Our friends at Gawker have taken a liking to one special Barnard gal, and her name is Lizzy Fraser. You might have seen her in your 20th century art class, or, failing that, probably at St. A’s.  According to the gossip site, she’s one of the “Upper Class of 2008,” specifically in the “New Edies” phylum. 

Says Gawker: “The ghost of Edie Sedgwick reincarnate: model, Columbia undergrad, Warholophile and photographer favoring self-portraits of herself surrounded by a minimum of four mirrors in varying sizes and shapes. See lizfraseronline.com.”

Terrible 12s, you haven’t even set foot on campus yet and already the whole Internet is abuzz with your goings-on.

In fairness, this latest outburst comes not from a Terrible 12 himself, but from his embarrassing mother, who (according to Craigstlist via Gawker) is looking hire a babysitter for him, for “support” — “support” apparently meaning picking up his dry cleaning, fetching things for his apartment (Carman double?) and scheduling his doctors appointments (walking to health services?).

Our new classmate will start Columbia in the fall, lives on 84th between Park and Lexington, has five brothers and sisters, and no nanny. All the job requires is “PERFECT English” and “SOME college,” meaning that you could be making 60-75k/year babysitting your own classmate.

Gawker is linking to Vanity Fair‘s just released “All Access Summer Guide,” which features the city’s best beaches, bars, restaurants, and pools. Second on VF‘s list of the Best Bars for Drinking Under the Stars? None other than everyone’s favorite backup for when 1020 is just too crowded, the Heights. “Columbia students drink their cares away at this second story Morningside Heights bar,” the guide truthfully (we guess?) points out. 

So be on the lookout for an influx of hip forty-somethings with an inexplicable desire to drink their cares away with a bunch of “twenty-one-year-olds” under the stars.

Over at Gawker, which time and time again has displayed a curious fascination with the Good Ship Spectator, it seems there’s been a tiff between Speccie Alexandria Symonds and star of MTV’s delightfully realistic The Paper/soon-to-be NYU student Amanda Lorber.

Lorber apparently took issue with Symonds’ review of The Paper published nearly two months ago in the Spec, which characterized Lorber as “a fundamentally lonely girl. Sure, she’s overbearing and annoying, but it’s obvious that it all stems from crippling self-consciousness and a terminally unfulfilled desire to be liked.” Retaliated Lorber to Symonds in a most unkind (and what should be noted as formerly private) email:

“I’m not saying I don’t have enemies, obviously I do. You seem to be one of them, but as I write now, I’m starting to see where it’s coming from. It’s a different kind of jealousy. The type spewed from young women who resent teenage girls that get their names out there. You, Ms. Symonds, are obviously a fundamentally bitter woman. You degrade the work ethic and academic values of a 17-year-old in order to cure your self-consciousness and upset at perhaps never being recognized for your work when you’re through with “The Specator.” In fact, if my staff hadn’t been excitedly ‘googling’ every article written about our (national television) show, I would never had come across your disgusting piece.”

Is this finally the NYU-Columbia rivalry we can all get behind? Perchance!

Gawker, whose staff apparently checks all the Columbia news websites every ten minutes for changes, is muscling onto Bwog’s turf a little bit this afternoon. Namely, catching Spec with its pants down with the following correction tucked at the bottom of yesterday’s caustic anti-Tibet editorial:

CORRECTION: This submission misstates that one Dalai Lama admitted to having sex with hundreds of men and women while knowing that he had AIDS. Additionally, the submission misstates that many monks participated in the dismemberment of female bodies. In fact, there is no factual evidence to substantiate either of these claims. Spectator regrets the error.

Well, yes, that’s amazing. Good enough for Gawker to walk its fancy self above 96th Street (and to note that relevance, the current Dalai Lama has held his position for fifty years, which means the number of Dalai Lamas an editor has to look up to verify that claim is approximately one).  We won’t even mention that Spec tagged the article “ignorance.”

Anyway, we applaud Gawker on their nice catch. However, stealing our headline from earlier today? Man. Clearly, somebody should be paying us. We’re looking in the general direction of your faux-loft penthouse, Denton.

Bwog is a simple website. We like hawks and free coffee and pictures of babies in snow. But this morning Bwog was thrust into the unflattering spotlight of the New York media thanks to a fact-checking-averse ex-Speccie with a Gawker byline. You can read the post here.

