Men’s tennis wins the Ivies! Congratulations! (gocolumbialions.com)

Alternative teaching programs such as Teach for America may soon be given the ability to grant master’s degrees, eliminating the need for formal institutions like Teacher’s College. (NYT)

Bryant Park has the cleanest public restroom in the city. (Gothamist)

New York Senator Chuck Schumer gets five airlines to promise to not charge customers for carry-on bags. (NYT)

The appeals case against last December’s eminent domain ruling gets a date, June 1. (Spec)

Update: Varsity Show tickets are now available online.

Image via Flickr

Photo credit: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to win the lottery? Bwog’s most stoic of Housing Correspondents, David Hu, brings you the gloats and surprisingly humble (for some) reactions of the recipients of this year’s best housing lottery numbers.

Bwog: What’s it like all the way at the top? Have people been congratulating you?

Winner 1: Yes, people have been congratulating me, but on the whole, people tend to be more jealous. They get this sad look like fate dealt them an unfair hand.

Winner 2: People usually say its lonely at the top, but i’ve had ladies all over me so far.

Winner 3: I’m honestly stunned, and grateful for this blessing. I posted the news on facebook, and people have been congratulatory there. I know that getting a high number is just as likely as getting a low number, and I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve this. But it is still exciting to be given this opportunity to get the housing we wanted.

Bw: Would you generally consider yourself a lucky person?

W1: I am definitely a lucky person. I think that if you generally have a positive outlook on life that you will reap positive benefits. And even if something negative happens to you, if you have a positive outlook, you can put a positive spin on anything negative.

W2: Have you seen you seen what I look like?

W3: I would say that I have been blessed before. I mean, I’m here at Columbia, aren’t I? I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, a very supportive group of family and friends, and a natural aptitude for my chosen field (medicine). All of these are things outside of my control to a large extent, and the circumstances could have been very different. I just try to focus on the things I can control and work from there.

EC Townhouses and more after the jump! Read more…

Columbians snagged some Oscars last night! Adjunct film professor Geoffrey Fletcher won Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on “Precious,” and Kathryn Bigelow, SOA ’81, became the first female to ever win an Academy Award for Best Director, and her movie “The Hurt Locker” took home 6 awards in total, including Best Picture. (NBCNY & NYP)

Governor Paterson pledges to keep governing until the end of the year. (NYT)

This time, Ahmadenijad is calling 9/11 a a “big fabrication.” (Gothamist)

The MTA is trying out experimental clocks that will say when the next subway train is due. (NYT)

Obama inspired first-time voters, but not enough. (NYDaily)

Also, please be aware that Bwog has recently updated its comment policy and encourages everyone to familiarize themselves with it.

Congratulations to Pittsburgh locals, your Steelers have won the Super Bowl! Two additional winners tonight: MVP Santonio Holmes (below), and of course halftime act Bruce Springsteen, who hilariously assaulted a camera with the inseam of his pants. Bravissimo, all!

Photo via NYT

After PrezBo’s announcement about the state of the endowment, Bwog decided to see how Columbia’s finances are doing relative to other Ivies. The results offer great opportunities for schadenfreude since Columbia’s predicted loss may be the lowest in the League.

As posted last night, Columbia has far out-performed Harvard and Yale, which lost 22 percent and 25 percent respectively, as well as Princeton, which also has an expected loss of 25 percent. Worse off is Cornell with a whopping 27 percent loss that is leading to major budget cuts and tuition increases.

UPenn has only reported for the 2008 fiscal year, which ended last June. Their loss up until June was 6.1 percent, the largest drop among the nation’s top twenty university endowments for that fiscal year. Its current numbers are unknown. See more losses after the jump.

Read more…

Wondering what you have to do to be an early member of Phi Beta Kappa? Here’s what Bwog found out about our early nominees:

• Rajiv Agarwal, Philosophy, co-president of Columbia Global Justice
• Rudi Batzell, History, Undergraduate History Council chair, editor/reviver of the Undergraduate History Journal, former editor of Lucha’s El Participante, and anti-ROTC panelist.
• Mikaela Bradbury, Anthropology, observer of street vendors.
  
• Jennifer Brown, English
• Cindy Cai, Biology/Music, member of Kappa Phi Lambda, piano player
  
• Willy Chang, Physics, researcher of things Bwog doesn’t understand, born in 1984 (Bwog loves an older man…)
• Emily Clader, Mathematics/Philosophy, Bach Society alto
• Yasemin Erboy, Environmental Sciences, EcoRep, part of the Lamont-Doherty Observatory
  
  
• Amari Hammonds, Sociology, former Bwog and Spec writer, Vagina Monologuer, reality TV star. Read more…

Oh sure, you may be a fan of Cribs or Pimp My Ride, but nothing really screams “pimp me” like a bookcart. At least, so say the runners of Unshelved.com, who have just concluded their third annual “Pimp My Bookcart” competition. Continuing our university’s fine winning streak, this year’s first place prize went to the employees of Butler’s Rare Books and Manuscript Library, who turned their bookcart into a hot dog cart. We’re hungry just looking at it, and so were the judges: “We rarely agree on anything as easily as we did in giving this cart first prize. Succeeds in all of our judging categories!”

