We're such a colorful group of urbanites!

The Native Society is a social club for native New Yorkers. Well, not most New Yorkers, just swanky prep-school grads or U.H.B’s (“urban-haute bourgeoisie”). Also you don’t have to actually be a native New Yorker as long as you “display the Native mind-set” and find college social life embarrassing. Money quote: “When you grow up in New York City, our minds develop faster.” The society has been cattily compared to one of our very own institutions. (NYT, Guest of a Guest)

A Berkeley theater professor has traced the origins of Jewish humor to the badkhn, a 17-century “kind of cruel court jester” who never called his mother. Oy vey! (Jerusalem Post)

What do you do if you’re a lazy news network based in New York and you need to add some color to a story about crazy college kids? Just come uptown and start asking questions! All college kids are the same, right? (CBS)

A secret tape recording reveals that an NYPD lieutenant encouraged his officers to meet arrest quotas. Arrest quotas? At the NYPD? That’s impossible! (NYDN)

On Wednesday, Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of African-American Studies at Columbia, took to the airwaves to debate the Texas State University student who wants to offer race-based scholarships to white college students. (TPM, Reuters)

Colored cartography from Wikimedia Commons.

Image via Wikimedia

Climbing twelve floors of the colossal IAB to make it to Dennis’ Gratz lecture on elitocide, Bwog’s Official Anti-Elitist Sarah Camiscoli was surprised to see that the “lecture” was only set up to accommodate Mr.Gratz, a moderator, and a small round table filled with professors and graduate students who were critical (or perhaps just confused) by the charged neologism that has caused quite a raucous on the social science scene.

The term “Elitocide” was born in 1992 when Michael Nicholson, British TV reporter, used it to express the elimination of dozens of reputable individuals in a town in northeast Bosnia and Herzegovina. But, unlike most of the empty “-isms” and “-izations” that can rob a humanities major of his or her command on the English language, Gratz visited SIPA to defend the term as a valid and absolutely necessary means of depicting the elimination of local non-Serb elites in Bosnia.

To persuade the round table of IAB academic hounds of the importance of accepting this clever neologism on the international stage, Gratz put up a bland PowerPoint presentation with his definition of the term, thematic maps of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the U.N. Convention on Genocide. Arguing elitocide as a unique sociological phenomenon that defines a particular type of targeting of reputable members of local communities in a genocidal context, Gratz was adamant about the opportunity to distinguish and thus determine different types of genocide for research and interventional purposes.

While Gratz’s presentation held our attention, his admission that his claims of genocide were often unproven led to a pretty heavy spit fire round with the twelve audience members sitting before him. To one member that asked, “Is that the real number? How do these things relate?” (in regards to statistical information), Gratz merely responded with a list of limitations in answering the question such as, “I am speaking from [an] elitist point of view who have education, money, and most importantly reputation.” Another person asked “Would it strengthen your argument if your definition of elite was narrower?” and Gratz simply responded, “In my fieldwork, it was the best I could come up with.” At this point, it became clear that the round table’s understanding of the term in their critical discussion was extending no further than my understanding of Kant’s categorical imperative last Tuesday.

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What better season than Chinese New Year season to reflect on everything that is totally and completely over? Bwog staff and friends assembled a list of has-beens last night. Our hearts break for everything below.

- Facebook pokes

- 1968

- Rasterbation

- Anna Nicole Smith and her baby’s daddy

- the phrase “I feel like”

- the “CSI” franchise

- SHOCC jokes

- safe spaces

- Michael Moore

- the phrase “sucks at life”

- Converse sneakers

- finding the “New Hungarian”

- personal blogs

- punk music

- friendships based on physical proximity of housing (only applies to first-years)

- Pluto outrage

- Courseworks

- Foucault and Benjamin as the reigning kings of Columbia

- exit opportunities

- nostalgia

- the word “hipster”

- Queer Awareness week flyers still visible from South Lawn from last March, now celebrating almost 50 weeks of continuous, blinding awareness

- ROLM

- Details magazine

- pretending to like “American Idol”

- The Eye

Many more after the jump! Read up ASAP

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