In July, Columbia said goodbye to longtime Dean of Student Affairs Chris Colombo. Now, Kevin Shollenberger has been appointed as his replacement as Dean of Student Affairs. Shollenberger had been serving as interim dean since Colombo left.

Before becoming dean, Shollenberger was Associate Dean of Student Affairs for nine years. He is best known among students for his role in organizing the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Office of Student Group Advising, and various other parts of Columbia's bureaucratic alphabet soup.

Bwog, of course, will always love him for looking as dapper as he did at the ServiceNation summit (see picture).

Students subject to Dean's Discpline to be treated like sex offenders

The awesomely-named Serene Jones, a Yale Divinity School prof, will be taking over UTS

Columbia really wants to offer a new financial aid package to compete with the likes of Harvard and Stanford, but gently reminds us that it is much, much poorer than those schools.

Chris Kulawik only Columbia student to ever make it all the way to the appendix of FACETS

Personally, we'll take Van Der Beek in Varsity Blues over Dawson Leery any day

The affordable housing octopus, wherever it is, is probably a happy one right now. Today, the City Planning Commission (CPC) approved Columbia's Manhattanville expansion plan by a vote of 10 to 1, with one abstention. And to make matters more interesting, it also approved Community Board 9's plan. According to Amanda Burden, the Chair of the City Planning Commission, the commission has modified both plans to make them more alike. Read her statement here.

Although this Times article was very polite, you can be sure that the Coalition to Preserve Community and other groups that oppose Columbia's plan caused quite a ruckus today—they're fantastically irritating hissers and booers. And they certainly had time to rally the troops—there wasn't a soul in the city who didn't see this coming. After the CPC's November 13^th public review session, Burden's minions issued a statement containing this amazing line:

"While the community board has prepared a highly thoughtful set of recommendations for the area covered by the heart of the Columbia proposal, the Department believes it has a fundamental failing:
It limits the extent and manner in which Columbia can grow."

Yes Amanda...that was kind of the point of the plan.

Haven't gotten paid? Bwog delves into the world of lost work-study checks patiently awaiting their owners.

The University is (hopefully) the only employer you'll have which will tell you to wait four to six weeks before they issue your first paycheck. And, as work-studiers can attest, this is hardly a given. You might get paid only after you call and draw their attention to the clerical error that has caused payroll to have all your paperwork listed as missing (as I well know). Misdirected paychecks, an administrator in SIPA recalls, "happen often," particularly at Butler, though the stories of abandoned paperwork, missing administrators and the like seem to cover most University departments.

If you change your campus job, the central payroll office (for reasons that remain unfathomable) does not automatically send your paychecks to the University department to which you've switched. Human Resources in Butler will tell you your department needs to fill out a "change of address" form, but most departments will tell you to complete it yourself. This form must be submitted or your checks will continue going to whatever office you were last working at in the University system. Of course, this form cannot be processed at all, we were told, until your employment has been terminated at your old department, which the HR representative apparently does not know how to do... even when you're sitting in front of them. Instead, this requires yet another form that must be submitted by your old department.

Because of all the deaths and illnesses attributable to our library's rat-infested coffee shop, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Division of Environmental Health) has seen fit to the uphold the public good and shut down the Butler denizen's only source of sustenance, Blue Java.

Of course Blue Java hasn't killed anybody and isn't infested by rats. Or is it? This notice from the NYCDoHaMH (DoEH), apparently posted at around 11 AM this morning, leaves much to the imagination. But given the recent spate of arbitrary restaurant closings, it's likely that Blue's violations were pretty mild.

To confirm this, Bwog called the Health Department's media desk, where we were brusquely informed that inquiries "take a long while" to process, and we were referred to an e-mail address where we could make a formal request for information (smarkt@health.nyc.gov, for the interested). Since we're not down with bureaucratic red tape, Bwog dialed the media desk again. Much to our relief we were answered by a different receptionist, who said she would try to get to the bottom of the Blue Java mystery by the end of business hours today.

She also told us about the Health Department's nifty search engine feature. It seems that Blue Java has an impeccable inspection record, although Bwog is outraged that a dry establishment would so flagrantly endanger public health by not adequately warning customers about the dangers of "Alcohol and Pregnancy."

