Out on the sundial CURTalented is having a show. There was some music, and apparently Learned was doing stand-up! Text 99000 to vote. And you should vote, even if you know nothing about the contestants. Because it’s your duty.

CURTalented

Diminish'd

CCSC cooked it up. Brian Wagner ate it down.

• The Council talked about granting Barnard swipe access to Columbia dorms. In the past, insurance and other legal matters have barred student government from changing the current system. The Council resolved to investigate these barriers and to see if any additional ones existed. They also plan to discuss whether swipe access should be extended to GS or GS/JTS students.
• Dean of Community Development and Multicultural Affairs Terry Martinez presented plans to create electronic forms for students seeking to reserve space and to grant certain student groups their own credit cards in order to make easier for student groups to access funds and space. Read more…

In case you don’t follow sports (though we prefer the term “athletically apathetic”), the Super Bowl is tomorrow, and Morningside Heights is rising to the occasion. If you know about any other Super Bowl-themed deals, let us know in the comments!

• In other news, CCSC President Learned Foote broke the handle of the door to the SGO last weekend. He claims that it was already broken and fell off in his hand. Bwog prefers to believe that he is secretly the Hulk.

Adam Kuerbitz was there!

CCSC literally kicked the year off with a howl last night when University Senator Kenny Durell initiated the gathering with a blast of his vuvuzela.

Grab your Vuvuzelas, folks! Photo from Wikimedia.

After reviewing representatives on rules of conduct and voting processes, CCSC President Learned Foote introduced CCSCtv, an initiative to post Youtube videos advising students on matters the council is discussing. Foote says the videos will increase transparency, a general goal of the council this year.

And just when you thought it was safe… the meal plan debate!

While the numbers are still unofficial, a recent poll shows significant increases in student dissatisfaction about the new options. Thirty percent of the 150 surveyed consider the new plan to be “terrible.” Council members and visitors alike agreed that the decision to close John Jay Dining Hall on Fridays and Saturdays, making Ferris Booth the only place to spend your fake money (really your parents’ fake money), is massively inconvenient. Even first year students commented on how inconvenient the new policy is compared to last year. President Foote has disregarded those particular comments.

Four students running for Elections Board positions spoke after the meal plans fiasco. Candidates discussed plans to increase participation in council elections and innovations for the process. University Senator Alex Frouman forced candidate Vikas Vavilala CC ’14 to think on his feet when he asked the hapless first-year how he would help Frouman specifically get reelected. Always the politician, Vavilala masterfully avoided the question somehow.

We finished with the promise of free food: come out Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 in the Broadway Room in Lerner and again on Saturday for Passport to Columbia in Roone Arledge Auditorium from 8 to 10. Head to Pourhouse on Thursday night at 11 for Senior Inauguration, which is most definitely not just free drinks.

Last year’s CCSC Exec Board race was, well, non-existent: Sue Yang’s ticket ran unopposed, marking a new low for non-competition for the top posts. For the first time in several years, though, a real race for the Executive Board could be in the offing, as the latest gossip hitting Bwog’s ears/inbox suggests there could be at least three people running for CCSC president. Yes, three! And it might be a competitive three!

Least surprising is 2011 president Learned Foote, who will try to succeed Yang after three years as class president. The two challengers whose names are out among the chattering few are ABC rep and Latino Heritage Month co-chair Isaac Lara and SGB/UC-CANF treasurer Eugenio Suarez. All three candidates’ tickets are supposedly close to being finalized–Bwog’ll have more as the final details fall into place.

- JCD

If CCSC has its way, Columbia’s Housing system will be slightly less oppressive next year. The council passed a resolution supporting gender-neutral housing last night, which will remove the gender restrction on double occupancy rooms. The plan, introduced by VP for Policy Sarah Weiss, 2011 VP Sean Udell, EAAH President Avi Edelman, and GendeRevolution President Miranda Eliot, would apply only to students purposefully picking into a double during General Selection. Neither blind doubles nor the first-year housing process would lose the gender restriction, so, if administrators agree to lift the restriction, Housing will still be spared new parents freaking out about their precious darlings living with someone of the opposite sex.

But three of the first-year dorms do get a little CCSC-ordered experimentation in the form of a new flyering program. The council also passed a resolution authored by CC 2011 President Learned Foote setting up a test program encouraging student groups to use less paper when postering. From after Thanksgiving until the end of the semester, John Jay, Hartley and Wallach’s ground floors will be equipped with new bulletin boards; the boards will have pre-drawn boxes marking out poster space, and groups will be encouraged to use only one poster per board. The policy will be self-enforcing, though – to quote the resolution, “we will attempt to institute a cultural change through voluntary participation.” Rumors of a Kumbaya sing-along to follow are still unconfirmed.

