Last night, Republican voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots for Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate to oppose Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election; a collective Democratic head-scratching session ensued. Meanwhile, a different crop of votes were cast a little farther down the coast. But these ones—meant to decide a name for the new hawk nesting in Washington Square Park—turned out to be a lot less legitimate. NYT’s City Room reports:

“In case the obvious needed to be said, we asked you to vote only once, please. We used a simple ballot that required no identifying information, because we trusted you.

Well.

Voting was fairly evenly split between the two names in the early going, though after 1,000 votes, Rosie was ahead 638 to 362.

Then Noelle began to, uh, gather momentum.

At one point on Tuesday afternoon, Noelle received 365 votes in a row.

We watched them come in. Every three or four seconds, as if someone were going click, click, click.”

After consulting with Professor Kenneth Katkin of Northern Kentucky University who confirmed that there was most likely ballot stuffing, the NYT has determined that a revote is the best course of action—maybe they’ll learn to take a leaf out of our (very-lengthy, hawk-naming-specific) book. Regardless, we can only hope that NYT readers will get it right this time, or else Romney will have to fire them.

Okay, that Real World exists too—but more importantly there’s that one plagued by tons of problems as well as a bunch of conceited head-cases on all sides of issues vying to be in charge of the whole mess. Maybe that describes both real worlds, come to think of it. Anyway, the 2012 election cycle took off with a bang in Iowa the other day, and if you’re anything like us, you’re a little out of the loop as you catch up on the sleep you missed during finals. We sympathize; the winter break coma is a real and medically diagnosable condition. So for those of you who’ve refused to crack open a newspaper (or switch on an iPad), here’s the quick and dirty for the 2012 Republican Iowa Caucuses.

Best In Show

Mitt Romney won the contest by a mere eight votes (one of the closest in modern political history), Rick Santorum behind him in second place, Ron Paul in third, and Newt Gingrich after him.

The name of the game for much of the GOP primary battle in 2011 was, “who can be the best not-Mitt Romney.” First it was Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and finally (?) Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both appear to have received attention and poll bumps without really doing much of anything, besides not being wealthy Mormon financiers. This is, of course, national, but the real battle takes place in early primary voting states, like Iowa and New Hampshire.

After the 24/7 2011 media shit storm surrounding the GOP primary, voting mercifully began on Tuesday for the 2012 Republican Iowa Caucus. This is a contest for around 1% (25 delegates) of the total national delegates in the Republican convention, in a state with only 614,913 registered Republican voters, and with voter turnout of only 19.9% to boot. There are approximately double the number of people in Harlem (210,000) as voted on Tuesday, but don’t expect Anderson to show up at polling stations along 125th this November.

 chart via Keith Humphreys

At long last, Bwog brings you the feature you’ve all been waiting for (but like, really—we’ve kept you waiting since 2009): a close look at Columbia’s best and brightest PowerSuites. In its inaugural installment, PowerSuites visits the den of four very influential juniors, through the lens of Examiner Extraordinare Alex Eynon. Join Alex as she rifles through their lair, and asks some nosy questions along the way. And remember, as Abraham Lincoln once (kind of) said, “Nearly all [wo]men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a [wo]man’s character, give him [her] power.”

It's (not at all) rumored that each suitemate has this very crest tattooed on an undisclosed body part.

The ascent to Ruggles five—specifically to suite 520-523—is a steep one, and not just because of the dawdling elevator. Rather, it’s the lofty pursuits of the quartet of ladies that comprise said suite; together, they are one mean political machine, and are naught but a force to be reckoned with.

Janine Balekdjian, Rebecca Ehrhardt, Sarah Gitlin, and Debattama Sen (whose suite crest is a hybrid between the CU Dems Logo and an Occupy Wall Street Banner, I’m told) manage their time impressively, and are somehow able to juggle an ardent opposition of the patriarchy and the one percent with a penchant for coffee runs, parties, and plenty of late night conversation. Their greatest collective cause, they say, is the Feminist Mystique Magazine, a newly formed group for which most of the suite sits on the board.

