Bicycles

Two bikes were stolen from the Wien Courtyard last Sunday between 4:11 and 4:15pm. Yesterday Public Safety sent out this alert with images of the thief. Public Safety reminds everyone to keep their bikes locked and call 212-854-4790 if they have any information about the crime.

Precious goods via wikimedia

One unfortunate Wienie was devastated upon returning to the communal fridge—rather than the comforting icy delights of Ben & Jerry’s, this Wiener found nothing at all.

Not sure we want to think about where that ice cream could possibly have been…

GOOD LUCK ON FINALS!

explains all the crazy studies and experiments that Columbian scientists do. Last night, he got to check out all the crazy art that Columbia scientists make when he previewed “>

Bwog’s senior science correspondent Ricky Raudales explains all the crazy studies and experiments that Columbian scientists do. Last night, he got to check out all the crazy art that Columbia scientists make when he previewed Through the Looking Glass, an artistic celebration of science. Through the Looking Glass will run tonight from 5–7pm in Wien Lounge. Free tickets can be picked up at the TIC.

Update: Tickets not strictly required! Anyone can just “wander in” til 7, and there will be free food.

For two hours tonight, Wien Lounge will be transformed into an artistic playhouse for Columbia’s science community. Co-hosted by the Columbia Science Review, Scientists and Engineers for a Better Society, Postcrypt Art Gallery and CU AMSA, Through the Looking Glass offers a glimpse into a world in which science and art momentarily converge. Columbia students and affiliates will provide the artistic backdrop for what will surely be an evening of lively intellectual exchange. Read more…

Location: 411 W. 116^th Street.

• Nearby dorms: East Campus
• Stores and restaurants: HamDel, food cart

Cost:

• $6,718. (Same as McBain, Schapiro and Broadway)

Amenities:

• Noteworthy: You get a sink in your room.
• Bathrooms: Amazing! Normal floor bathrooms.
• AC/Heating: No A/C. Pleeeenty of heat. Heaters also make a lot of noise.
• Kitchen/Lounge: Lounges on 5, 7, and 9 with a flat-screen, chairs and couches. The only big kitchen is downstairs, so cooking isn’t really an option.
• Laundry: Big laundry room near the kitchen. Nothing fancy.
• Computers/Printers: Computers and printers next to the laundry on the lobby mezzanine.
• Gym: Nope.
• Intra-transportation: Two elevators and a central stairwell.
• Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi and ethernet.
• Hardwood/Carpet: Hardwood or linoleum.

Room variety:

• Singles: Tons of John Jay-esque singles. Maybe a little bigger. Around 118 sq. ft.
• Doubles: A variety of single room and walk-through doubles. Pretty random sizes. Some are big! Averaging around 150 sq. ft. for each room.

Numbers:

• The singles go to sophomores.
• The big walk-through doubles go to the top half of sophomores, and all else go to the dregs of the housing lottery.

Bwog recommendation:

• Wien has a bad rap, but it seems to have turned around after renovations. Read a classy defense of this much-maligned dorm!
• The singles are a good option for rising sophomores and juniors who don’t want to go to Schapiro.
• The doubles are hit or miss. If you can score a good one, nab it. But as a rising sophomore, you probably won’t have a better choice..

Read more…

A Bwogger passing by Wien this morning noticed this peculiar new addition to its architecture: the door on the right now has a large crack in its window and is covered in caution tape. One Wiener we spoke to said it wasn’t bad it enough for cold air to seep in, but it is still pretty unsightly. And we note that the last thing residents of Wien probably want to see when walking outside is their door yelling “caution” at them, as if hurtling them into an existential crisis—but we digress. (Although seriously, be cautious there today, kids! It’s like a real blizzard or something.)

Theories abound (snowball? battering ram?), but if you have any concrete info about this, please let us know in the comments.

In other door-related news, the gates at Carman are locked: not sure how creative you can get with those, but calculate this into your walk to class!

Update, 11:32am: Columbia has now issued a Weather-Related Update, noting all the gates that are closed: Earl Hall, Chapel, CEPSR, Carman, and John Jay. The school plans to remain open today and tomorrow. While maintenance looks like they’re doing a great job this morning keeping walkways snow-free, just remember to take a little extra time and stay safe out there!

Update, 1:10pm: The gates at 120th are closed too.

Update, 3:29pm: Caution tape! Even that weird gate by Fayerweather is closed.

Photos by EQ, MMT

You'll want to go for the rooms facing the river in Woodbridge. Photo via Wikimedia

The Core, it has been said, is good for cocktail party chatter and not much else. You’ll be able to schmooze with people about Woolfe and iambic pentameter, yadda yadda. This post supplements the rather specific knowledge Columbia bestows on you (hey, no snark alert: we kind of love the Core) with some genuinely useless knowledge that might be fun when you try to mingle with upperclassmen tonight.

You know that dorms are named after donors or whatever, but we thought we’d dig a little deeper. Bwog did some of our famous shoe-leather reporting and hit up ancestry.com to learn more.