UPDATE: Bwog’s man in SEAS, Sean Zimmermann, reports that ESC passed the resolution as well at their board meeting tonight.

- JCD

On academic freedom: “Their exclusive medium and stylized rhetoric render them inaccessible to a large portion of the public whom they might endeavor to engage and educate.”

We don’t get cable, so we don’t buy TV’s, so we don’t watch their soaps.

A prominent campus figure explains what exactly Conservatism is.

Kenneth is real.

Image via Chrisday71/Flickr

Next week the student councils will be sending a survey out to the student body, to gather opinion on the proposed campus smoking ban. To provide a little background, tonight we present senior editor Adam Kuerbitz’s feature on the ban, from the new issue of the Blue and White.

The cigarette break has changed drastically in the past decade: What was once nothing more than a courtesy to anti-smoking relatives—or even just a good excuse to leave a bad party—has become a mandatory exodus. Since 2003, when New York State banned indoor smoking, a culture of urban smokers has developed under the city’s awnings and streetlights. Smokers at Columbia are no different: Friendships begin around ashtrays outside John Jay and Carman and continue during study breaks and chance meetings outside Butler and Lerner. Last month though, New York City officials led by Michael Bloomberg suggested banning smoking at all public parks and beaches.

Smoking is similarly under fire at Columbia, as the University considers a ban on lighting up inside the Morningside campus. The most recent proposal drafted by the administration prohibits smoking within the gates of the Morningside campus, including the bridge over Amsterdam Avenue and the areas around Wien Hall, the Law School, and the School of International and Public Affairs. But the movement has been tempered by bureaucratic mismanagement, confusion within student government groups, and a dearth of information about whether a smoking ban is even a policy Columbia students want implemented. Read more…

Tomorrow’s opinion section of the Wall Street Journal features a familiar byline: a one Mr. Learned Foote, CC 2011 President.

Foote, speaking as a gay pro-ROTC student, said that he felt conflicted in his eventual decision to back repealing the ROTC ban. “I wanted to fight discrimination, but I also wanted Columbia to restore its relationship with a fundamental American institution,” he said.

Foote argued that if students are unhappy with the current DADT policy, they would be wise to permit the return of ROTC to campus, to influence change “from the bottom up.” He concludes by stating that since Columbia is “a university funded in part by taxpayer dollars, we cannot excuse ourselves from actively engaging with the military.” 

In which Learned Foote, one of those delightfully over-eager first years (and a legit film reviewer), muses on Nicole Kidman’s latest risky venture.

No sarcasm intended whatsoever�Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which weird alien intelligence hits Earth and stealthily creates duplicates of the people we know and love,  should definitely be remade every twenty to thirty years. Humans know something�s off, but we can never figure out exactly what�s wrong until�gasp�we�re walking emotionlessly through the crowd, trying to hide our humanity from the alien majority. 

I had high hopes for The Invasion. The first two (1956 and 1978) are classics, and the 70s version is one of my personal favorites. Oliver Hirschbiegel. who recently helmed the Hitler biopic Downfall, signed on to direct the 2007 version, although he was fired during production. The movie stars A-listers Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. What really whet my enthusiasm, however, was the trailer, which nailed the poetic tension these B-movies need. Using a lulling and mournful Sigur Rós song, the film actually seems to be about The Loss of Humanity, not just gross sticky aliens. 

But no, The Invasion messes up right from the beginning, when Nicole Kidman freaks out under fluorescent lighting. Actually, that part�s rather cool, because you can instantly tell which scene from the original movies is being re-imagined, which is half the fun with the Body Snatchers series. Then, however, the story flashes back to the chronological beginning, and this is how the invasion takes place in 2007: a spaceship falls from the sky, leaving a trail of contagious debris from Texas to Washington DC (so much for the eerily quiet takeover). People scratch themselves with a sharp item from said debris, expose their blood flow to the air, and wake up in the middle of the night with a goo mask. That�s right, original Body Snatcher fans, The Invasion features nothing growing to life in the closet next to your bed. There�s just a virus or bacteria or whatever, as if this were some goddam zombie movie, rather than the highly-appropriate-for-wanton-subtextualizing process of the olden days: seedpods.  Read more…