UPDATE, 10:21 AM EST, 6/20: There is now a sign right beneath the Health Department notice stating that the Department has required Blue Java to have a two-welled sink, and that the coffee shop will be closed until it complies. Could this be an all-too-transparent cover-up by library management? Doubtful, but for the suspicious: Bwog has been informed that Health Department violations usually hit the public domain after about a week, so if you're still interested check back next Wednesday.

-ARR

Every spring at about this time, freshmen walk by Low Steps wondering why a bunch of seniors are sitting there with bottles in paper bags, or why Alma Mat

er smells like vomit. Last year, a few of the hipper low-level administrators joined the loiterers in their celebration of public drunkenness, dodging security officers' halfhearted attempts to shoo them away. But like all organic traditions, this one too must die--seniors recieved an e-mail yesterday from their class presidents with the news that anyone caught cracking open a 40 on the steps in the weeks before and after the 40-days-to-graduation marker would face disciplinary hearings. To make up for the loss of that fuzzy senior moment, admin is throwing 2007 a massive party on the lawns this Thursday, complete with t-shirts, picnic food, and all the beer the revelers can stomach ("They'll be getting at least 48 ounces," CC '07 president David Chait promised. "We should have had the event last week.")

Here's how it happened: about a week and a half ago, Dean Chris Colombo called a meeting with the senior class presidents to inform of the change, citing past incidents (word is that PrezBo got a friendly ass-slap last year from one 40-drinker). After conferring with their class councils, Chait, SEAS '07 president Jarod Were, and BC '07 president Puja Kapadia met again with Colombo, this time with a counterproposal: the event now happening on Thursday. According to Were and Chait, administrators were then very accomodating, ponying up the cash for a not inexpensive event on very short notice. No Baker Blast-style theatrics this time. They're pitching it as a more inclusive event, a 2,000-person party rather than a low-key thing where a "select group of students" sits on the steps--but trading the thrill of rebellion for the bounty of Columbia catering?

A few hours of free beer later, Bwog has a feeling that seniors won't mind a bit.

Update, 10:20 PM: The 40s "tradition" is about five years old. Yes, there will be kosher food and booze. And no, this is not an April Fools joke. Bwog doesn't believe in April Fools.

More letters added to Columbia's delicious alphabet soup

UAlbany students told their teetotalist public service announcement patronizing, lame. We know some substances that could fire their creativity...

Plus, without drinking, how could we learn that "blackout activity range[s] from sex to urination to fluent sentences in Hebrew" or forget "social standards, repercussions, your future, and other extraneous details"?

Morningside residents commemorate war anniversairy, bemoan lack of youngins

Meanwhile, one of the aforementioned youngins mocks "poorly-attended rallies," concocts bold new plan to stop the war: "Let your life be a counter-friction"

Columbia-sponsored high school, created as Manhattanville quid pro quo, evicted, now homeless: ironic?

CU formally apologizes to Minutemen: reactions predictable

Barnard career services better than Columbia's...unless you want to be a bartender

Speaking of which: bars crack down on legal IDs, but hire illegal bouncers

Revelation of the day: "in certain cases drug use destroys lives, but in a lot of cases they help out a whole bunch"

Columbia's alphabet soup of schools: doomed to "sad and paradoxical reality" of awkward coexistence - forever. Which, according to this, is a good thing. We think.

In the latest news from the rest of the Ivy League, Harvard plans on naming Drew Gilpin Faust as its next president, according to the New York Times and Harvard Crimson (and most definitely not to a hoax email).

If Harvard's Board of Overseers gives her full approval as expected, Faust, who is currently Dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at the university, will be the first female president at Harvard in the school's 371-year history. In the meantime, Bwog finds it unnecessary to make any clever references to German folklore, since they've all probably been used within the last 24 hours (although admittedly, President Faust is a pretty damn awesome title).

After 20 years of safe subterranean spelunking, admin. to shut off access to fun...oops, dangerous chemicals...

...and will make damn sure you stay in your boring science and math classes...

...but the utter thrill of manipulating financial aid loopholes remains. Go agency!

Er...go agency?

Meanwhile, GS students, as always, find a "nontraditional" way to cheat the system

And, oh right...don't forget to resist Man Law...or expansion, because of...uh, yeah, you've read this all before

Maybe we're just better?

For the world, comedians. For Columbia, ex-Presidents!

Wednesdays = entirely superfluous.

Ask, Don't Tell--Columbia administrators riding high

Support the team, not the record

Urinetown! Urinetown! Urinetown!

