Bwog fell asleep at 8pm on Thanksgiving (and last night….oops), and was determined to find out why. Assuming those after-meal droopy eyes had something to do with science (the idea of a god of food comas was dismissed after much discussion), we set Bwogsleuth Zach Kagan on the trail. Here he presents a roundup of […]

The Day of Judgment has come. Weep ye College undergrads for major declaration. For those deciding now how to spend a good chunk of their remaining years at Columbia, or for those reminiscing on that major they declared long ago and now regret (or have not really even nearly kind of sort of completed and […]

If you’re like us, you’ve spent hours of valuable registration appointment time agonizing over whether to take a class with a visiting associate professor or an adjunct assistant.  What do these titles actually mean?  Bwog’s expert on esoteric distinctions, Jon Edelman, breaks it down. According to the faculty handbook, there are twenty-three possible titles for […]

Bwog has been operating under the commonly-held assumption that Core Professors have to petition with the Core office to give you anything under a B-. This, to us and scores of friends, was common knowledge. Um, guess we have to get on our shit. From: Sarah Camiscoli Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 10:11 AM To: […]

You’ve tipped us about it for years, and we’ve sort of snickered about it since the dawn of Bwog. So we finally decided to investigate. Why is there a prominently located lactation room in Carman? Are there more? Is this a joke? You have questions, Jon Edelman has answers. It’s not so much the idea […]

One day, in a fit of rage, John McCain sarcastically asked how many times a person can graduate from Columbia. Mr. McCain may have had a point. Bwog stopped and asked: Wait, how many times can someone graduate? Matriculation Guru Derek Huang tries to answer this question by documenting one hypothetical student’s quest to earn […]

Anyone who has ever been late for a class knows that running up the uneven Steps of Low is basically impossible, even for the athletically inclined among us (i.e., not the Bwog staff). Many Columbians and pedestrians alike have puzzled over why the Steps’ spacing is so adverse towards mobility. Bwog’s Megan McGregor reports with […]

The abandoned stone structure on 119th and Amsterdam sort of looks like a medieval castle – a very, very small one. It isn’t quite the stuff of architecture classes, but the little building stands out – you’ve probably wondered what it is or was as you passed the forgotten, weedy lot. It’s not like there’s […]

To Columbians, Election Day means more than the clatter of local politics in Wien. The coming of democracy signals the end of debauchery; Halloween and our four-or-five-day break is over. But why do we break now instead of earlier in the semester like our Columbus-Day-hating brethren? Bwog’s own David Hu looked the gift horse so […]

Welcome back to Ask Bwog, where we try to find the answers to Columbia’s persistent questions. Anyone who has graduated from Columbia in the last 60 years can tell you that to earn a B.A. degree, you must either swim 75 m (three lengths of the pool) or take the beginner’s swimming PE class. The […]

While we’re down here celebrating Columbus’s discovery of the New World and decrying the subsequent effects on indigenous people, our neighbors to the North are celebrating something a little different. No, Ithaca didn’t get a Chipotle yet… it’s Canadian Thanksgiving! Every second Monday of October since 1957, Canadians have been gathering ’round to give thanks […]

Welcome back to Ask Bwog, a feature in which we answer the many burning questions of this campus. If you have ever had the pleasure of taking the Official Columbia Campus Tour, you probably heard this story from your tour guide: when Ghostbusters was filmed at Columbia in 1984, the university set up a fund […]

Remember when you were in eighth grade and you were forced to read The Catcher in the Rye? Remember when Holden asks that taxi driver where all the ducks in Central Park go in the winter? Remember how you thought that was somehow a metaphor for imminent escape from your acne-ridden 13-year-old existence? Yeah, we […]

In 2005, the University Senate voted 53 to 10 (with 5 abstentions) against repealing the ban of ROTC on campus. At the time, the most recent student survey conducted about the issue (in 2003) showed that 65% of students were in favor of repealing the ban. Two days ago, only 49% of students who participated […]

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 […]