The young women met via some hodgepodge of UWriting interactions and CU Dems meetings (three of the roommates are CU Dems members), and have since managed to coordinate their talents, interests, and styles of décor into one suite. They claim to all share housekeeping duties and cooking, and Bwog was asked to NOT refer to Janine as “the one who cleans,” so we won’t do that (nor will we refer to her as “the one with the dorkiest PJs”). Suite hobbies include coordinating events and registering voters at Occupy Wall Street—it comes as no surprise that the young women claim Rosie the Riveter as an unofficial mascot.

Read on for Halloween plans, and photos of the interior

"Things do not change; we change." -This Monkey/Thoreau

• Lindsay Lohan Representative Charles Rangel gatecrashed Rick Perry’s NYC fundraiser. Rangel’s opinion? “He’s tall and he’s from Texas.” [Politico]
• The Times has plenty to say about the much maligned Ahmadinejad dinner. They even talked to Hornsby! [Opinionator]
• People are wondering why Barnard fell so far in the USNWR rankings. [Spec]
• NYC might be getting a casino soon! (Yeah, we’re wondering if they’ll take Flex, too.) [Gothamist]
• It’s the end of an era: Single-space parking meters have been purged from NY. So, like, will they end up in the Divine Comedy? [NYT]
• A couple of New Yorkers are among the new class of geniuses. No 2015, we aren’t JUST talking about you. [WSJ]
• Brooklyn bikers hit more people than we thought… Somehow, the tight jeans are probably to blame. Or something. [Gothamist]

Pensive clamor-er via Wikimedia Commons.

It's not Halloween yet, you say? Then how do you explain this grab bag of political updates...?

• Obama’s new (angsty!) video encourages us to “get the facts.” We’re feeling a back-of-the-envelope calculation coming on… [NYMag]
• The New York Post and Fox have dusted off their anti-Columbia headlines from 2007, after learning that the Columbia International Relations Council and Association was invited to dinner with the Iranian president. No word yet on whether the invitation was reciprocated with a John Jay guest pass. [NYPost, Fox]
• Republican Rep. Bob Turner is the new representative for New York’s 9th Congressional district (in Queens), last represented by Democrat Anthony Weiner. Meanwhile, former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren announced she’ll run for Senate in Massachusetts. [NYT, Atlantic Wire]
• Even Weezy (<3) is weighing in on the conversation, with comments about Republican primary race. [Vibe]

Clever costume ideas via Wikimedia Commons.

the exec board.”>

your eager exec board

This year, Bwog’s keepin’ the administration and student leaders on their toes. CCSC gets a boatload of your money, and we think it’s important to keep tabs on their progress. But before we get into the nitty gritty, magical muckraker and philosopher queen, Sarah Ngu, introduces the exec board.

What is it?

Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) is an umbrella of student councils from every class, with the “executive board” on the top which focuses on policies, funding and programming for the entire Columbia College. They collaborate with the other undergraduate schools, like CE SEAS, BC and GS. There are four committees, which are open to anyone who is willing but are mainly staffed by members of student council: communications, finance, campus life and policy.

The policy committee is the “meat” of CCSC in that they advocate for changes in policies and work with administration to ensure the implementation of those policies. It’s helpful to think of Council as the official voice of the students to the administration. Past policies include easing of traffic at mail services, gender neutral housing, Good Samaritan policy, financial aid policy reform, etc.

CCSC’s purview is limited to undergraduates, which means it cannot handle issues that are important to undergraduates but that also affect graduates, such as moving the academic calendar so it doesn’t end right before Christmas or publicizing course evaluations — those issues are bumped up to the Senate, a representative body of all the schools in the University which traditionally operates quite slowly.

Who’s in the executive board?

President: Aki Terasaki — he is generally known for negotiating compromises and his work ethic. Fun fact: he appeared in Jeopardy as a kid. He’s been in council since his freshman year and also has headed up Columbia Japan Society. It remains to be seen if he will bring the revolutionary vision that some hope this year’s president will have.

