Several New York blogs have picked up on an Obsessed TV interview with "Real Housewife of New York" Kelly Killoren Bensimon, and all seem to agree the best quote is about how she got into the School of General Studies:

"A friend of mine said you should really go to Columbia, they have an amazing journalism department there. And so I actually went to the school and I said to them, I said, 'You know, if you take me, I, you know, you just gotta give me a chance, and if you take me, then I will be the best student, I will do whatever it is, whatever you need whenever you need it. I promise you, you know, I will not be a mistake.' And this man, the dean, was like, 'Who are you? Like, what? No, no, no. We have a process here. You have to fill out an application.' And I was like, 'No no no, It's nice you have an application, I've already sent that in, but I want to go here, and I really really wanted to go there.' And he let me in."

Combined with the allegations against her for assaulting her boyfriend and stealing jewelry ideas, GS students everywhere haven't been this embarrassed since the last time they had to...oh screw it, the Varsity Show beat those jokes into the ground.

But perhaps GS can claim Bensimon is simply dumber with age. In April 1996, she talked about balancing her studying, modeling, and charity work to the now-defunct Columbia Observer, saying "Columbia is like just one of my fingers. But being part of my body I treat it with the same respect that I do my work or charity or whatever I'm doing." Then again, maybe not.

Harvard rejects can always feel bad that Ted Kaczynski was accepted, and now Columbia has its very own esteemed criminal alumni. Esther Reed, a Montana woman who attended Columbia for two years under an assumed identity, was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison for identity theft.

Starting in 2004, Reed spent two years studying in New York under the assumed name Brooke Henson. Reed is pictured on the right, and Henson is on the left. Henson, a South Carolina woman, went missing in 1999. Though police still have a missing persons webpage for her that's still soliciting leads on her whereabouts, the lead detective believes the real Henson was murdered (Reed was not involved in her disappearance). The working theory is that she stole Henson's identity after seeing a news story about her. More after the jump

Bwog would like to invite you to say hello to GS's new Owl Logo! You'll recall that their old Owl, Gulliver, was owlnapped from Harford Community College.

Anyway, this new guy (gal?) is so snazzy with the little thumbs up. Well, thumbs up to you too New Gulliver.

Does anyone actually know what anthropology is?

What does Evo love more: nationalization of oil or speaking at Columbia?

Should GS deans be chosen in the same way as GS students--far too late?

Did you know that, like, East 116th is TOTALLY less gentrified than, like, Columbia? I think she actually saw a poor person!

Can Columbia sports only win through not telling anyone about injuries to players?

Fu Foundation Bureau Chief Sean Zimmermann reports from last night's ESC meeting.

At last night ESC meeting, many changes were afoot within the ESC you know and love. Even though CourseWorks is maybe probably on the outs, the Council's Director of Technology Kenny Rivera is developing a CourseWorks application for the iPhone—to better check that your professor didn't post the assigned reading, on the go!

And then there was a bit of odd news concerning GS's logo, which needs to be replaced because it was apparently taken from a community college. You remember Gulliver, yes? ESC did not mention which community college shares GS's logo, but a quick Google Image search reveals that Harford Community College is a possibility.

Earlier today, we spoke to SGA President Sarah Besnoff, who explained that despite reports of Swipe Access' imminence, in fact, a CCSC/SEAS survey on the issue is the next step in actually moving forward on this thing.

According to CCSC VP of Policy Adil Ahmed, this survey will be sent out "shortly." CCSC is currently working with Housing and Dining, and then must present their efforts to Security.

As for the GS question, according to Ahmed: "[CCSC has] only talked about BC and will be incorporating GS into the discussions shortly. We're going to work on this in stages with BC getting first priority."

Current-founder Bari Weiss, CC '07, writes in the (possibly ill-fated) New York Sun today about the 19 incoming Columbia GS first-years who had previously served in the Armed Forces.

(According to Weiss, GS was created in 1947 partly as a response to the high number of ex-soldiers returning from WWII.)

Weiss spoke to a number of the 19 first-years about the differences between military life and academic life, and reactions range from confident about success ("You sit down next to these girls who are 18 years old and they've got plastic jewelry from Claire's and they're trying to understand the rise and fall of the USSR. They can do it; but we've seen dictators rise and fall") to thankful for the ability to appreciate the civilian life: "I'm just happy to be alive. I'm ecstatic here."

