Break out of your pre-finals slump and head over to Hewitt Dining Hall for WBAR’s Winter Formal for free unidentified giveaways, in addition to the free music and fun. Featured artists include Amen Dunes, Sweet Bulbs, Sleepies, Mr. Dream, and Midnight Magic. The Facebook event promises lots of dancing, so for all those tired of grinding in Campo, go get your grind on in Hewitt. The Village Voice seems to care about this event, and so should you! Doors open at 8.

But if dance parties aren’t your thing, check out a musical showcase hosted by Youth for Debate in Wien Lounge at 9 PM. Cupcakes, cookies, cider, and hot chocolate will be served in abundance!

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The cover story in this week’s Village Voice is an interview with Columbia’s Klaus Jacob, geophysicist and adjunct professor of international and public affairs. 

Jacob is a big time disaster expert: in the 90s, his research on earthquakes convinced the city to change its building codes. And when he worked for President Clinton, he was the first to lead a national study on the effects of global warming.

Nonetheless, Jacob has been trying to warn Columbia for four years about the possible dangers inherent to the University’s blueprint for Manhattanville. Columbia, as it tends to do from time to time, is not listening.

For one, he believes that the new campus is located right in the heart of a flood zone (Think about the valley where the 1 train comes above ground. In fact, there’s Jacob over there to the right, standing in this very valley.) And thanks to global warming, the possibility of flooding due to hurricanes is only going to steadily increase over the years.

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Good morning, Columbia, hope you’re all set for some more Madonna Constantine updates. Oh good, let’s get started. First, according to last night’s AP report, Constantine has decided to appeal her termination, claiming that she was fired because of the noose incident and that the plagiarism charges are “baseless.” 

And speaking of nooses, it’s finally time for the Village Voice‘s sequel to its exciting series on “Knotty Noose Problems”. When we last left off, a bunch of people accussed Madonna Constantine of plagiarism, so she made one of them organize some stuff in her office over winter break, which was mean. Meanwhile, Darlene Bailey, VP of Academic Affairs at TC, launched counter-investigations against a women who wanted to look into the allegations against Constantine.

So now that we’re all caught up, on to this week’s article, and we’ve once again distilled everything you need to know in reader-friendly bulletpoints.

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Today, the Village Voice ran the first part of a billion part article that’s something like the definitive account of everything that happened surrounding Madonna Constantine. You might recall October’s noose-hanging incident and the whole multiple charges of plagiarism thing, for example. Anyway, we’ve distilled everything that’s new and important in the article in easy-to-digest bullet points below (Spoiler Alert: She plagiarized.) 

• “As many as 10 people complained about Constantine over several years, and these sources say the college did little to intervene.”
• “Constantine attempted to silence her accusers in the spring of 2007 by sending them letters threatening to sue unless they dropped their claims. She used college stationery and the college mailing account.”
• “Despite [former student Karen Cort's] accusation [of plagiarism], Constantine never pursued official sanctions. Instead, as punishment, she ordered Cort to cancel plans for the January break and come to her office. Constantine had her mark each book in her office with the professor’s stamp. The shelves in the office held hundreds of books. The job took several days to complete.”
• This particular plagiarized text was a second-year research paper written by the aforementioned former student, Karen Cort. Constantine told Cort to list Constantine’s name as the primary researcher, despite Cort actually writing and researching the paper. For whatever reason, Cort agreed.
  
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A tipster alumnus points out this article in the Village Voice from last week in which local writers name their favorite writer-y watering holes. The Sabotage Cafe author Joshua Furst selected Columbia standby 1020, and explained: “Not that many bars in the city where you can talk about Foucault for two hours.”

Of course, while actual conversation at 1020 is less Foucault and more fou-cking, Bwog offers accolades to the bar for making the cut.

- JNW

The Village Voice has just released its list of the Ten Worst Landlords in New York City, and man oh man, are these guys jerks. The landlords profiled in this article evict tenants unfairly, cut off electricity without warning, and change the locks on 70 year-old diabetics while they are stuck in the hospital. One of the worst, however, just might be Mark Hersh, whose Colonial House Hotel, which is down to one tenant and is not actually a hotel, is located in our very own Morningside Heights. One of the main reasons that the building, on 112th between Broadway and Riverside, has a hard time attracting tenants? It is reported that Good Sir Hersh has a nasty little penchant for vigilante justice, harbors a deep affection for his baseball bat, and enjoys a good bash.

Read the full story on Hersh and see the list of all ten nightmare landlords on the Village Voice’s website. The details are enough to make you want to move to Manhattanville.