On the first day of classes, you may be looking for a pick-me-up, and Oren’s Coffee will be there to help. Among the many different inauguration promotions across the country, Oren’s is giving away free coffee from 10:44 am to 12:44 pm tomorrow. They’ve also unveiled a special “Blend 44: Beans You Can Believe In” […]

A tipster/fan reminds us that campus artist Reni Lane CC ’10 has not only signed with major label Custard/Universal Motown (joining James Blunt, among others), but also will have her song “Place for Us” on tonight’s episode of Showtime’s “The L Word.” You can hear the song right now on her Myspace page. Sure, Showtime […]

Classes “begin” in a few days, figuratively because a few of Bwog’s have already been canceled for CC’83 Awesomeness Festivities.  But your fair university didn’t get nearly as much sleep as you did over break.  Here’s what Alma Mater’s been up to. People of Old Alumni provide proof that we’ll all find jobs, eventually.  In […]

Two pieces of (somewhat) Obama-related media: first, one of his first college roommates writes about their time together in the fall of 1981. Phil Boerner ’84, who transferred with Obama from Occidental, remembers Obama that, “as a host and roommate, he sometimes did the shopping and cooked the chicken curry.” Oh, and Obama may have […]

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 […]

Commentariat got its hands the names of the early Phi Beta Kappa inductees: Rajiv Agarwal, Rudi Batzell, Mikaela Bradbury, Jennifer Brown, Cindy Cai, Willy Chang, Emily Clader, Yasemin Erboy, Amari Hammonds, Emily Jordan, Kyle Jurado, Leora Kelman, Jisung Park, Andrei Petrenko, Brendan Price, Richard Prins, Mollie Schwartz, Swarup Swaminathan, Xiyin Tang, and Xiao Wei. Congrats […]

Why, look, the Spec has a new set of columnists! Hoping to end the association of the Spec opinion pages and giant penises are:  Monday: Eric Hirsch (CC ’09, former associate editor of AdHoc), Philip Petrov (CC ’09, literary editor of The Current) Tuesday: MaryAlice Parks (CC ’09, member of CUPlayers and a coordinator of […]

Housing and Dining, being too cool for email announcements, has stealthily added a “New in 2009” part to the room selection section of its website. The new policies: “The Same Room/Same Suite policy has been eliminated. All students who wish to reside in Housing must go through the Room Selection process. 30 point senior groups […]

Better late than never: one week before his inauguration, an article Barack Obama wrote for the now-defunct campus magazine The Sundial has finally surfaced in full on Politico. The article had first been excerpted in the class notes section of Columbia College’s alumni magazine’s November/December issue. Written in the spring of 1983, just months before […]

The University of Havana-North, not content with having one of its own in the oval office, continues to add alumni to the new administration. This time, the post is chairman of the FCC, which has been in censorship overdrive ever since Janet-Jackson-boob-gate, and the nominee is Julius Genachowski, CC ’85. Genachowski not only overlapped with […]

Via City Room, Bwog learns that Duane Reade has rolled out a new logo at newly renovated stores, replacing the longtime interlocking blue and red DR with a black-and-white, non-interlocking version. City Room commenters pointed out that the logo seems to draw its “inspiration” from Radio Shack. But the store, which has been in and […]

While student groups may still be in the planning stages of any events about the Gaza conflict, some more Columbia professors have voiced their opposition to Israel’s actions, signing an open letter to Barack Obama written by USC English professor David Lloyd. Among the approximately 800 signatories are 14 Columbia faculty members, including: Anthro professor […]

And you thought cell phones were only for what the kids call “texting”: six SIPA students, in partnership with UNICEF, have received the first-place award in the US Agency for International Development’s “Development 2.0 Challenge” for their project incorporating cell phones in monitoring child malnutrition. According to their project proposal, the students intend to replace […]

Two years ago, when New York named its five most influential intellectuals in New York, three of the five had direct connections to Columbia. The first two were well-known professors Jeffrey Sachs and Brian Greene, but Bwog pauses today to remember the third Columbia presence on that list, Father Richard Neuhaus, who died today at […]

As you may have heard, there’s a bit of a to-do in Gaza right now. Being an utterly uncontroversial source for Israel-Palestine conflict analysis, Columbia hasn’t been able to keep its name out of the media, with several professors offering their thoughts on the latest clash. Some samples: Just before the start of the conflict, […]