It’s New Year’s Eve! But before you go popping the champagne corks, strap in for an announcement and a look back at the last semester of the Aughties/Naughties/Zeroes. First, starting tomorrow, former daily editor and current magazine senior editor Eliza Shapiro, CC ’12, will be taking over as Bwog editor; joining her as deputy will be three-semester (!) daily editing veteran Anish Bramhandkar, SEAS ’11. Once again, it’s been a privilege to edit this blog for y’all this past year – thank you.

– JCD

The year began with improvements: JJ’s got WiFi; the JSchool got shiny. Then 2013 took the 2 train too far uptown and taught us all a thing or two about forced friendship.

After the fresh-people were tucked in to their tiny Carman beds, the hot-button issue of the Fall semester exploded. As the leaves turned, Marky Mark stopped by Happy Hour at 1020. Plus: famous people hung out in Low; PrezBo looked funny. Westboro protested at JTS. The Columbia Bartending Agency re-opened and the War on Fun was pretty much unaffected.

During midterm season, the hot dog saga continued. Everyone went swine-crazy. The Community Food & Juice Inferno ’09 finally stopped raging, 6 months later, and we all guzzled $5 hot chocolates in celebration.

Before Thanksgiving, we saw stars outside Butler. Shock and awe: Columbia beat Princeton, a year after 08 Homecoming. Raphael Graybill made us proud and jealous. And in November’s episode of Damn the Man, Postcrypt (Art Gallery) got evicted, and the concrete jungle where dreams are maaaade of denied us a meteor shower.

Winter started creeping in, and gender-neutral dorms put everyone in a tizzy. Bob Saget performed in Miller and made us all miss Full House. Morningside Books basically re-opened with a new name: Book Culture! Hawkma made the semester’s first appearance, bloodying up a pigeon near John Jay. Lerner celebrated its double-digit birthday, but no one celebrated with it. Barnard’s mandatory meal plan announcement didnt go over so well.

Despite all this we were thankful.

The first week of December, the not-so-arguably most legitimate news story of the entire semester broke: Columbia was denied eminent domain for the Manhattanville expansion project. Finals, running right up to the 23rd, sucked even worse than usual, and Fall 2010’s schedule probably won’t be much better. And if the administration has its way, there might not be a Postcrypt Coffehouse to lighten the mood.

The semester ended with a heartwarming scene of widespread icy violence: hundreds of Columbians pelted each other with snowballs and sledded down the Steps late into the night, and compared bruises the next morning back in Butler.

– ECS