(To our great dismay, Bwog was unable to locate meanings for “Furnald” or, um, “Harmony.” Your guesses are welcomed in the comments.)

Carman: 

Hartley:

Hogan: Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hÓgáin ‘descendant of Ógán’, a personal name from a diminutive of óg ‘young’, also ‘young warrior’. In the south, some bearers claim descent from an uncle of Brian Boru. In northern Ireland a surname of the same form was Anglicized as Hagan.

McBain:

River: Possibly English (see Rivers), or an Americanized form of a like-sounding name in some other language, perhaps German Riffer (see Riffey).

Ruggles: English: patronymic from a pet form of Rudge.

Schapiro: Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant spelling of Shapiro.

Wallach: Jewish (Ashkenazic): from Middle High German walhe, walch: ‘foreigner from a Romance country’, most probably a nickname for someone from Italy; or, German: habitational name from Wallach, a place near Wesel; or, Scottish: variant of Wallace (Scottish and northern Irish: from Anglo-Norman French waleis ‘Welsh’ (from a Germanic cognate of Old English wealh ‘foreign’), hence an ethnic name for a Welsh speaker. In some cases this clearly denoted an incomer to Scotland from Wales or the Welsh Marches, but it may also have denoted a Welsh-speaking Scot: in western Scotland around Glasgow, the Welsh-speaking Strathclyde Britons survived well into the Middle Ages).

Watt: Scottish and English: from an extremely common Middle English personal name, Wat(t), a short form of Walter.

Wien:

Woodbridge: English: habitational name from Woodbridge in Suffolk or Dorset, both named from Old English wudu ‘wood’ + brycg ‘bridge’, i.e. a bridge made of timber or one near a wood.

and if you go to Barnard…

Brooks:

Reid:

Hewitt:

Plimpton: English: habitational name from Plympton in Devon, named in Old English with pl¯me ‘plum tree’ + tun ‘settlement’, ‘farmstead’. It may also be a variant of Plumpton, from any of several places so named, which have the same etymology.

Sulzberger: German: habitational name from a place called Sulzberg.

Wieners, rejoice! Your times of woe are over. As far as our sources can tell, the dreaded Wien-wide raid was not conducted. Res Life’s threatening letters effectively dealt with the case of the mysteriously disappearing furniture, and all kitchen and computer lab cushions and chairs have been returned to their rightful place – though perhaps not all in their original forms. Some self-sacrificing residents seem to have given up their own room chairs for the greater good – or perhaps for a little more room to breathe.

Every play ever produced has been showing this weekend and last. Bwog’s Anish Bramhandkar checks out the latest offering from the CU Players, Dirty Hands.

There’s no way around it. Dirty Hands, Jean-Paul Sartre’s post-war political drama, is very long. At the end of the two-and-a-half hour play, you’ve enjoyed yourself but find yourself wishing that translator Lionel Abel had the foresight to write an abbreviated version.

In a fictional country allied with Nazi Germany, Hugo (Sam Johnson, CC ’11), a young Communist, is reluctantly chosen by the party to assassinate a political leader, Hoederer (Arron Seams, CC ’13), whose actions make him a “class traitor.” Hugo and his wife, Jessica (Jenny Vallancourt, BC ’11), move in with Hoederer so that Hugo may work as his secretary and kill him. As an educated man of ideals and principles, Hugo finds it difficult to follow through, though he is egged on by his wife, who treats the entire affair as if it were merely a role-playing game.

Sam Johnson, Jenny Vallancourt, & Arron Seams

And it was this notion of a game that kept the audience’s attention. Jenny Vallancourt’s lively, uninhibited character enraptured the audience from her first appearance. Unlike her fellow actors, Vallancourt’s character was completely at ease in this dark world. Every phrase she uttered resonated with delicious, conflicting layers of meaning. It was the women of this play that held scenes together. Jenny’s delightful fickleness contrasted so beautifully with Olga’s (Madalena Provo, BC ’12) somber concern and Louis’ (Anya Whelan-Smith, BC ’13) swaggering bravado that scenes without either of them floated, unfocused and disconnected.

Read more…

Photo by ESN

Bwog’s Airborne Contaminants Team has finally confirmed, after days of close analysis, that the sign posted on the Wien bulletin board earlier this week does indeed contain the word “asbestos.” We’re all gonna die!

Well, maybe only those of us who like to hang out anywhere that smells of the good ol’ John Jay garbage chute. Though the sign says that floors 3-9 will be affected, close inspection of another sign (with much smaller print) reveals that construction on floors 3-8 will be limited to trash rooms, where some asbestos-laden pipe insulation will be replaced.

On floor 9, residents might be a little freaked by the plastic covering the carpet from the staircase to the south end of the hallway. The construction crew, which is set to start work tomorrow, will be removing “350 feet of vinyl asbestos tile” from rooms 938 and 940.

You may be coming home to a freshly “inspected” room,  but just think – it could be worse. Instead of stealing your alcohol, Columbia could have stolen your dearly loved asbestos tile floor. Never leave your valuables behind, kids. 