VP of Policy: Ryan Cho — a member of ROTC, he seems fairly level-headed and confident in steering the direction of the committee. The changes he plans to bring about in how the policy committee operates (more on this soon!) are a long time coming. Plus, he is an ABC rep, an RA in Hogan, and a brother at Lambda Phi Epsilon. Read more…

The new CCSC is looking to freshen up its image. We recommend Febreeze.

CCSC met formally for the first time of the year. Seasoned student council buff Brian Wagner and our newest addition to the bureau, Maren Killackey, CC’15, were there to smile and wave politely.

• The new student council, led by President Aki Terasaki, introduced themselves to each other and onlookers. To get to know each other “slightly better,” they played a game of bingo using random facts about each other as squares. Amidst jealous cries from the excluded unelected first-year candidates, a winner emerged, and it was time to get down to business. Well, after cookies.
• The first issue faced by the council regarded funding for student groups. VP—Funding Kevin Zhai gave a presentation on how best to deal with recurring co-sponsorships for student groups. Previously, some governing boards had been caught holding onto a bit of the cash for themselves, which made CCSC a little uneasy. To remedy this, the Council presented three options: not granting funds at all, giving the funds to the governing boards with increased oversight, or giving the money to the joint cosponsorship committee to handle. A formal resolution will be drafted in the coming weeks, but a quick straw poll showed that council members favored option 2.
• Aki then went on to discuss some of the new strategies and goals of this year’s council. The main focus, as promised during elections, is increasing communication and outreach with the general student body. This includes a fancy new website, more advertising and branding, student polls, and new office hours in which any CC student can come and voice concerns directly to members of the E-Board. They also promised to look out for the College’s best interests in the wake of Moodygate. After a brief rehashing of council rules, the meeting ended in record time.

Artsy air sanitation from Flickr/rayewing

Last night, the J-school hosted a panel organized by the British literary journal Granta, whose latest issue is 9/11-themed, on the rise of Islamophobia. The audience was full of Journalism students tweeting about the panel. The speakers on the panel included star Columbia sociology professor (and former president of Students for a Democratic Society) Todd Gitlin, lawyer/journalist Alia Malek, and law professor/poet Lawrence Joseph. Peter Sterne reports from Bwog’s J-school bureau.

An example of improving US-Islam relations.

We all know Islamophobia exists, but where does it come from, and how can it be stopped? That was the question discussed at last night’s panel on Islamophobia. There was disagreement on whether the American government or American people were more Islamophobic, but the panelists pretty much agreed that Islamophobia was a result of xenophobia, not anything relating to the religion of Islam itself. It was an enjoyable panel, even if none of the panelists’ arguments were especially compelling.

Alia, a lawyer who once worked for the Justice Department, seemed to have the clearest idea of how American Islamophobia grew from individual hate crimes against people who seemed Arab or Muslim (though the first hate crime victim was actually a Sikh) into institutionalized discrimination when the government began treating Muslims differently as part of the War on Terror. “Different legal processes and types of incarceration for Arabs and Muslims,” she said, “send a signal to society that [Muslims] are ‘sub-American.’” Incidentally, Alia just wrote a book (which Bwog was convinced enough to purchase after the discussion) about the experiences of Muslim and Arab-Americans after 9/11.

Read more…

Local politics might not be your chief concern as you prepare to uproot your entire universe, move across the country, and attempt to make friends with a few thousand other over-achieving geeks, but there are plenty of reasons to care about your new home! With countless unions, special interests, businesses, and millions of people, New York City is like a political pressure cooker. It’s impossible to summarize that whole mess in a short blog post, but here is some basic information about our local, state-wide, and federal representation.

Once upon a time..

Community Board: Morningside Heights is member of Manhattan Community Board #9. Manhattanville, the northern site of Columbia’s mammoth expansion, is also a part of CB9M. Most of the Mville expansion (don’t worry, there will be a primer for that too!) battle has been fought in courtrooms, and it’s likely that nothing exciting will happen with the community board in the near future.

