It’s fire safety day at Barnard! Occasioned by this would-be bonfire on Lehman Lawn, which appears to be a test of fire extinguishing equipment. The exercise will also involve filling the second floor of Sulzberger with smoke for escape practice (“not for people with asthma,” warned one gym teacher).             […]

If you bank with the HSBC branch between 102nd and 103rd, and had some late Friday withdrawls to make, Bwog suggests finding another location. Gothamist reports that the branch was robbed about two hours ago.  How big of a heist it was, and whether it relates to a robbery an hour earlier at a Chase […]

Tonight was the third fire alarm for Carman residents in that number of weeks. The 12s were ushered out of the building at around midnight tonight and were then told to go back inside while the alarm continued to ring. According to our mysterious friends at Public Safety, the alarm was set off due to […]

News trucks for the local ABC and FOX affiliates were spotted outside of Ricky’s, to report on a series of assaults that took place on Sunday night. Seven students were assaulted between 12:00 and 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, between 113th and 122nd Streets, along both Amsterdam and Broadway. Only one student was actually robbed, according […]

When we analyzed Public Safety’s newly released Annual Report, a few commenters noticed the curious absence of hate crimes in the year 2007. 2007, you’ll recall, was the Year of the Hate Crime — with graffiti in SIPA, Lewisohn, and a half dozen meetings in response to the incident. So what’s with the row of […]

Yesterday, the Columbia Community received an email from James McShane announcing the release of Public Safety’s Annual Report. Bwog’s Crime Bureau Chief Jon Hill crunched some numbers and compared Columbia with Duke and U. Chicago (our peers in U.S. News rankings) on their levels of per-student (full-time enrollee) crime. Says Hill: “The University of Chicago […]

The Mystery of Pain.  Asked to legitimize the illegitimate, GSSC Elections Commission resigns. Barnard Voting: The eBear Necessities. Congestion plan coughed up.  Bob Dylan meet Joe Pulitzer. How safe are we really? In other Columbia-related news:  the NYTimes captures the different views on the boy arrested in the recent death of a grad student.

Given recent events, Bwog placed a call to Public Safety yesterday afternoon to find out how the department is reacting to Minghui Yu’s death and how they intend to make students feel more secure. [Edit: 3:24pm: Jim McShane email after the jump.] According to Public Safety, officers do not currently patrol the area where Yu […]

Through the grapevine, Bwog has been hearing rumors that in attempts to safeguard against theft, Public Safety has plans to begin taking unattended laptops in Butler. Oddly enough, this is one rumor that turned out to be kind of true, in a vague, quasi-benevolent way. Ricky Morales, Crimes Prevention Manager at Public Safety clarified: “It’s […]

The residents of a Columbia dorm floor received these bizarre emails from their RA (specifics redacted) on Thursday morning. Here they are, very sic, copy-and-pasted. “Date: Sep 13, 2007 3:27 AM Subject: Incident Tonight Hi Everyone! As some of you might have heard, an incident occured around 1:40am this morning.  There were screams, loud noises, Public […]

Bwog editor Chris Szabla writes in: “Did security invade anyone else’s EC room in the early [Saturday] morning hours to inspect something down on Morningside Drive?…” Chris first heard the security officers discussing what sounded like the source of some projectiles (“10-4, it’s the fourth window up, seventh one over”) before hearing a knock on […]

There doesn’t seem to be a resistance, exactly, to the strike going down on Thursday—but not everyone is happy about it. SGB President Sakib Khan says that, while handing out flyers to advertise the strike yesterday at 7:40 PM outside Carman, a “tall skinny guy” came up and slapped a flyer out of his hand. […]

Public Safety is now on the Facebook in the person of John Murolo, the Morningside Campus Director. Let’s all welcome him into our trusting community with open arms and many Facebook friendship invitations. It must be tough to come back as The Man only two years after graduating at the fresh young age of fifty […]

    Columbia Security is reporting that EC-resident Richard Ng has been missing since Sunday. Security is interviewing students in EC today but anyone with information on Richard’s whereabouts is encouraged to contact Campus Security: (212) 854-5555 or 99 on a ROLM phone. Full flyer after the jump.

In an email sent this evening, LLC director Scott Helfrich warns the student body to be on the lookout for a shady character who has been terrorizing a certain floor of McBain as of late. Helfrich included two photos and an account of the man’s actions as described by Public Safety, which reads as follows: […]