You can see a rearview of the “hot book cart” here, and you can also see the ingenious designs it beat.

The Columbia men’s basketball team got its season off to a thrilling start, as they gutted out a 65-62 win over Fordham. Fordham led by as much as eight during the second half, but the Lions held them to 25% shooting to gain the victory. Columbia dominated on the boards in particular, with a 52-27 advantage over Fordham. Senior center Jason Miller posted a double-double, with 13 points and 15 rebounds, junior guard Patrick Foley added 18 points and 5 rebounds, and sophomore forward Asenso Ampim came off the bench to add 15 points and 14 rebounds. It was Columbia’s first season-opening win in three years. The Lions play at Seton Hall in Newark, Sunday at 1 p.m. (game on WKCR).

In other winter sports news, the women’s basketball team opened with a loss, 79-57 to Oakland (Mich.). The men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams both won their season (and conference) openers, with the women squeaking by Yale 155-145, and the men dominating Penn 170-128.

Celebratory Bwog banner — and change and hope, etc. — is on its way! See you in class tomorrow.

More exciting news headlines announcing this very thing after the jump! Plus, stick around for Anish Bramhandkar’s Party Photos from celebrations out on Broadway.

Read more…

Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced this year’s recipients of its famed Genius Grants, and one winner is the Mailman School’s own Wafaa El-Sadr.

El-Sadr is a clinical researcher, specializing in such noble pursuits as studying alternative treatments for patients who can’t tolerate certain therapies and developing gels that inhibit HIV transmission. She is also chief of infectious diseases at the Harlem Hospital Center. 

El-Sadr receives $500,000, no strings attached, meaning the money is not necessarily designated for any specific project. Oh, and bragging rights, she’s won those too. 

Bwog apologizes for the delay in Barnard class day coverage.  Our camera wasn’t working and we couldn’t have you just take us at our word.

On Tuesday morning, as a faint drizzle turned into a steady downpour, 597 “awe-inspiring women” graduated from Barnard, along with their president.  Let me the spare you the burden of reading the rest of this post: Barnard class day won this year.

Although the college had boasted of a star-studded class day with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Billie Jean King (tennis star), David Remnick (New Yorker editor-in-chief) and Thelma Adair (Head Start founder), only hizzoner addressed the graduating class.  The rest received Barnard medals of distinction.  New Yorkers are accustomed to seeing Bloomberg on TV for the occasional press conference, and he usually appears somewhat lovable, schlumpy and uninspired.  But during his class day speech he was practically animated—funny at all the right times, legitimately inspiring at others—and reminded everyone why he’s Joel Klein’s boss and not vice versa.

He began by mocking JShap’s poodle, Nora, who he called a “one poodle canine security patrol” and questioned the dog’s legal right to parade about an otherwise dog-free campus.  He then addressed the subject of the wall around the Vag’s construction zone with the tone of an amused civil servant.  “You’ve all spent your senior year learning to be graffiti artists,” he said. “May I remind you—your tagging days are done.  What happens at Barnard stays at Barnard.”  Read more…

Last week’s haiku contest proved a jolly good time, so we thought we’d share with you which haikus H-dad liked the best. We’d been corresponding with him via gmail up until yesterday, when we received this report. Is H-dad dead? Prove that he is/isn’t by sending pictures and sightings to hawkmadinejad@gmail.com

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Read more…

Elizabeth Rice, SEAS ’11, is the champion.

Learned Foote and Tom Amegadzie of Class Action! The ticket triumphed with 42% of 483 votes. Sean Udell (Representative – iColumbia) was the only candidate to break into Class Action’s slate, garnering the most votes of the representatives with 168 (probably because of the awesome carnival that he proposed in the debates). The only Class Action candidate not to be elected was Noah Baron.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that despite RealColumbia’s strong showing on Facebook, they seemed unable to turn out their base. Vesal Yazdi and Tania Harsono came in second, 17 points behind Foote and Amegadzie.

The turnout overall was pretty low (even for American standards) and with under 50% turnout, Class Action’s “mandate” is weakened substantially.

In other election news, an anonymous tipster reported the tearing down of a poster and remnants of torn posters in an eleventh hour campaign scuffle between Columbia’s 711 Open 24/7 and Fight for Your Right.

Read more and you can find the complete results as well as the answers to iColumbia’s Sudoku.

Read more…

Columbia won (gasp!) the men’s water polo championship, beating West Point 6 to 5. The team goes to nationals in Miami, Ohio in two weeks.

Now if only Bwog could remember where it put its school spirit…