Barnard housing for the win!

But still not quite able to let Columbians in.

CTV is going for broke...

While CU Snacks goes up in smoke.

Help us win more! the Spectator cries

Nothing to see here, the Ivy League lies

The matter of how the 200 Obamacain seats would be assigned was a pressing concern for about 15,000 of you. At the same time, many campus media organizations applied for press credentials (which were approved -- or, in all cases but two, denied -- by ServiceNation), so that they could record, report, videotape, and photograph the event from the coveted interior of Roone.

According to a University spokesperson, Columbia didn't secure any of the 200 seats for campus media. However, ServiceNation did save a seat for one lucky Spectator reporter -- our money's on Joy Resmovits, the deputy campus news editor who got the initial scoop -- and, in an exciting new development, one for Bwog too.

Meanwhile, the Columbia-affiliated CTV applied for credentials from ServiceNation and was denied, as was WKCR.

"Unfortunately, because it's not a university sponsored event, the University has very little say in who gets credentialed and as of right now. It doesn't look like any of the campus media groups are being credentialed," said Allison Yang, the CTV news director. (The University spokesperson said that a livefeed would be broadcast on CTV.)

However, the majority of the press will work from outside Roone, in designated press room with a live feed of the Summit.

So to speak. "After these long, lonely months without a Columbia soap opera," writes CTV producer totally independent operator Katie Simon, "we decided it was time for a change. Prepare yourself for Exclusion Suite, Columbia's SECOND original soap opera, coming this January to an internet connection near you." Get involved in what's sure to be a classic piece of Columbiana by auditioning "Sunday 12/2 and Monday 12/3 from 7:30 to 9:30pm at a location TBD."

Of course you'll never live it down, and our lives have enough real awkwardness as it is--y'know, without the fake, CTV-produced awkwardness that'll end up on YouTube and turn you into a laughingstock on IvyGate. But in Bwog's opinion, this is but a pitifully small price to pay for immortality.

But wait: the real, CTV-produced "Gates" is also coming back this Spring, says director Davide Barillari! Word has it that Season 2 of won't disappoint fans of college-budget, student-produced camp. CAVA, coke, drunken violence, endearingly cheap, on-location shots...been there, done that. An Afghan opium ring operating out of the archeology department? Now you're talkin'! We aren't ones for wild speculation, but we're anticipating plotlines involving drugs, awkward romance, angst, booze, an asshole CC professor...and also sperm banks, genetic diseases, gang warfare, an intractable moral dilemma or two, and the discovery of chilling secrets buried deep in the bowels of Low Library. We can hardly wait.

- ARR

In the grand tradition of Columbia media outlets, CTV News has released a guide to everything you need to know to go here, an 11-minute broadcast that's been split into six bite-sized videos for your viewing convenience. Bwog brings you the CliffNotes to the highlights.

Most Useful: Year in Review
Judging by the class of 2011 Facebook community, there's a chance that most incoming freshmen have been eagerly tracking any and all Columbia-related news for the past year. For anyone who hasn't, this video summarizes what CTV has deemed to be "the biggest events that" transpired between fall 2006 and spring 2007 (read: "One scandal after another"). Watch this if you've somehow forgotten about the Minutemen, if you want to see a dramatic cut from a Columbia staff webpage that includes a picture of disgraced former Associate Dean of Financial Aid David Charlow to a webpage that's Charlow-less, or if you like gratuitous firedancing clips.

Most Awkward Ending: Student Government
"And the votes are in: student government wins as one of the best ways to get
involved in leadership on campus. So what are you waiting for? The polls are
waiting!"

Most Heartwarming: Senior Advice
Faces from the past! Awww.

Least Useful: Tie between Eating in Morningside Heights and Extracurricular Activities
The main problem with Extracurricular Activities is that it's too vague; after noting that there are "more than 200 student clubs on campus," CTV reporter Allison Yang proceeds to quickly list a few as the camera lingers over their websites. In "Eating," Jason Alarcon rev eals that our neighborhood is home to several restaurants "and even supermarkets!" He then randomly spotlights a few restaurants in the Columbia area, including Strokos, Artopolis (which apparently serves 'savory desserts,' a phrase any Top Chef aficionado will recognize as an oxymoron), and Massawa. This video's greatest crime is perpetuating the myth that there's anything redeeming about Koronet slices other than being sickeningly huge.

Longest Clip of Austin Quigley Speaking: Administrators to Know
Umm... yeah.

CTV's got Core review sessions for Lit Hum (with Mark Cohen) and Frontiers (with Darcy Kelley), with Music Hum to come tomorrow at 6PM on Channel 37!

Also having to do with recorded stuff, except things that you actually want to listen to, Spec has a web-only story about the RIAA's latest shenanigans: they've thrown the book at 13 Columbians, bringing the grand total to 60.

Columbia's own CNN - or perhaps MSNBC - presents its latest episode, and we dissect it for you.

Core schmore, what about the part when he made fun of "300"?!

CTV presents: Beating a Dead Horse 101.

What is a Mimzy? If it doesn't have any connection to the Core or Modesitt, we don't care.

Yogurt that doesn't taste like dirty snow? Watch yo' back, Tasti!

