On December 7th, 2010, five Columbia students were arrested for allegedly dealing marijuana, LSD, cocaine, Adderall and ecstasy. Four of the five students arrested were members of fraternities. They were arrested after allegedly selling drugs to an undercover cop. This is a story you now know well.

Exactly thirty-seven years earlier, on December 7, 1973, five Columbia students were arrested for allegedly dealing cocaine and marijuana. All five of the students arrested were members of two fraternities: Beta Theta Pi and Delta Phi. They were arrested after allegedly selling drugs to an undercover cop. This is a story you may not have heard before. Bwog heard the story from an alum who was a freshman in 1973, and found the Crimson article which confirmed the details.

The harsh Rockefeller drug laws, which had gone into effect just months before the 1973 arrest, maintained a “one strike and you’re out rule” for drug dealing. All five students spent time in infamously brutal Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. Bwog is still digging up all the details we can find on this, but—good gravy!—history repeats itself we guess.

Update, 12/24: Here’s a Times article from December 21, 1973, on the two students arrested for dealing cocaine. Both students were on the wrestling team and members of Beta. The students—because there aren’t enough coincidences in this case—were unrelated and named Sean O’Neill and Robert O’Neill. They sold four ounces of cocaine to an undercover cop who posed as a student and moved into the Beta house. The other three students were Richard Becker, a senior charged with selling four pounds of marijuana to the undercover agent, Nicolas Delancie who was the President of Delta Phi and sold 15 ounces of marijuana, and Roman Luis, a sophomore charged with selling marijuana and cocaine.

Bwog found Mickey Avalon’s backstage spread rather ordinary – fruit, iced water, some Red Bull. When Zoe Camp and Peter Krawczyk showed up to interview him before last night’s show, they couldn’t detect slightest sign of illicit behavior – for all we know, it could have been Al Gore’s green room.

But then out walked the sultan of sleaze-rap himself, sipping on a small cup of Red Bull, smiling at the giddy students that walk by. Going into an interview with an artist whose biggest hits include songs about dicks, sluts and “hot dick dot com,” one would expect a certain air of crassness. Bwog found Mickey Avalon delightful backstage; onstage he had his moments.

Mickey did pretty much what we expected him to do: make out with all the girls in the front row (twice), play “Jane Fonda” and “My Dick” (during the last five minutes) and be fucked up. Overheards ranged from “I’m getting tired of trying to have fun,” to “I am so happy I go to college.” The cigarette-smoking and ensuing threats of shutting the show down, the awkward moments where kids were dragged off the stage by Public Safety and the middle school dance grinding may not have lent the evening a refined air, but we suspect that’s not what anyone was looking for last night. Mickey and his dancers were spotted at O’Connell’s, of all places, around midnight last night. They played “My Dick” in his honor. Happy birthday, Mickey! Thanks for giving an excellent excuse to actually attend an event in Roone, Bacchanal! Bwog loves you.

Bwog: It’s your birthday tommorow! What are your plans?
Mickey: I fly out for Honolulu in the morning. I play the 3rd, the 4th, and the 5th. Then I have a break before the 10th, so I can relax, surf…just chill.

Bwog: Very cool! So you did a song with Ke$ha (“Sticky Mickey”). What was that like?
Mickey: It was fun. She came on tour with me and opened for me. I knew she was going to be bigger than me but we share the same record company and they wanted to give her exposure. I’ve collaborated with others, too…Kid Rock, Katy Perry, Perry Ferrel. For rap music, it used to be all about the verses without hooks. But now, you need hooks. It’s nice to have other people – especially girls – singing on the hook.

Bwog: In songs like “What do you Say”, you go for obscure samples (King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O, by Chubby Parker and His Old Time Banjo). How do you pick those samples?
Mickey: I like folk and country. We sample a lot of 60′s psychedelic stuff too, and I’m working on some Bob Dylan covers. Subterranean Homesick Blues especially – the way it’s structured, it’s already great for a rap song. I like samples because it helps to expose people to music they wouldn’t hear otherwise. My friend, his niece knows who Ke$ha is, but not who Keith Richards is. I don’t get that.

Bwog: You’ve spoken about being a male prostitute in the past, and it’s something that pops up in your music a lot. Now, with your music career, you obviously don’t need to do that any more. Does that mean we won’t hear about it in your music, or will we still get to hear stories of your past?
Mickey: It’s a progression. I think of each album as a chapter in my life. The next record is the next chapter. I might poke fun at myself here and there, but at the same time, I don’t want to hear 50 cent talking about selling crack all the time. This is just my job and it pays the bills and child support and all that.

