In the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the issue has resurfaced about the banning of the ROTC (haven’t a clue? everything you need to know about the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps here) on Columbia’s campus. This has been a contentious subject in recent years on campus. Here is a brief history: […]

When the results of the NROTC survey were released last week, students complained that the results had been combined for CC, SEAS, and GS. While the breakdown may no longer matter that much, Bwog has finally obtained the percentage breakdown by school:    NO  YES  ABSTAIN CC  53.0%     46.8%   0.2%  SEAS  46.4%       53.6% […]

Tomorrow’s opinion section of the Wall Street Journal features a familiar byline: a one Mr. Learned Foote, CC 2011 President. Foote, speaking as a gay pro-ROTC student, said that he felt conflicted in his eventual decision to back repealing the ROTC ban. “I wanted to fight discrimination, but I also wanted Columbia to restore its […]

When released last Monday, it was unclear how the NROTC results would affect the University Senate proceeding with the issue. Not only were the results controversially tallied, but they were not broken down for three of the four schools (Barnard being the exception).  However, Council and Senate sources confirm to Bwog that NROTC will not […]

As the NROTC results are being discussed and debated, it’s likely that the term margin of error is going to get thrown around. So, what is the margin of error? According to Jon Hill, Bwog’s Nate Silver Correspondent of Mathematical Wizardry, there is none. Here’s why: Votes counted: 2,971 Undergraduate enrollment (2007 [2008 figure was […]

Hot on the heels of the CC/SEAS/GS results, Barnard’s numbers came in just a few moments ago. Here’s how they look: Total # Votes: 1,189 Yes: 453 (38.1%) No: 736 (61.9%) According to SGA President Sarah Besnoff: “The results of this vote indicate that this is an issue that will be discussed in the University […]

In a statement to the GS student body, GSSC President Brody Berg expressed skepticism about the results of the NROTC survey, writing that “I believe that this poll result is meaningless due to the huge number of apparently fraudulent votes.” Although almost 2000 fraudulent votes were removed (including one student who voted 276 times) by […]

Final results for the NROTC vote were just announced for three of the four undergraduate schools (CC, SEAS, and GS), with an extremely close result. From CCSC president George Krebs’s weekly email: “The NROTC poll was closed at 9 am Monday morning and here’s the tally: We sent out 6913 email invitations, including all CC, […]

The results of last week’s ROTC survey should be released later today. Before they are, Bwog encourages you to do some close-to-home back-reading on the issue–below, we’ve re-run Izumi Devalier’s article from the November 2005 issue of The Blue and White titled “Embedded in New York: Or, How I Learned to Stop Whining and Love […]

Ooh, what’s going on over at Fox News? Much the same thing that’s happening here, in fact! It’s a debate about ROTC at Columbia, with a special Fox twist. And by “twist”, we mean that they chose a photo of a 1972 student riot to accompany the article. But no matter, let’s see what the […]

A tech-savvy commenter speculated that after “clearing their cookies” (a term we’ll define for the computer illiterate in just a minute), voters can change their personal survey ID number to someone else’s, which in theory would mean that anyone would be able to vote multiple times.  Bwog’s on-call computer whiz kids Hans E Hyttinen and […]

Guard the link to your NROTC survey with your life, as that link that was emailed to you this morning is a personalized link. What this strangely inefficient system means is that if someone clicks your link, they can change your vote. Of course, this is only coming to light after numerous students group leaders […]

Continuing our recent tradition of Extremely Scientific Exit Polling, we want to know: What’d you vote for on the ROTC survey?  Use the commenter name to share your school and class year, and the comment for your answer and any explanations.

Old themes came back to haunt us this week.  More of this, a little of that. About ROTC: New posters arrived. Professors supported ROTC on campus; professors explained their support; professors opposed ROTC on campus. Plus, a forum! About Flex: Bwog was pumped, we could charge our parents for Hungarian.  Oh no wait, we can […]

Hot on the heels of an NROTC professor endorsement, a number of faculty members have signed the following statement of opposition to NROTC on campus. In fact, this petition is something of a direct response to the pro-NROTC side’s statements: “In contrast to those who have expressed support for ROTC based on hypothetical conditions, we […]