The story has inexplicably gained some momentum, and Bwog was later contacted by Media Bistro regarding our response to Gawker, which you can read here.

We’d chalk it up to a slow news day, but then again Governor Spitzer was just implicated in a prostitution ring, so we’re stumped.

Que sera sera.

It’s like Columbia Day over on Manhattan’s favorite gossip site.

Now we’re elitist for complaining? (oh, and Ivygate‘s got video).

Tasti rival moves in! Bwog misses Soupman.

We’ve been trying to avoid this one, but since so many of you seem to think it’s newsworthy (seriously, stop e-mailing us about it), Matt Sanchez has been up to some other activities besides bashing Columbia on conservative talk shows. Yawn.

With that Tourettically over with, a quick self-absorbed indulgence.

The Bwog started as a mere twinkle in the eye of the staff of The Blue and White. Editors had been kicking around the idea of as website for awhile, but opinions on how we should present its content and tenor varied. When the Bwog finally launched in February 2006, we had QuickSpec, “free food,” lots of random photos and bits of gossip, and a staff dedicated to making the Bwog as silly and witty as possible. Since then, editors have come and gone, layout styles have come and gone and come back, and we’ve gotten a little more serious and news-ical. Our readers and commenters have swelled in number and snark, showing us up constantly with their witty

vitriol. So- reader, thou philobwoger- thanks for “reading more,” and we’ll see you tonight.

BWOG VITALS

Hits per day: A lot

Comments: 17,871

Posts: 3,111 (including events and issue articles–hey, it’s the only way to count)

Images: 2,636

Unique tags: 1,184

Registered commenters: 203

“Free food” tags: 69

“Romance” tags: 35

“Meta” tags: 30

Major fuckups: Several

Daily editors, past and present: 14 or so

Gothamist shout-outs: 24

Gawker links: 8 (we thought it was more, too)

Layout overhauls: 1…and one reversal

Gmail addresses with the word “Bwog”: bwogfan, bwogette, and bwogsex

Number of times mentioned in the Spectator: 8

Number of times we’ve mentioned Spectator (including Quickspec): 124

Number of facebook profiles with Bwog in them: 20

The internets are afire with talk of this weekend’s “Modern Love” column in the NY Times, authored by one Ashley Cross, a reputed student at our very own university. The mysterious Ms. Cross, who could not be located by Facebook, Columbia directory, or truly thorough Googling (unless she happens to own this site), has come under attack for defending her relationship with a Harvard student suspended from the institution after being accused of rape. In her piece, Cross divulges the two are no longer together, her ex-lover’s apparently attractive assertiveness having been suppressed by the re-education programs he was ordered to attend as part of the plea bargain he worked out after criminal charges were filed (which also included house arrest). Still, she is now seen by many as having severely downplayed the allegations against him– and helping to cast doubt on future rape accusations.

A tour of the controversy so far: a thread on the topic at liberal politics blog Daily Kos, where some seem confused by the fact the story has not run as a straightforward news item and others link the social implications of Cross’ piece to the Duke rape case, has run to 340 responses; Gawker questioned Cross’ reasoning…twice, Harvard’s Gadfly ran lots of Crimson documentation on the question of the rape case, and IvyGate wants Cross’ number.

…are set up in the Wien lounge right now.

Presumably, they’ll be sold like last year—meanwhile, get used to the discordant sounds of tuning as your move-in soundtrack.

Also, Gawker has an idea for our out-of-work opinion editor.

A few notable links that have come in over the past couple of days:

1) Andrew Delbanco’s essay in The New Republic, War College.  The chair of American Studies department, Delbanco reflects on his teaching of LitHum and the difficulties of understanding war within the university.

2)  An update on the final exam incident at the J-school.  At least one student has sent  Gawker some scuttlebutt on today’s section of Freedman’s course, which was  mandatory and supposed to weed out the cheaters.

3) Advice from the Dude Decoder on Alloy, an online magazine targeted at 12-16 year old tweens.  A CC sophomore interns for the company, and the dudes here are a bunch of her ’09 friends – Bwog’s favorites are Steve S. (Do you mind if a girl is better than sports?), Max P. (Are girls who dress for class hot or not?) and Jordan K. (What’s the last time you cried?)

4) More from Gawker – they’ve read our Wednesday personals and have nothing nice to say about our Greek friends.  Too bad.

Jeff Sachs, with you and me together, why, we could end world poverty by Christmas!
 

More party photos after the jump.
Read more…