We've been hearing a lot about Business School professors opposing the government bailing out Wall Street investment banks, but according to IvyGater Robyn Schneider, they have no problem bailing out their vending machines.

They have lowered the prices of Luna Bars and Vitamin Waters so that even the poorest MBA student can afford them. The move has put Uris Hall into the upper echelons of campus automatic refreshment dispensers along with Mathematics and Schermerhorn, which feature the $1.50 Nantucket Nectar (the best price in Morningside until the Business School came along) and the cafe between Journalism and Furnald that sells $1 Wolfgang Puck hot chocolate. Bwog, however, will always have a soft spot for this little guy.

Photo by Robyn Schneider via After the Gates

UPDATE, 10/16, 11AM: The vending machines on the first floor of Mudd (the real first floor, not campus level) have joined the Defend Your Dollar program, too. This one might actually help people, as most Mudd-dwellers live off vending machine food and the occasional mac and cheese from Carleton Lounge.

Last time we checked in with our pals over at the Business School, things weren't looking too hot. Since today was the first good day in a long, long time, Bwog headed over to Uris when the stock market closed this afternoon to see what we could find.

B-Schoolers were clustered around the televisions in the lobby, reading the headlines on the 11.6% gain and the European summit this weekend and chatting happily. The powers that be had wisely chosen this particular day to sell Business School merchandise, and Bwog noted long lines of students shelling out $50 for backpacks.

We asked a vendor clad in a B-school T-shirt that read "we're the GBA, and we're here to serve you!" if the mood had been a little more cheerful around school today. "It's hard to say for sure," he began. We gave him a few moments, and he lifted his head after stacking another $20 bill into his collection. "But yeah," he continued, and Bwog may have seen a twinkle in his weary B-school eyes, "yeah, a definitely little bit."

The B-schoolers aren't the only ones effected by the recent economic downturn. It turns out undergrads are too! Instead of offering advice on how to save money, this week Bwog on a Budget returns with a special money-making feature.

The long and the short of it is simple: Bwog is broke. Given our economic state, there's little sense in discussing how to save money since there's no money to be saved. Yes, indeed the time has come for Bwog to make some money. But when the times are tough, finding work is hard. And finding work is especially hard for Columbia students, who not only prefer not to waste their talent doing remedial labor but also have their cumbersome class schedules to take into account. And while the minority of employed folks may receive a steady flow of cash each month, by October 18th, September's paycheck certainly must have diminished.

Bwog's done some research and discovered that Columbia's most lucrative resource is just where you'd expect to find lucrative things and people. Tucked away on the second floor of the business school library is Columbia's Behavioral Research Lab. If you are desperate enough, Bwog understands and suggests you sign up to receive the Behavioral Research Lab's bi-weekly announcements.

Remember that subprime mortgage-induced liquidity crisis and the subsequent slight dip in the markets as a result of the bailout plan being rejected? Us too.

Prior to Monday's rejection of the $700 billion plan, a letter was sent by economists around the country urging Congress not to adopt the plan set forth by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. This petition included 13 signatures of Columbia professors, all of whom work in the Business School and range from those holding named professorships to non-tenure track positions on the faculty.

From a cursory look into their after-school jobs, it seems as if, like most b-school professors, those who signed on appear to generally back the Wall St. establishment: Christopher Mayer is a real estate expert who moonlights with a hedge fund while Wei Shang-Jin is a vocal supporter of outsourcing and globalization. In the letter, they stressed a long-term solution that was fair to taxpayers and investors. The full list of Columbia professors is after the jump.

Remember American hero and proud Business School alum ('97) Roy Den Hollander? The self-described antifeminist who sued Columbia for failing to offer a "men's studies" course? Whatever, anyway, he's back! And he's suing mad, specifically about ladies' nights at bars because what else?

This month, Hollander is arguing that when nightclubs offer all the ladies reduced-price drinks, they are discriminating. He then went on to conclude that since nightclubs get their liquor licences from the state, it's not only the clubs but New York that is discriminating against him, Roy Den Hollander, and all of his kind.