NY1 is reporting that a mother and a daughter graduated together from GS yesterday. "'It was very competitive, she loves to compete. Like what grade did you get on your paper? How well did you do on your midterm? And in the end when I got a B+ and she got an A-, she was like "I did better than you did," she rubbed it in my face,' says mother Insaf Abdullah." As for post-grad plans, daughter plans to return to the Middle East while mother opts for grad school.

Bwog offers accolades to both mother and daughter, but frankly we're a bit shocked that this exact situation has never been lampooned in a Varsity Show before.

Jarid Maged wrote a "17 page admissions essay" to get into GS, which apparently doesn't impose a word limit. (Also, the title of this column makes only weird, self-referential sense.)

The Spec is extremely comfortable cursing in print now. And, apparently, fellating the Arcade Fire. Quite literally.

Tegan and Sara... still fresh. Still cool.

Apparently Columbia should "move on" from the whole 1968 thing. An eight hundred word editorial and 40-year anniversary conference are good first steps.

Take-out food... it's delicious! Um, unless you take this article's advice and go to Milano.

The School of General Studies has just announced its 2008 valedictorian: Joel Beal.

Beal, like CC's valedictorian, is an economics-mathematics major. He is bound for Stanford in the fall, where he will be pursuing a Ph.D. in economics.

Congratulations!

Turns out the mysterious Tao Tan is now in Australia. Stranger still, he's been paying attention to the latest news coming out of Morningside Heights. The armchair Columbia historian's thoughts (which matter, we think) on today's front-page shocker:

1) I had drinks and lunch with Peter Awn some years ago. I have a very good friend who's my age and who's in GS, because he's also JTS and the joint program is only GS-JTS and BC-JTS. I asked Awn have they ever thought offering a CC-JTS programme, so my friend could go into something more his age group and still be able to pursue his JTS studies. Awn waffled, saying something like how the GS-JTS program is longstanding and how it would be impossible to satisfy the CC Core requirements whilst still taking JTS studies.

To me, this smelled like BS because 1) GS has the same core requirements as CC, and 2) BC has a similar core load in terms of credits. It is far more likely that the GS-JTS joint programme was conceived because when it was conceived (in the 1950s), CC was a bit, shall we say, anti-Semitic...but, GS is composed of 40% people of "traditional" age (most of whom are JTS enrollees) and 60% older people. I think that the prime beneficiaries in this are the traditional-aged GS-JTS students.

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2) I think if they ever considered a merger, GS admission rates and class sizes would drop precipitously. In the 1960s and 1970s, GS was 3-5x larger than CC, because back then, GS was a cash cow that took open enrollments. After Awn took over in 1995, started offering up competitive merit-based financial aid, and tried to make GS a more selective school, enrollments dropped and admission rates dropped as well (to just below 50%). The key takeaways from this is that IF GS is recast in the mold of a more traditional school, they will have to do something about the merit-based financial aid -- because, as you know, the Ivy League does not grant merit-based aid. If GS goes all-need-based, then it will become unbelievably more competitive to get into.

3) I have $100 Aussie dollars that absolutely nothing of any significance will come of this...a professor once told me that every few years, Columbia announces some sort of revamping operation (this being no different) that comes out with sweeping, grandiose plans to fundamentally change blah blah blah. And when they do come out with their much-ballyhooed report, the alumni revolt makes sure the whole thing is quietly shuffled and buried and nobody thinks much of it until when a few years down the line, the next hare-brained committee is formed.

The most recent task force that professor served on was the one right after the 1996 hunger strike on ethnic studies when a task force was formed to talk about the future of undergraduate education and curricula at Columbia. After that he got tenure and refused to deal with any more faculty committee crap. I think a possible compromise they might dream up is that GS will have to fundraise until it has sufficient monies to run a sustainable need-based-aid regime, and then talk about closer integration -- knowing full well that it is beyond unlikely for GS to fundraise like that. That way, they can throw a concessionary bone to GS , while making sure that -- in the grand tradition of faculty committees past -- nothing. Ever. Happens.