Jezebel has breathlessly recounted an argument that occurred between Columbia's own James, a self-described anti-feminist with a private Facebook page, and an unnamed Barnard student who slapped him for saying that he hadn't met an "intellectual feminist" in his life. Naturally, this all happened this weekend at a party East Campus because of course.

James' mysterious and covert Facebook also features a theoried-out anti-feminist rant. It's cryptic and long and its coherence is tenuous, but you can read the whole thing on Jezebel (if you're so inclined).

Oh okay fine, here's the thesis: "The ethos of the feminist movement and gender relations today in America [is] the homosexualization and corruption of women into earthly creatures moved only by sex and material power, incapable of affirming a natural and sacred feminine identity in favor of an unnatural masculine one."

Bwog just heard word that this July, Governor Paterson signed legislation making smoking illegal in all New York college dormitories -- this includes EC!

A pair of RAs also noted that at least for Columbia, the mere possession of tobacco products is forbidden.

In other crackdown news, one Bwog staffer was removed by security this morning for eating some delightful breakfast treats in a Lerner computer lounge. The no-eating policy in the computer lounges is nothing new, but now it seems it's actually being enforced, which is just awful.

Smoke, heroism and disappointment cloud EC and its environs! Eyewitness report from Bwogger John Klopfer:

"Minutes ago, outside of the Center for Career Education on Morningside Drive, a loud whoomph was heard and the smell of gas filled the Columbia University Tutoring and Translating Agency. Alarmed students poured out of its offices as flames shot six feet into the air through the hood of a taxicab parked just outside. The driver valiantly fought the flames with a small extinguisher, which availed him little. Within minutes, no fewer than three fire engines arrived on the scene. As bored firemen bandied about their axes and neighborhood children looked on in awe, the first engine's hose was brought to finish the job. Now, the driver is standing by his car making phone calls, looking disappointed as the fire crews roll out."

Photo by Sam Reisman

The answer, as six unlucky CU students will probably soon find out, is perhaps a lot more than $200. One Bwog tipster (and probably dozens of other students with decent lottery numbers) received an email from a group calling themselves "Columbia Students." The email proposed an Old-Timey Barter in which housing lottery numbers would be swapped in order for "Columbia Students" to secure a coveted East Campus suite with 6 singles. The email reads:

"Obviously, we know that there would be no reason for you to help us out, but we were hoping that with monetary compensation some of you would consider a swap. We would be able to get 6 good rooms in Broadway (or very possibly a 6-person suite in EC with 4 singles and 1 double), so if you are interested in swapping rooms/suite for a decent monetary compensation (at least $200 per person, but price is completely negotiable)"

Parties interest in swapping lottery numbers should email the (endearingly utilitarian) Gmail address provided: cu.housing.seniors@gmail.com

Full email after the jump

While you sun yourselves in far-flung locales, remember, gentle readers, that the 2008 housing lottery waits for no one. In the spirit of steadfastness, we invite you for a brief sojourn back to East Campus.

A Brief Guide to East Campus, from someone who lives in Wien

Next door to the dilapidated honeycomb that is Wien Hall rises the stentorious [point taken! - ed.] edifice of East Campus. With its own moat-like brick-layed "plaza" serving little or no purpose except during Orientation Week (hotdog party memories anyone?), EC lives up to its reputation as a latecomer to the campus housing circle, a distant add-on to the cozy buildings surrounding the lawns and nestled down among the residential side-streets of Broadway.

As an outsider, I'm afraid I have little to offer in the way of gross-out anecdotes about bathrooms or complaints about maintenance or broken doors or somesuch thing. I do offer a hodge-podge of general notes on the dorm, though, that might be helpful to potential residents:

This is for a very narrow section of the population, namely for those of you bored in class, reading Bwog, and contemplating a shower on your return to your dorm in EC. Tough luck. There will be no running water in EC for an indefinite period of time. The reason? Only the delightfully intriguing "emergency repairs" was given.

The winds of change (and frigid, seasonal air) are a'blowin' in Morningside. Beginning with Toast, everyone's favorite spot for a second or third date. Toast has relocated from its previous location on Broadway between LaSalle and Tiemann (right near 125th) and has taken up residence in Carne's old spot on Broadway and 105th. With Manhattanville's development in the works, this seems a bit counter-intuitive to Bwog, as property values in precisely Toast's old location are sure to skyrocket. Nonetheless, we look forward to schlepping just as far to Toast, this time in the other direction.

Farther up on Broadway, big news for Pinkberry devotees in the form of its latest flavor addition: coffee. Bwog picked the brain of Pinkberry cashier Shadenia who explained that many customers have been sampling coffee, but not many have been ordering it. "They have to get used to it." Those quickly-adapting coffee converts are enjoying the new flavor with chestnuts, a new seasonal topping. (To those following Pinkberry's seasonal ingredients, winter's chestnut is replacing fall's pomegranate seeds.) "I'm not really a coffee person," said Shadenia, quite seriously.

Bwog observed six customers in Pinkberry, none with coffee. Melanie and Angela ate original and green tea, respectively. They seem underwhelmed about the addition of the coffee flavor and had no plans to try it. "It's the same category as green tea," Angela explained. Bwog asked for clarification. "There's original. And then the other flavors are green tea and coffee." Brows furrowed, Bwog exited Pinkberry.

And no recapitulation of developments in Columbia and its environs would be complete without a salute to the new EC elevators. The vaguely space station-y silver elevators are just as sterile and ugly (metal mesh!) as the old EC elevators, the design of which Bwog can barely remember.

- JNW

Move-out yields hints of distinctive suite decor.

Figure out who's posting the jaws around campus? This pair was spotted above the scaffolding from EC to Revson Plaza, and it's starting to get unnerving.