The lawsuit was dismissed and Hollander called the judge a "feminist." The end.

It's not often Bwog takes pity on the young masters of the universe of the Columbia Business School. They're territorial with small spaces, and not terribly warm to the idea of mere undergraduates purchasing food in Uris.

But still, this week is not a good week for the b-schooler. Here, observe as they stand in Uris and watch updates about the banking collapse.

Things are not looking good -- they can have those group study rooms.

Photo by Lydia DePillis

You'll recall Bwog reporting last week that Business School Alum and self-proclaimed "anti-feminist" Roy Hollander was suing Columbia for offering women's studies courses. Apparently, these courses are discriminatory against men.

Now, according to Bwog tipster Stephanie Quan, some Columbia women are interested in hearing his views. More specifically, the group Women in Science at Columbia have invited him to speak at the school, where he will "give a short talk briefing us on the case against Columbia and then answer any questions from the audience."

The talk is scheduled for tomorrow, August 28th, from 1-2 PM, and the room is TBA Havemeyer 209. Whether it includes free food is unknown at this time.

Roy Den Hollander (he of litigious demeanor at right), a proud business school alum ('97) and self-proclaimed "antifeminist," is suing the University Trustees and the Institute for Research on Women & Gender for using federal aid to promote a "religionist belief system called feminism."

Women's Studies programs, he claims, are "spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust towards men with the result of the wholesale violation of men's rights." And while the College Bulletin claims the major is "intended to introduce students to the long arc of feminist discourse about the cultural and historical representation of nature, power, and the social construction of difference," the super-secret version explicitly states that the purpose is to "demonize men and exalt women in order to justify discrimination against men based on collective guilt."

Terrible news for those partial to the business school library's wonderful study rooms: this preference is no longer an option for you, and please get out. According to a Bwog informant -- and confirmed by the man who just picked up the phone at Watson library -- the study rooms are going to be business-schooler-only come fall.

Our informant (who moonlights as a library employee) says she was asked to hang signs announcing that September 1st would be the last that the study rooms would be undergrad-friendly. But she is conflicted about performing these cruel tasks: "I thought the whole point of the university system was that we have access to tons o' fun and resources, including as many business-y and economic-y books as required to fill our bellies. So are we paying for a share of the goods, or aren't we?"

In any event, see you in the Lerner Piano Lounge, where the duration and volume of someone's piano playing is always proportionate to your workload.

Happening right now, in Uris. Free Business School t-shirts that read:

"Disruption is inevitable. Who gets to be the disrupter is up for grabs."

Ooh. Cryptic.

Also: bagels.

Chinese pride (at right)

This afternoon at 1:00 PM. Lou Dobbs, eat your heart out.

Discoveries of New Burial Plots

For a mere $25,000, you can get buried at Duke. But hurry--already 200 reservations have been made. According to the Chronicle, "the one-and-a-half acre area first opened in response to requests from alumni in the past few decades who wanted to have a final resting place at the University." Pity, Columnia alumi will have to make do with Manhattanville...

Self-Promotion, Health Promotion

As part of their health promotion program, Go Ask Alice! (the friendly Q&A health website that brought you answers about sexy role plays and tattoo guides) is sponsoring a photo contest only a month away. All Columbia students are eligible to send in photos that will be published on the Ask Alice webpage. And that's right kids, you'll get your own photo credit! Deadline: February 23rd.

SIPA, Student Soldiers, and Kitsch

The Morningside Post (Delivering SIPA's Global and Local Enterprise in their very own blog) brings another point of view to the student-soldier debate with a video produced by SIPA students Caroline Bray and Aaron Ernst. Highlights include varied interviews and kitschy classical (juxtaposed to hard rock macho) music. Just another example of Columbia students' talent with video equipment!

Raising The Bar

Abe Handler overheard this in the business school library today afternoon: "I feel like everybody and their dog has 100 million dollars. The question is how to go from like here (gestures to his waist) to like here (gestures to his shoulders)."