Bwog: Ok, so of course we had to bring up “My Dick”. Did you – pardon the pun – know it was going to be so big?
Mickey: We’ve never done anything that’s a good business choice. I’ve always thought that it was a terrible idea, a terrible song that was so stupid. Same with “Jane Fonda”, actually. But people work 9-5, they come to these shows and they just want to have fun. When I hear people that want to get deep or philosophical, I just say, “dude, it’s rock and roll. If you wanna get philosophical, do it somewhere else.”

But I’ve heard some pretty funny stuff – the funniest was when my music publisher said that his son loved “My Dick.” I was like, “Dude, you shouldn’t be telling everyone this.”

Some people take the music a bit too seriously, though. I played this show at Mount Holyoke, and there were these girls outside protesting with these signs that said my songs were pro-rape. I’m not pro-rape – I have a daughter…That kind of hurt my feelings. It was like they were sitting there wanting to be mad at me.

Bwog: Speaking of mad, a lot of people have been getting worked up over Four Loko. Do you drink it?
Mickey: What’s that? Why, are young girls getting date raped or something? (after an explanation, a visible wince) There’s reason that hard alcohol makes your stomach lurch. You NEED that, and young girls definitely need that. Caffeine just masks that.

Bwog: One last thing: Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese?
Mickey: Cheese. Wait, as in being a vegan? (a beat.) Yeah, I like both things, but cheese.

Spotted shortly after the show

Mmmmmmmmmmm... pizza.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy is holding a phone banking event to end marijuana prohibition in California in 501 Lerner with free pizza from Angelina’s (105th and Broadway). Apparently there’s some sort of competition between other SSDP groups nationwide to see who can make the most calls, with the winner taking home a banner. Bwog would probably totally mess up and just end up calling its dealer over and over, so watch out for that.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Quick – get your Tamagotchi African villager avatar – lest you be trapped by your own limited, soon-to-be-obsolete pen-and-paper way of learning.

Watch out for them drugs, kids! You might end up accidentally cheating by outsourcing your work to yourself.

An awkwardly short list of nothing particularly awkward or noteworthy.

Riot grrl#~~!!*

Oh! The shame!

Thanks to one of the few female graduates in the early days of the law school, copyright law was blessed with the “fair use” clause.  Here’s to in-class movies and music.

Measles, mumps, and rubella are frightening now, but as a child you would have preferred putting off your immunization visits to being saved from disease.

A ‘72er (not to be confused with a ’68er) has some words of wisdom for ambitious New School and NYU “protesters.”

The adults have found out about college kids’ drug of choice.  Run!

Professors will get even less work done next semester.  The world’s largest collection of pop music since the 1950′s will be available for use by Columbia professors soon.

Here’s a trippy opinion piece called “The Benefits of Smoking” that doesn’t contain a single word. [ed: Spec has, for some reason, removed this article in the last hour.]

Pete Seeger lived through the 60′s. That must have been so sick, man. Wait, why was he at Teacher’s College again?

No one will ever suspect you if your eyes are a little red today: “everyone knows” we don’t sleep anyway.

Facebook and religion. That’s what it’s all about, dude. It’s all this massive social construct. Like, the Facebook guy just wants us all to buy into this system of organized religion. We have to fight it; we have to fight back against Facebook. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Wait, I’m so hungry right now. Cheetos? 

The real world media reveals that Columbia’s full of denial this week.

The Alps don’t exist.  Really?

Bananas aren’t blue.  Really!

Traylessness isn’t all that bad.  Obviously.

The drug war isn’t publicized enough.  Irresponsibly.

CU Med school doesn’t get questionable donations?  Honestly!

An anonymous tipster spotted the pictured stack of books in the Butler computer lab. “If only my finals were this interesting!” he laments.  The books include:

Cannabis Culture

Marijuana

Marijuana-The New Prohibition

Sexual Power of Marijuana

Man and Marijuana

Marihuana Reconsidered

Marihuana Papers

Bitter Pill

Birth Control

From Private Vice to Public Virtue

New Concepts in Contraception

National Com. on Marijuana and Drug Abuse

It looks like there may be at least one student who’s a little less stressed than the rest of us.

Two Bwoggers report on a disturbing journey to the center of the mind…

Our reasons for doing Salvia had as much to do with irony as they did with recreation. Free of associations with the 1960s counterculture, the perfectly legal psychoactive escaped the social retrenchment our nation experienced during the 70s and 80s. So while Salvia gets you high on one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man, it also gets you high on contradiction: going by our current standards (you know, the ones that don’t let you drink ‘til you’re 21), there is no conceivable justification for keeping this stuff legal. None. It’s like hypocrisy you can smoke.

I, however, was a bit confused when my co-experimentalist first floated the idea. A visit to Wikipedia turned up the following information (here I paraphrase):

Salvia divinorum is a naturally occurring herb related to mint and capable of producing strong psychoactive effects for a short amount of time when smoked and inhaled. Its twenty-minute trip has characteristics of both weed and stronger drugs, like shrooms. Salvia’s Latin name means “sage of the seers”; the word salvia is related to salve, used by the ancient Romans to mean “hello,” “be well,” and possibly ““care for a smoke?.”