City Council: Our City Council member is Inez Dickens. She is well-connected and has served as the majority whip. Some speculate that once her second term expires (2013) Dickens might try for Charlie Rangel’s House seat (see U.S. House below).

State Assembly: Our New York State Assembly member is Daniel O’Donnell. Elected in 2002, O’Donnell was the first openly gay member of the State Assembly. He was actually the author of the recent (and finally successful) Marriage Equality Act. A member of the “bear” community, he represents district 69.

State Senate: Bill Perkins is our New York State Senator (30th district). He went to Brown.

U.S. House: Charlie Rangel is our representative in New York’s 15th Congressional District. He’s the third longest serving member in the House, and during the last 30 years he’s been one of the most relevant figures in congressional politics (looong Wikipedia page). Recently, Rangel has been caught up in multiple ethics scandals. Despite that, he still won re-election with 80% of the vote. Shortly after the election, Rangel was censured by the full House. A note about NY-15: it’s tied with NY-16 for being the most Democratic congressional district in the entire country. Obama carried it with 93% of the vote.

But really, when it comes to NYC politics, Mayor Michael Bloomberg runs the show. While the official reach of his powers may be officially limited, this is a guy that managed to change election laws so that he could chill in town hall for a few more years. That, and there is always a rumor circulating about a self-financed run for the White House.

Fat Cat via Wikipedia.

A milestone for civil rights: gay marriage is now legal in New York! You can now claim to attend school in a “progressive” state.

Last Friday night around 10 pm, news started leaking out: two Republican state Senators had just announced they would support the gay marriage bill in the NY State Senate. A few minutes after this announcement, the bill was brought to the floor of the Senate, where it was approved 33-29, ending a long behind-the-scenes political process. Almost immediately, Governor Andrew Cuomo, who turned passage of a gay marriage bill into a personal crusade, signed the bill into law.

A touching tale: during a recess, Senator Huntley, a Democrat who had just come out in support in the bill, hugged Daniel O’Donnell, an openly gay Assemblyman who sponsored the legislation. According to the New York Times front page story, O’Donnell teared up and announced, holding his partner’s hand, “we’re going to invite you to our wedding.”

Celebrations erupted throughout the city—especially outside Stonewall, where the gay rights movement started almost 42 years ago—and the Empire State Building lit up with rainbow lights. Proposals ensued! And the final passage of the bill came conveniently right before New York City Pride Weekend.

New York is the largest state to allow gay marriage, and over 10% of Americans can now legally marry whomever they want. More states are likely to follow, as a recent poll shows that a majority of Americans support gay marriage. This is sure to put pressure on President Obama, who came to the city on Thursday and told a crowd of gay-rights supporters that he supported equality for all, but he still failed to endorse wholeheartedly same-sex marriage. (“In civil rights terms, it is 1965,” writes Remnick in the New Yorker, “but Obama is still acting like F.D.R. And that is no credit to a worthy and ambitious presidency). Even so, Obama has arguably been more sympathetic to gay rights than any other American president. But is history still the best “yardstick”?

Update, 6/29 6:30 pm: One commenter points out that some states have already passed constitutional amendments prohibiting gays from marrying. Slate has an excellent piece on how the voters of 2004 are preventing the voters of 2011 from allowing marriage equality. We’re in the midst of a demographic and cultural transition!

Last Tuesday, Bwogger Alex Jones hopped over to the law school to hear Michael Steele speak at an event hosted by the Columbia Political Union.

As the former chairman of the GOP, Michael Steele has a past defined by partisanship. But the message he conveyed on Tuesday was one of post-partisan idealism.

The speech was odd in that it had no stated goal. CPU didn’t bill the event as “Michael Steele on the 2010 Election,” or “Michael Steele, Redefining Conservativism.” It was just… a talk, perhaps more suitable as a commencement address than as a talk to 125 interested poli sci majors.