New semester, new season of CTV. Same hosts; same production values (note the dropped audio in the first few seconds of the show); thankfully, same opening sequence, featuring a CTV correspondent stepping out from behind the Butler stacks. Pure gold - and we're only being half sarcastic.

Notable stories on the first episode included:

Now we can finally take that Anthropology course!

All we need is for Obama to admit he went to Columbia...

Better than Ferris Booth, even if you can't use Flex.

Bwog must interrupt its holiday programming for this important announcement.

The New York Daily News, that staid bastion of equanimity, has declared that Columbia is out of control, and they're not talking politics: this time, it's all that wild crazy sex. The 1,200-word feature story (which ran online with the dubiously related picture at right) cites example after example to prove that Columbians have finally gotten too randy for their own good. Among them:

Exhibit A: An undercover Daily News reporter witnesses a lecture in Hamilton in which a man named "Dov" flogged a female student volunteer with various objects.

Exhibit B: Miriam Datskovsky weighs in. "Everything is so much easier and so much quicker," she told the paper. "You go to dinner and then have sex."

Exhibit C: "Smut TV," in which CTV airs "hard-core porn" involving "a naked couple engaged in sex." Financed by the school. Broadcast into dozens of rooms and lounges. Really.

Bwog must concede, Columbia has fallen to the purveyors of vice...now if only a little more of it would come our way.

CTV viewers were shocked—and secretly hopeful—at the announcement a few days ago that Sexiled, that sex show on CTV, is looking for two new hosts. That's right: Vanessa Goldstein and Travis Cone are ready to hand over the reigns to their liberated forum of hard-hitting sexual discussion, and are holding auditions for replacements. In an email to Bwog, Vanessa explained:

The last few semesters have been great. We have had sex-educated guests, sex-oriented club groups, field trips to sex shops, and have won a lot of publicity—some good, some controversial. Either way, it has been an amazing experience and I want to pass it on. To keep up hype, every so often the show needs a makeover—a new face, new format, new topics. We are looking for sexy, loud, funny individuals—preferably one man and one woman—who feel comfortable talking about all topics of sex and who can have fun doing it.

Bwog readers: Now's your chance!!! If you think you've got the stuff to make it as a representative of Sex at Columbia, auditions will be held tonight from 7-830PM in the CTV Studio, 5th floor Lerner, and on Friday, December 1 from 7-9.

For those of us who spent Thursday night watching Grey's Anatomy instead of CTV's soap opera premiere, The Gates, our strange dream of watching fellow Columbians act like melodramatic fellow Columbians is now realized! Watch the drama unfold in the poor quality tradition of YouTube. (See the links below.) Oh the suspense!

The Gates Pilot Part 1

The Gates Pilot Part 2

The Gates Pilot Part 3

Well, it finally happened: CTV has realized how to attract viewers. A post on today's IvyLeak reports that, last night, at 10:45 PM, our traditionally unwatched television network aired a five-minute clip of hardcore anal sex as part of the show Sexiled. There was heavy breathing, there were hand-held cameras, and, for the first time in the network's history, Columbia students couldn't pry themselves away from CTV.

Meanwhile, now that they have realized that there actually is no censorship at CTV, the creative giants behind The Gates are hard at work revising their scripts.

As if there weren't already enough drama on campus this weekend, a few evenings ago auditions were held for the new Columbia/CTV soap opera, entitled The Gates. As expected, Bwog tried out—and was deferred. "The thing is," said the writer/director in an email, "even though there are about 25-30 characters in the season, only about 10 of them appear in the pilot episode. We'd love to work with you, but right now the parts we have in mind haven't been fully written / fleshed out yet."

Sounds like a cop-out rejection to us, but we're keeping our fingers crossed. Maybe we're just not soap opera material? For now, details of the show are fuzzy—we only know about the parts that we won't be getting. The pilot episode begins with two roommates—one jockish, soon-to-be frat brother, and one quiet, sensitive Buddhist introvert—meeting for the first time freshman year. How will it work out? They're so different! Oh no, the drama! Other characters include assorted frat brothers, a girl who was described to us as the "stereotypical Asian lesbian," and another whose only known attribute is her tendency to discuss great works of art while performing fellatio. Overheard in callbacks:

Do I have to go through all the motions?

No. You can just sort of...you know...stand there.

We are famous.

Also, we sound like men.

When reached for comment, Felix Gillette, CJR Daily reporter and author of the Slate profile of J.J. had the following to say:

"I'm concerned that the long hours, endless travel, and lack of a stable home life may finally be catching up with J.J. Jumper. This latest incident looks like nothing less than a cry for help. I think NCAA officials need to step in, pay CTV for the damaged equipment, and get J.J. into counseling. Pronto. Otherwise, this kind of passive aggressive behavior is only going to get worse.

After all, it's a slippery slope from dancing to 'Lil Bow Wow to smashing up court-side cameras to drinking one's life away on the streets.

My thoughts are with J.J."

As are ours. Last of the J.J. posts, we promise.

This isn't the first time Columbia and J.J. Jumper's stars have collided. A Columbia Journalism Review reporter did a bittersweet profile of the homeless frog for Slate almost a year ago. It seems like J.J. takes it more than he dishes it out so maybe we aren't so mad at him for destroying $6,500 of CTV equipment.