In which Bwog instills heart-thumping excitement in you and all of your friends; this piece will appear in the November issue of the Blue and White. Here, Lenora Babb discusses the wacky world of "Department Administrators and the University That Needs Them."

Professors like to think they're the stars of the university, but in every department there is someone else: someone who counsels students, organizes special functions, serves on committees, and handles confidential information like professors' grant spending, salary, and tenure applications. You might not know these people, mundanely titled department administrators, but without them Columbia could not function.

To call Joy Hayton the matriarch of a swollen, motley family of over-educated adults only begins to describe her job. For 26 years, Hayton has served as the departmental administrator (DA) for English and Comparative Literature , watching the comings and goings of professors, students, and four university presidents. Things have changed a lot since she arrived. "It's an astonishing thing if you think about it," she said, "and I try not to think about it."

Hayton arrived in 1980 as a "secretary," but her position has grown beyond that. She is the caring human being behind the scenes of an intimidating bureaucracy, helping students get their bearings. Her office on the sixth floor of Hamilton is strewn with photographic glimpses of her life—here she is, slightly younger, a bright green parrot perched on her shoulder; now smiling on a gray beach next to bulging brown lumps of sea lions; and again, arm in arm with a blue-robed student on the steps of Low.

As the Spec reported on their website yesterday, the Student Governing Board of Earl Hall--that amorphous body that gives your political or cultural group money every year--will soon no longer reside in Earl Hall, under the benevolent eye of Chaplain Davis. If administrators get their way, SGB will move next year to the oversight of the Office of Student Development and Activities (which also houses the Activities Board at Columbia), which means they'll report to Chris Colombo instead. The administration says the move will afford SGB the financial resources of the College in staffing its advising. Three cheers for synergy. On the other hand, it's nice having the safety of a satellite office to plan potentially controversial events, like the Finkelstein and Gilchrist speeches. Worth noting: on October 20, the SDA posted a job listing for someone to manage political events.

Next Monday, PrezBo and Executive VP for Student Services Lisa Hogarty will be at SGB's biannual town hall. The leadership of the SGB has put together a diplomatically worded press release about the change, reprinted after the jump.

- Lydia DePillis

Sometimes, when one wanders long enough in the inscrutable labyrinth of the bureaucracy, one confronts not the Minotaur of crude administrative obfuscation but a true gem. Here are selections from one such gem, the new "Leadership Life Newsletter" coughed up by SDA to "guide you [student leaders] through the challenging and important task of leading your peers". How ought an aspiring leader do it by the book? Read on...

From the section "Setting Expectations":

"Setting expectations is an important step in developing a team. This activity will enable everyone in your group to share what they expect of themselves, and each other as they work together to accomplish the common goal(s) of the group.

1. Pass around a 'bank' of pennies. Have each group member give the bank a shake and take however many pennies fall out (maximum 5 pennies).
2. Once everyone has pennies, have each group member come up with expectations that they have for members of the group (i.e., how the group will function, deal with conflict, etc.) Each member will need to share as many expectation thoughts as they have pennies.
3. Have everyone share their thoughts and create a visual expectations list. As a group, review and discuss the list making revisions as needed. The following questions are helpful in guiding your group's discussion:
-> Were you surprised to see some of the expectations listed? Which ones? Why?
-> How will the group confront individuals not living up to the agreed upon expectations?
-> How can you hold yourself accountable?
-> What do you think will be the most challenging expectation to uphold as a group?
After the list is collectively agreed upon, remind everyone that they are responsible for holding themselves and each other accountable.
4. Have each member keep one of their pennies as a reminder of the mutual expectations they all agreed to."

Their source for this wisdom? "The Big Binder of Leadership Activities"

More advice- and an appearance by CC'09 president George Krebs -after the jump.

Columbia alums congegate from Switzerland to Suffolk County...

...to relive their youthful protests against Alma Mater's expansion

Meanwhile, the administration creates an office to actually help students, then hides it away deep in the bowels of Dr. No's waterborne fortress and swears its employees to a code of Masonic-like secrecy

Andrew Martin boasts indie credentials, "bathe[s] in the collective sweat of victory"

Difference between ennui-riddled rat and ennui-riddled human: only one can be miraculously cured by a jazz singer's condescending remark

A Chinese Bazaar? Whatever, East is East