Steele’s remarks can be reduced to three basic arguments:

• Embrace interesting times: “Times that aren’t structured, times that are a little more chaotic,” [a CPU banner falls down from the chalkboard behind him] “like that!” Our times are interesting times, according to Steele. The world is changing and not many people know exactly how. It is unclear if he meant simply that we shouldn’t be afraid of turbulent change, or that we should strive to create our own noise and confusion. Perhaps his argument is that only through times of uncertainty, real change is achieved.
• Reject political labels: Steele made it clear that he abhors political labels: liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat. That’s a strange position considering that it was explicitly his job to development a consistent and convincing Republican brand over the last two years.
• Find and adhere to principles: Steele described the development of his principles: “My daddy was an alcoholic, he beat my mama. That’s my story. They shaped my philosophy, they shaped my politics.” Steele’s principles are undoubtably conservative, but shaped by his experience in the poor inner-city of Washington, D.C.

Read more after the jump!

Slacktivism on McBain 8

Turath, the Columbia Arab Students Organization, may have spoken too soon. On Thursday, members announced a “Columbia Stands with Egypt” protest against the injustice of the Mubarak regime. But after Mubark’s departure on Friday, what was once a protest is now a party. Head down to Low Plaza at 2 p.m for snacks, sharbat, music, and lotsa discussion.

Matt McMillan, CC ’03, in front of a political campaign org chart

Last night Peter Sterne learned pretty much anything you would want to know and probably a lot of stuff you wouldn’t about how to have a career in politics.

Last night, Matt McMillan, CC ’03 and internet consultant for Democratic political campaigns, showed a group of about 40 undergraduates in Hamilton 602 what it really takes to break into politics. Although good-humored, he did not mince words. McMillan freely admitted he had an overly idealistic view of political campaigns as an undergraduate and believed politics to be “more of a meritocracy than it actually is.” Now, he sought to show students of his alma mater exactly what they had to do to actually succeed in becoming political consultants.

McMillan’s own experience is telling. After graduating from Columbia, he quickly discovered that an Ivy League education didn’t help as much as he thought, since political campaigns valued experience over education. Fortunately, he happened to have the right skills at the right time. “In ’04,” he explained, “when internet consultants were still being laughed out of the room,” he was able to create a website for a dark-horse candidate that was much more successful than anyone anticipated. Soon, he received calls from more important political campaigns in the United States, and was even given the opportunity to work for some international campaigns. Unfortunately for those who aren’t already successful internet political consultants, his meteoric rise to prominence would be difficult to repeat these days. Since campaigns now realize the importance of web presence, they hire internet consultants the same way they hire political consultants: a combination of friendly referrals and relationships that McMillan derisively terms “political nepotism.”

Read more…

Our new Governor

Give me Four Loko, or give me death! Or at least don’t ban it. (Spec)

In case you haven’t heard yet, we have a Five Guys coming! Their burgers taste good. (DNAinfo)

Peek into the lives of Jake and Marty La Salle CC ’07 under the big-top, on a new PBS series. (NYT)

Democracy happened yesterday, and Cuomo beat Paladino. (NYT)

CB12 doesn’t have a decision on Columbia’s Inwood developments. (Manhattan Times)

Image via Wikimedia

O hai Charlie

Breaking news if you’re into this kind of thing:

New York’s 27th congressional district will likely find earmarks a lot harder to come by soon, as a House investigative committee has found that longtime congressman and lord of Harlem Charles Rangel “violated a range of ethics rules.”

The eighteen-month-long investigation was investigating whether the former Ways and Means chairman “improperly rented four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a price well below market value” and “improperly used his office to provide legislative favors for an oil-drilling company that pledged a $1 million donation for an academic center named for Mr. Rangel and improperly failed to report taxable income received from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.”

And if precedent’s any guide, Rangel won’t have a happy ending: the last congressman to face equivalent violations was expelled from the House. On the sort-of-bright-side, Rangel still looks better than his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, who not only had his own corruption scandal, but was also a homophobe. A step up!