When we posted an update about all the new professorial friends you'll be making (and losing) next year, we weren't aware that we had made a grave and conspicuous omission. One recent grad informed us that Cheryl Mendelson, wife of Edward Mendelson, is filling in as "Term Associate Professor" in the Barnard Philosophy Department next semester. Cheryl Mendelson is also the author of such fine books as Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House and Laundry: The Home Comforts Book of Caring for Clothes and Linens, which are 884 and 400 pages, respectively.

Oh, dear.

According to scholarly database Amazon.com, Mendelson has also dabbled in fiction, namely a book called Morningside Heights: A Novel, which Publisher's Weekly described as a "talky, occasionally stilted debut." Apparently, it's about an opera singer and his wife, who turns "domesticity into a deeply creative act" -- kind of like Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House and Laundry: The Home Comforts Book of Caring for Clothes and Linens. (From Home Comforts: "Until now, I have almost entirely concealed this passion for domesticity. No one meeting me for the first time would suspect that I squander my time knitting or my mental reserves remembering household facts such as the date when the carpets and mattresses were last rotated. Without thinking much about it, I knew I would not want this information about me to get around.")

Anyway, Mendelson will be teaching two classes in the fall: Mind and Morals and What is Philosophy?

This perhaps flawed electrical set up is coupled with recent reports from CUIT's head of information security of phishing attacks made on Columbia Cubmail accounts. It seems emails from Nigerian princes asking you send money in order to receive your lottery winnings might be of questionable intent. This led some Bwog editors to wonder about how safe are we really? If we're not safe in the John Jay laundry room or on the interwebs, which places does that leave us? Barnard? Bwog thinks not.

Both emails after the jump

This message found taped to an EC vending machine. Not that angry statements against laundry aggressors aren't that novel, but this one's pretty harsh...

ATTENTION: To whoever stole my year-supply of TIDE detergent (w/Febreze):

I would like to tell you personally, that you are a douchebag. You couldn't grab like a load's-worth of detergent, you had to take the entire thing. When I went to go put in my last load of clothes, not only was my detergent gone, but the detergent machine ate my coins and my clothes are washing with no soap. I don't even know you but this is already too expensive of an interaction. Who do you think you stole from? Not from a privileged republican athlete, you stole from a girl who is not wealthy and was trying to save money by buying her detergent in bulk. I hope i have the opportunity to meet you in person so that I can tell you to eat shit. (something crossed out) fuck you.
<3
-El
p.s. your mother should have had an abortion, you parasite.
To whoever is touring Columbia's campus as a potential place for your son or daughter, do not come here. Your child's detergent is not safe. And he/she will be going to school with malicious opportunists who have no class and no respect.

- Kudos to Avishai Gebler for typing up the vitriol

Casting a glimpse at the sheets hanging on Low Plaza right now may trigger some residual memories of last spring's SHOCC protests. But at today's "speak out," the medium is the message. Jennifer Oki, C'07 says Columbia sends dirty tablecloths from the faculty house and soiled towels from the EC hotel to get washed at New Haven's New England Linen, a non-unionized company where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found 23 health code violations.

Most laundry companies in New York are unionized, Oki said. "It won't be a huge thing to get them to use another company."

In other news, cute baby to be activist!