Friday afternoon edit: We noticed a plastic container in Lerner lobby bearing a poster covered in similarly orthodontic motifs. It also has a sign that asks passersby to donate "literature for prisoners." Teeth molds = non sequitur advertising for charitable effort?

In retrospect, how did no one figure out this was going on?

EC "excluded" from many seniors' plans.

Repeating a meaningless phrase fourteen times in one article doesn't make it funny.*

From Rajasthan with love.

*Unless that phrase is "purple monkey dishwasher."

It seems as if Columbia has been having a bit of trouble with Fire Safety lately. Yesterday, two unrelated occurrences confirm that maybe we should be worried about the all-consuming wrath-fire after all.

From Bwog Tipster Addison Anderson, on yesterday's EC fire alarm:

After the alarm from the smoke scare on the 14th floor stopped ringing, everyone went back inside. I was walking down the hallway on 14, when I ran into a bunch of firefighters standing outside the Suite of Carelessness. The following exchange ensued:

Firefighter (annoyed): You know, there's a fire, and one of you kids might get hurt.
Me: So they shouldn't have let us all back inside?
Firefighter: ...No.
Me: Because that's what they did, they said we could...
Firefighter sighs and shakes head mournfully, fed up.

Some EC residents are beginning to feel like maybe the University has it in for them. First the non-working water heaters, then the awful elevators, and now this? It makes you wonder...

Next, a same-day dispatch from Bwog staffer Andrew Flynn.

Today was a bad day for fire alarms. One went off in Milbank during my class with Taylor Carman, professor of Philosophy. Carman was already over-time, but he stopped to assess the situation. Unfortunately, the noise of the alarm was not loud or frequent enough to constitute a significant emergency, he told us. So, as we watched through the glass doors as others streamed out of the building, Carman raised his voice and frantically tried to continue his lecture on Bourdieu over the commotion. A few minutes into this, he stepped back and stoically declared that he was beginning to question the wisdom of our procedure.

I love this man.

Bwog doesn't have the cash to "pimp your room," and we certainly don't want to raid it and then date you. So we bring you our semi-weekly feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Gabi, Moe, Celia, Sara (left to right) and Tom (not pictured), some adventurous and artsy juniors and seniors, set out from their EC exclusion suite on a mission. They had a blue Craigslist couch (right) to retrieve from its owner on 86th Street, and they weren't going to let anything -- not Housing and Dining's rules about renting bins for only two hours, nor the steep slope of the Upper West Side -- get in their way.

The couch was essential. It would become a member of the EC1406 family, and would be affectionately referred to as "Peeb'r."

Why Peeb'r?

On the day they got the couch, Gabi says, "alot of PBR was consumed."

The cold, barren stairwells of EC aren't usually the most exciting venue for New York's artistic avant-garde. Bwog was surprised, then, to find stenciled notes hanging on dueling walls, one between the 6th and 7th and 13th floors of the building and one on the 11th, sporting ironic questionnaires. "Do You Like Me?" one inquires, giving the reader the options of "No" or "Eww, No". The other allows one to pick "Yes" or "Totally".

Stairwell spelunker David Iscoe asks "which wall will get lucky and which one will be turned down? Maybe that's the 'art' of it?"

Overheard! in Café 212:
Girl 1: It really sucks that Anna Nicole Smith's kid died.
Girl 2: How'd he die?
Girl 1: He overdosed on drugs.
Passing Boy: If Anna Nicole Smith was my mom, I'd probably
do drugs too.
[Girls 1, 2 stare as passing boy passes by.]

Overheard! outside of Carman:
[Mobile phone.] "Well, I went to talk to my advisor today, and he wasn't even there! The secretary lady told me I'd have to come back with a form, but I'm not sure which form she means—I was going to ask the advisor! Ugghh, Columbia! There's just so much... What's the word? Bureaucracy!"
Columbia: a school of hard knocks and unwittingly repetitive railers.

Overheard! on the west end of the Low Library steps:
[Mobile phone.] "What do you mean she doesn't want the Nobel!"

Overheard! at the EC security desk:
Male Security Guard: The more you drink, the better you look. And I would know, as I've been drunk many a times.
Some Preppy Guy: ...

Overheard! in Intermediate Macroeconomics:
Xavier Sala-I-Martin: But even sperm, you put a helmet on sperm, you get no cookies!

Warm thanks and congratulations to tipsters Brandie Moreno, Taylor Walsh, Seth Berliner, John Shekitka, and John Klopfer. Send us your gossip, one and all!

Well, friends, it seems that John Jay is infested with much larger, much blacker, much furrier pests than those of yesteryear—those being the famed bedbugs. Bwog recently received several pictures of pestilence countermeasures deployed throughout John Jay and the cafeteria's back room.

Bwog also speaks to its janitors on occasion. Last time, Bwog asked what the evil smell emanating from behind Bwog's broken stove was; the janitor suggested that there was perhaps a dead rat back behind there, in the electronics—yes, a dead, stinking rat which had wriggled its way into a cozy nest of wires and nearly gutted the whole suite with cleansing gas-fueled fire. Supposedly, this isn't something to raise eyebrows over, these days. Bwog knows its janitor wasn't raising his.

In other housing news, the 12^th floor of EC should be ashamed of itself. Housing and Dining reports that fourth incident of 'careless cooking' has been declared by the FDNY, which, in Bwog's opinion, is probably beginning to think Columbia students are conspiring against it. At least, this time, they haven't published the suite number. Bwog speculates that this this omission is intended to slow the formation of a fifth column of anar-cookery specialists.

Thanks to tipster Yadira Alvarez for having her camera phone ready.