Bwog apologizes profusely for the late arrival of this review.  This afternoon’s  technical difficulties prevented us from posting it earlier. If you can hurry to the Wien Lounge for the final performance of The Winter’s Tale, do so now. It begins at eight—run!

As odd as it may seem there are traces of Othello, Lear and The Tempest all in The Winter’s Tale.  The relatively lesser known Shakespeare play is at once a political play, a domestic drama and a romantic comedy. The combination of these disparate genres could lend itself to satire, perhaps even pastiche, but in KCST’s current production directors Stephanie Denzer and Katie Logan bring impressive candor and earnestness to The Winter’s Tale.  Indeed, its moments of drama are as fraught and powerful as its moments of comedy are natural and entertaining.

Read more…

Tipsters report several cop cars and two ambulances in front of Wien and that two cops have rushed inside the building.

UPDATE 7:57 PM: Apparently a student was “unresponsive” to knocks at the door by Public Safety. Police and emergency services were called to remove the student from his dorm. Apparently calls were made to public safety regarding the welfare of the student, who was described by a ResLife staffer as “unwell.” The student is now at St. Luke’s.

UPDATE 8:06 PM: The student lives on the 9th floor.

UPDATE 9:23 PM: Bwog staffers have been in contact with the student in question throughout the incident and can assure you of his physical well-being. (Also, regarding issues of privacy: the student had requested that Bwog post these status updates.)

Welcome back to our weekly-ish series, “In Defense Of”, in which we get behind the most maligned elements of Columbia life. This time, it’s everyone’s favorite housing bogey.

Wien is the ugly ducking of Columbia housing, synonymous with the worst kind of lottery luck— Rusty pipes! Institutional corridors! Vermin of all kinds!

But the popular mythology has been unfair to Wien Hall. It was not first a mental institution, as the lore would have it, but rather a colonially-inspired McKim Mead and White original designed to evoke a “homey” feel for its exclusively female residents. And beyond its soft, gentle beginnings, Wien has a host of redeeming characteristics that make it a fine place to spend a year of your life.

Most of the rooms are small and somewhat cell-like, to be sure—but no more so than singles in River or Broadway, and most have generously-sized windows that look out onto a serene courtyard, lending them at least the illusion of space. The corner walk-through doubles are light-filled and glorious. And no, there are no floor lounges, but a) who hangs out in floor lounges anyway and b) there’s a cavernous, beautiful space on the first floor if you must leave your room. Read more…

Bwogger Sara Vogel points us in the direction of the Housing website, where there is a list of all summer dorm renovations. “We cannot guarantee projects or timing,” it warns. Anyway, we are excited!

• Three lucky apartments in Woodbridge (right) are getting an environmentally-conscious makeover, complete with Energy Star appliances and lighting and Forest Stewardship Council-certified furniture and flooring. 

• McBain’s getting a new elevator and it — along with the existing elevator — is going to be remodeled after the “sleek” new elevators in Hartley.

• Oh, and remember last summer when the north side of Ruggles was renovated? Kind of? Oh good, because the south side is currently undergoing the same renovations “to replicate the same look and feel as the rest of the building.”
  
  Read more…

Last night, Bwog attended the penultimate performance of the CUplayer’s performance of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.  Read on to see what you missed if you didn’t make it. 

The high ceilings and picture windows of the Wien Lounge perfectly recreated the elegant atmosphere of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.  Although Melanie Silver’s stage design could not have been more appropriate, the choice of Simon’s play in three acts seemed less appropriate for an undergraduate theater production. 

In Act One: A Visitor from Mamaroneck, Jason Resnikoff and Masha Kamenetska play Sam and Karen Nash, a conventionally unhappy middle age couple, who have come to suite 719 for their 24^th wedding anniversary.   Attempting to extract some tenderness out of her husband’s severe retorts, Kamenetska’s bubbly performance is painfully contrasted against Resnikoff’s sedate resignation.  Resnikoff’s furrowed brow and gravelly pitch suit Sam’s perpetually dour mien, but his performance is best when he laces his cruelty with humor. Similarly Kamenetska plays an excellent peppy house-wife, but she adds depth to Karen’s seemingly shallow anxieties when she hisses, “What can I do, Sam? I’m attached to you!”   The fine acting showcased here successfully draws out the conflict buried within Simon’s script: What does one do with life or love when it becomes boring?

Read more…

Hurry! From 6-9 tonight, the Blue Key Society hosts a competitive, campus wide Spelling Bee in the Wien Lounge.  ROAR, LION, ROAR! [Results after the jump!]

For almost every student, Spellcheck is an indispensable tool. Thanks to Bill Gates and his brainchild, Microsoft Word, the once tedious process of editing a paper for spelling errors has been reduced to a series of simple clicks. But then, there are those other students…

Yes, at Columbia,  there is a strange breed of students whose spelling capacities surpass those of that supercilious dancing paper-clip icon. These students spell with natural confidence and verbal intuition. Their vocabularies are so rich that while Spellcheck may flounder over obvious Greek derivatives, like, dialogism and phyllophyllin, Columbia’s superior strain of spellers can easily tackle any word.

Read more…