talked amongst themselves (with surprisingly limited chaos or diversion) and afterwards shared their thoughts with the class, bravely standing up in front of 1,400 of their closest friends. Some fumblings ensued, but Mercer applauded all.

Delighting everyone perhaps even more than the abs did, the program ended thirty minutes ahead of schedule.