We’re back at it again with the Core Archetypes.  Senior Staffer Betsy Ladyzhets brings us up-close and personal with the person who has committed to memory the placement of every bracket in Sappho’s fragments. You get to class early, but they are already there. They sit at the precise opposite end of the table from the door (where […]

Yesterday, the famous New York Public Library Rose Room re-opened after two long years of repairs and $12 million dollars, required to repair the damage caused when a 16-inch plaster rosette crashed down from the room’s ceiling. This beautiful reading room was the architectural inspiration for another reading room that looms much larger on our campus: Butler […]

In some very specific conditions, electrons (you know, those tiny negatively charged subatomic particles) can run away. But how does this happen? Where do they go? Are they dangerous? We sent Senior Staffer Betsy Ladyzhets to the Plasma Physics Colloquium yesterday afternoon to find some answers. Shortly before 1pm yesterday, I ventured into the depths […]

You get food from them. You talk to them. You wonder whether that that extra helping of rice was because they were flirting or just being nice. But have you ever considered that the halal carts around Columbia have personalities?

So we’re back from summer and settling into our primitively furnished, university-provided dwellings, right? Well, turns out we can’t even rely on Columbia or Barnard to even meet the primitive room necessities which we actually kinda require. In her latest investigation, Internal Editor Betsy Ladyzhets peers into the murky pool of Barnard’s facilities—but she sees no reflection. […]

It’s impossible not to notice that the space where Lehman Library once stood is now a gaping pit – complete with piles of sand, rusty construction equipment, and sharp pieces of uncovered rock. As one student pointed out in Overheard @ Barnard last week, this pit is eerily similar to the pit from ‘Parks and Recreation‘. Inspired […]

Yesterday, Barnard students received an email from Rob Goldberg, the college’s Chief Operating Officer, stating that their beloved magnolia tree is now officially deceased. The tree was moved last fall to accommodate the construction of Barnard’s new Teaching and Learning Center, and today’s email has confirmed what we suspected earlier this summer: it “did not survive […]

Earlier today, the Barnard Community was deeply saddened to receive a construction update email with the news that our beloved magnolia tree (which was moved last fall in order to build Barnard’s new Teaching and Learning Center) may be on its last limbs. Despite the recent warm weather, Maggie’s leaves have still failed to emerge, […]

As today is the first day of Reading Week (or Reading Three Days), and likely the first day you realized you seriously needed to get your act together and start studying. To help you on this seemingly futile quest, Bwogger Betsy Ladyzhets has put together a playlist of instrumental music that’s at once motivational and […]

Last Saturday, the Columbia Space Initiative (CSI) successfully sent Roaree, a smaller, cuter incarnation of Columbia’s mascot, to near-space. Roaree traveled in style: in a high-altitude balloon that was able to reach 108000 ft after just two hours of flight. The balloon was launched from Prattsville, NY at 4pm, then land safely near Poughkeepsie later that afternoon. In addition to […]

Money: something we, as college students in NYC, love to think about but rarely have on hand. We sent Bwog staffer Betsy Ladyzhets to a lecture on neoliberalism and campus finance to torture her with money talk, but it ended up being an informative panel. We’ll try better next time–maybe a talk on how millennials are […]

Using Bored@Butler is like taking a shit: it’s an effective means of procrastination, it often happens in the Butler bathroom, and everybody does it, but nobody wants to talk about it unless they’ve accomplished something particularly impressive. I myself had heard of Bored@Butler as a sort of mythical creature, existing only in Bwog tips and conversations […]

There are many things at Columbia that make us cringe, curse, and shake our heads. But stairs, of all things, should not be included on that list… or so you’d think. Yet in some buildings, taking the stairs can mean endless frustration and confusion. Daily Editor and dutiful stair-climber Betsy Ladyzhets calls out those who make the walk even harder. […]

This weekend, the Columbia New Opera Workshop is presenting John Eccles’s opera The Judgement of Paris. Bwog writer (and, more recently, potential opera enthusiast) Betsy Ladyzhets had the honor of attending rehearsal this past Monday, and talked to members of the cast about what makes this production unique and about why opera is still relevant in the […]

Columbia’s got a decent-sized campus, so one would think that finding rehearsal and performance space would be a fairly easy task for our many performing arts groups. Unfortunately, with a constantly-increasing number of groups vying for space, and the Columbia bureaucracy doing what the Columbia bureaucracy does best (i.e. creating complications), the task is far […]