After digesting this new knowledge, I thought for a few seconds, reveled in the narcissism of enlightened drug use, and replied: “Sure, why the hell not?” After all, I was in need of a psychoactively novel experience, and I didn’t see myself making it down to the Navajo Nation any time in the near future. So a few weeks later he and I, after pushing through throngs of hipsters and goths on St. Mark’s Place and purchasing our wares in a seedy yet comforting headshop (Addiction NYC, for the curious), found ourselves loading surprisingly odorless, fine brown leaves into a knobby and voluminous bubbler.

Read more…

For anyone who’s spent any time at Columbia beyond Days on Campus or a guided tour, this article says nothing new. The Arkansas kid who claims that Adderall users are “nonstinky,” however, has clearly not been in an environment (read: Butler) where a thousand souls are pulling their second all-nighters with the aid of their favorite speed-like substance. As we know, those kids get funky.

But wait! Columbia kids also use happy little pills for another noble purpose: to combat the unpleasant warning-sign side-effects of drinking! Here we find OTC methods to deal with “the Asian sensation, Asian explosion, Asian flush and Asian blush.” And a posh snap-shot of Calvin Sun.

Columbia-sponsored high school, created as Manhattanville quid pro quo, evicted, now homeless: ironic?

CU formally apologizes to Minutemen: reactions predictable

Barnard career services better than Columbia’s…unless you want to be a bartender

Speaking of which: bars crack down on legal IDs, but hire illegal bouncers

Revelation of the day: “in certain cases drug use destroys lives, but in a lot of cases they help out a whole bunch”

Columbia’s alphabet soup of schools: doomed to “sad and paradoxical reality” of awkward coexistence – forever. Which, according to this, is a good thing. We think.

While you’re in Butler cramming — or simply shitfaced at 1020 — your university is actively engaging with that frightening specter beyond the 116th Street Gates: the wide, weird world. Below, Bwog presents some of the most recent (yet unheralded!) findings and goings on from the realm of science and technology to have occurred at Columbia over the last few days.

Seismic Shi(f)t Happens

When some seisometers placed by Lamont-Doherty researchers along the sea floor of the Pacific near the Mexican coast found themselves stuck in fresh lava flows 8,000 feet below underwater, the university’s bursars were surely shaking their heads in disbelief that they had surrendered any funds to a project advocated by the curious novelty of an “Earth Observatory” again. That is, until Lamont scientists Maya Tolstoy and Felix Waldhauser discovered that the seisometers were still transmitting, and became the first to closely record micro-earthquakes resulting from underwater eruptions. Good news, especially if it means Columbia research vessels won’t be returning to the area to install new devices— and making enough noise to kill whales again.

Gateway Lab con Stile?

Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes have two obsessions in life: Andy Warhol is one, the other is the virtual online community Second Life. Bwog has no doubt that if cultural critics had the time, the patience, or the lack of lives these two must in order to have endured a year in this hyper-aestheticised neighborhood of cyberspace, they would fall into paroxysms of glee before scribing fascinating tomes on this binarially-circumscribed subculture. Instead, we’re left with Warholesque portraits of the artists’ favorite virtual avatars. Oh, and they’re going on display at Casa Italiana. We get the Italian connection, but wonder if the location has more to do with Mudd being too crowded with Halo fans?

Read more…

Columbia’s myriad of research institutes helped Bwog to realize that not only will studying PE or blebs in college prove fruitful some day, but that every research, however small, can be funded if need be. Even if you have to ask reactionary drug war people for the money.

A few favorite centers:

Center for the Active Life of Minority Elders

Center for Decision Sciences

Fecal Incontinence Center

Institute for Tele-Information (CITI)

Langmuir Center for Colloids and Interfaces

Center on Medicine as a Profession

Renal Transplantation Center

Center for Resilient Networks

Looks like Dean Quigley’s 10th Anniversary Dance Party, scheduled for 9pm this Wednesday, is going to have a change of venue. Quigo’s club of choice, the Avalon, has been shut down as part of a city-wide bust for narcotics. Ecstasy, to be specific. From the beginning we thought there was something a little fishy about a British man in his 60s getting his funk so enthusiastically on.

In CCSC’s weekly email to the Columbia College student body:

______________________________
___________________
1. FREE FOOD tonight
2. Dean’s Day Closing Reception
3. Run for Student Council
4. How do you feel about Coke?
5. CC/Lit Hum Graduate Student (Preceptor) Teaching Award
6. Columbia College Days is coming. . .
7. Housing Satisfaction Survey
8. Party For a Purpose ! Join the RELAY FOR LIFE 2006!
______________________________
___________________

If you wanna know how I feel, it’s overpriced and gives me sinus problems all day.