We really appreciated the toasty warmth of Butler Library.

Ah, Orgo Night. As revealed by CUMB at 11:30 pm, this year’s Orgo Night was back in Butler 209, despite administration previously barring them from performing in the library. If you missed the memo, don’t fret: as per Bwog tradition, we sent Bwog froshies Jenny Zhu and Zack Abrams to review this year’s Orgo Night. 

This year’s Orgo Night advertised that it would be “Back in the But,” and it delivered. Just as the clock struck midnight, CUMB members rose from the ashes, put on their iconic Columbia blue long sleeves, and began playing “Roar, Lion, Roar!” in (yep) Butler 209. Spirits were high, as chants of “Orgo Night! Orgo Night!” filled the air.

We saw this in the script, and it made us physically uncomfortable. Who the heck writes “Netflix” as “NetFlix”? And why do they hate themselves?

As demonstrated by the multiple Public Safety officers stationed inside Butler lobby, Columbia administration had expected Orgo Night to take place outside this year, yet CUMB somehow was able to surreptitiously smuggle all their instruments (including a toilet seat) and members inside 209. While at first administration closed off 209 and refused to allow any students to enter past midnight, they relented by 12:10 pm, with cheers heard as new students started filtering in.

CUMB began their 209 comeback tour by likening the recent new chain openings in Morningside Heights to some student stereotypes that you might see at Columbia itself. Their first target was the oh-so-beloved, yet oh-so-overpriced Shake Shack, which they compared to a Columbia fuckboy: “You know they’re no good for you, and they’re not even that good; but sometimes, you just need a nice… hunk…of underwhelming meat.”

Overseen: A band member reading sheet music from his phone – the relatable content we signed up for.

Along the lines of that metaphor, they compared Pret to “the basic bitch” of Columbia, Hex&Co to the Furnald archetypal geek, and Junzi Kitchen to a Chinese transfer student who likes to work hard and play hard – or, as the Band puts it, “has an adderall prescription but chooses to do coke instead.” They capped off the food-related segment by playing a cover of “Carry Out My Wayward Bun.” We’re not sure which bun they were referencing, but the performance was surprisingly not terrible.

After a rather slick transition, the Band moved on to a substantially funny, very Bwog-approved bit riffing on the recent issue of sexual assault in the media and the political community. But first, a disclaimer: “Before we begin, fasten your seatbelts, evacuate for Hurricane Harvey Weinstein, and cancel your internships with Al Franken.” The Band cleverly related the current happenings to Columbia’s history of mismanaging sexual assault response, like back in 2015 when they spent $2.2 million dollars on a survey instead of, you know, hiring more counselors?

And surprise! The survey revealed that 1 in 3 women still face sexual assault by senior year, as the Band cited. CUMB pointed out the flaws in Columbia’s actions (or lack thereof) with a metaphorical situation: if ⅓ of the student population was suddenly affected by food poisoning, we’d hope Columbia wouldn’t have addressed the issue with only an optional survey. They wrapped up our favorite bit of the night with our favorite song of the night, a performance of “The Sound of Breaking the Silence.”

The Band’s next bit dealt with the new Barnard President, Scion Bailout Sian Beilock. Though they claimed Beilock let the Barnard Bartending agency dissolve, the situation is a bit more complicated than that. Their joke about this move being as self-destructive as “wearing a pipe bomb on your morning commute through Times Square” was way too soon, though. In addition, though the Band claimed that Barnard RA’s got fired due to lack of commitment to their position, Bwog has reported in the past that RA’s feel that they’re undervalued and undercompensated by Barnard ResLife. The bit was capped off by a slightly dated cover of a Taylor Swift classic as they performed “We’re having Trouble pronouncing Sian Beilock.”

We love Ross!

CUMB continued by ragging on everyone’s favorite butt of the joke: CUCR. After first emphasizing that attention was the intended goal for CUCR’s Free Speech month (“being protested is CUCRs kink!”), the band launched into a particularly edgy, clever bit relating the group to the KKK, the Nazi party, and *oo, shocking* Columbia’s very own Contemporary Civilization. They argued that the only solution was to “punch them in the face,” and finished their speech with this one-liner: “Next time CUCR tries to host a Klan rally, we in the band hope the Hillel will book that space in Lerner first, so the Jews can indeed replace them.”

The rest of the night touched on relevant topics like the Ruggles fire, the Columbia Lions’ surprisingly successful football streak, Carman’s ceilings (or lack thereof), and our favorite campus publication to hate – Spec. They claimed that Speccies constituted “the most masturbatory group on campus” (true), were actual “vampires” (true), and had to move out of their old office because it “just wasn’t large enough to hold their ego” (very true).

While some jokes were definitely told too soon (though thankfully a particularly nasty one was changed from our version of the script) and the song parodies were a bit of a stretch, we were happy that CUMB and Orgo Night were back where they belong – Butler 209. Like they’ve been doing this past year so successfully, we appreciated that (for the most part) the band punched up, with particularly good bits exposing Columbia’s consistently poor treatment of sexual assault issues and CUCR’s attention-craving troll events. Check out the rest of our gallery below, and we’ll see you next year in 209!

Photos via Aliya Schneider