- YS

UPDATE, Sunday 3:10 PM: As pointed out by a commenter, news of the Business School potentially moving to Manhattanville was amply covered by the Spectator last year. The precise location is unconfirmed. The source for the Economics Department's cancelled move to Knox Hall is an administrator in the Economics department via a student tipster; this is also unconfirmed.

RETRACTION, Sunday 3:10 PM: The assertion that the Economics department will relocate to Uris is pure speculation.

Apparently rendering Uris Hall menacingly hostile to outsiders was hardly enough for business students still surrounded by the puerile pestilence of unkempt undergrads. According to an anonymous (and unofficial) tipster, the B-school now wants out of Morningside entirely. After one planned location, St. John's Cathedral Close, was given the kibosh (Bwog speculates it might have had something to do with that pesky Biblical maxim about money lenders in the temple, or perhaps the decidedly anticapitalist rhetoric penned on the bathroom walls of the nearby Hungarian Pastry Shop), Columbia is, our source states, planning to move its instruction of future captains of industry to- you guessed it- Manhattanville. The specific location, in fact, will probably be at the end of 125th Street, down by the new Hudson Piers Park, placing part of Alma Mater, at long last, directly on the Hudson shore.

The catch? Well, much of the proposed site is currently occupied, seemingly, by the viaduct of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Not to mention, our tipster writes, "we don't own (and we aren't gunning to own) the plots of land closest to the river". Bwog wonders what this new development could mean for Columbia's protracted battle with CB9 over the fate of the neighborhood. As for Uris, it could, apparently, be handed over to the Econ Department, especially now that its move to far-flung Knox Hall at the Union Theological Seminary has been nixed. And though the B-school's putative move is at least five years away, we hope for the sake of future Columbians that Flex and Dining Dollars are to be, once again, enshrined as legal tender at a deli that welcomes undergrads with the waft of hot, handmade sandwiches.

Spectator reported yesterday that the Business School's Uris Deli has banished all forms of parental food finance: Flex, Dining Dollars, and First-Year Points are henceforth useless. It seems someone at the business school doesn't want undergraduates clogging their territory any longer; this would also explain why professional power-lunchables (think spoiled sushi and oniony sandwiches) are the only remaining offering at Uris.

With this development, Café 212 in Lerner is the last bastion of deli sandwiches--which, Bwog will note, remains open to graduate students. Likewise, those hankering for bubble tea and smoothies will have to trudge down to Lerner and get their daily fix at soon-to-open Cafe East.

Bwog correspondent Christopher Szabla adds that the B-School copy machines no longer accept Flex either, adding bite to that unfriendly facade. Bwog wonders at the economic inefficiency, and sulks.

Item! Somewhere in between stifling the urge to can the Supreme Court and accusing reporters of treason, President Bush has tapped the Business School's resident inflation dove, Frederic Mishkin, to fill a spot on the Fed's seven-member board of governors.

Why does this matter, besides saving the students who made that music video commiserating with Glenn Hubbard, the B-School dean who didn't get to be Fed Chairman, the trouble of making another one? Our anonymous tipster opines that Mishkin's selection signals a fundamental shift in Fed policy: from stomping out inflation before it has a chance to spawn to allowing it to reach tadpole size and continue swimming unmolested. Which is odd, considering the GOP has traditionally been the party of inflation hawks, and doesn't typically move towards policies already embraced by Canadian and European central banks.

But enough about monetary theory. Bwog is still waiting for its Stiglitz-Bernanke death match!

We knew the School of the Arts kids are talented. We'd pin the SIPA kids for some serious clowning around if they were drunk enough. But who would ever... ever... suspect the semester's best student production would come out of the Business School.

But when B-School Dean Hubbard gets passed over as Fed Chair by Bernanke, the Follies Student Comedy Review gets a little inspiration from the Police and lets their voices be heard.

Word is the video played a significant part in Bruce Preston's Intermediate Macro review session.