From the deepest corner of our hearts, Bwog wishes underclassmen the best of luck on today's Lit Hum and CC exams. We'd wrap this post up with a classical reference, but Bwog is being edited by an engineer today, so we'll just allude to the Wretched of the Earth with a dash of übermenschen and leave it at that. Excelsior!

(Also, um, hopefully the exam stayed secret this year. Everyone hates make-ups in September.)

A faculty tipster informed a Bwog staffer that the new book for the second semester of Lit Hum is going to be Ovid's Metamorphoses. (Ovid is not going to be taking the place of anything else, it's just an addition.)

"They were also thinking about adding Kafka for irony's sake but ended up not doing it," explains the in-the-know Bwog staffer. Because nothing screams "irony for irony's sake" like two books that have little to do with each other but happen to be homophonic.

Plato is rooting for you!

The 2006-07 school year has contained multitudes. In fact, it may just be the most eventful year Columbia's had since... well, the year before. Remember Matthew Fox? The Chung-Diamond "scandal"? "Don't Be a Pussy"? "Epilogue to Our Crime & Punishment: A Petition"? Bwog certainly does, so step into the Wayback machine - you're about to relive nine months of Columbia in a single post.

August

First-years move in. Orientation yields a legendary (to Bwog's mind, at least) week-long burst of posting. Addison Anderson went to a bunch of bars in the name of "journalism." Most literary post: "And now for some disorientation," which reads like early Bret Easton Ellis, if he knew about Koronet's. Orientation week was the best.

September

Facebook went literally insane. Then calmed down somewhat. Harvard abandoned ED; Columbia did not. Columbia Football had as-yet uncrushed high hopes, later crushed. Seth Flaxman declared victory. Best villains: Zuckerberg! Murphy! Ahmadinejad! You know, one of those.

October

Everything was coming up roses for Mark Modesitt. 1968 spirit was invoked by Jim Gilchrist. The fallout was immense - shady disciplinary letters, "news" coverage of all sorts (Jon Stewart, Fox News). Even Bwog had an opinion. But October wasn't all about relevant television coverage of Columbia issues with high production values - we also had "The Gates"!
Best correspondence to Bwog: "Subject: terrorists. your worse then the mooselums who flew the planes into the buildings"

Columbia students who stayed tuned after American Idol tonight were rewarded by this Fox 5 news teaser: "The cheating scandal at Columbia - the teacher at the center of the
storm, and the tough choice students are being forced to make." The Fox News affiliate ran a brief story, with both the usual (stock footage of college walk, picture of Wen Jin) and with the somewhat more interesting. One freshman engaged the reporter in this exchange:

STUDENT: "I think, because it's Columbia, people like to sensationalize the whole thing."

REPORTER: "So you're blaming it on us..."

STUDENT: [laughs] "Yeah, you guys."

Spec's reporting that freshmen will have the option to retake the lit hum exam or to receive a grade based on the rest of their work this semester. Apparently, it was all the professor's fault... So the choice is obvious for most.

But what about all those C students who have already jet off for the Caribbean?

Full text of the email after the jump. (Don't worry, the article is still on the Spec site.) You'll notice they said they released it "to the press"- check the New York Post, Daily News, AND New York Sun tomorrow for doubtlessly enlightening information, some of which was gathered through Facebooking freshmen.

NOTICE, Tuesday 4:20 PM: As noted in a previous post, comments with full names will be deleted at the request of the target.

UPDATE: Here's some Spec coverage to tide you over.

UPDATE 5:29PM: A new email has been released by the Core Office:

The following e-mail was sent to all Lit Hum teachers earlier today:

Dear Colleagues,

There has been an unfortunate breach in Lit Hum final exam security.

Notes identifying the quotations and sketching out the essay questions circulated among students prior to the exam. (We have one copy of these notes.)

You probably didn't hear it here first: the freshman class, according to numerous sources, is buzzing with the knowledge that content from the Lit Hum final was leaked to at least one class prior to the exam.

Details are shady, but first-years tell of widespread indignation when the exam let out at 3:30 on Friday that many students had received a "study guide" with areas to look for passage IDs and vague ideas of essay topics. The most solid information Bwog has been able to obtain indicates that a female seminar leader gave the information to her entire class, and that it spread via floors and sports teams until hundreds of students had seen the notes, which one source spotted lying around Butler Café after the exam.

"Anybody could have gotten 10 out of 10 on the IDs," said one source.

The Associate Dean of the Core Curriculum has been informed of the prevalence of alleged leaks. Bwog will update you as more information becomes available.

NOTICE, 4:45 PM: As part of a pending comment policy revision, comments with full names will be removed at the request of the target, no questions asked. We live in the age of Google, kids. If you must name names, use initials or something.

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.

I have to be honest, I didn't know that much about the Core Curriculum when I first came here. More specifically, I didn't know that it would take over my life, precluding me from being like my friends at Brown who take four pass-fail courses in bone-setting and rhythmic gymnastics. No, I'm forced to learn things. And learning is hard. Forthwith, I present my Core learnings, having reached my first midterm of college.

The Medea — You know that girl who got dumped by her boyfriend, and then immediately started spreading rumors about how small his dick was and how he gave her herpes? Of course — everyone knows that girl. And how she then started a Facebook group mocking her ex and keyed his car? Sure, sounds familiar. And then gave the ex's new girlfriend a poisoned robe, killing the girlfriend and her father? And killed her (hypothetical) children? Medea — role model to crazy exes everywhere.

Oedipus the King — And to think all this time I thought people were saying, "edible complex"...

After the jump, our intrepid first-year explores the world of University Writing and Major Cultures...

More stuff you shouldn't have saved on public computers.

But if God is omnipotent, why does he care? As we see in Exodus 20:5, God declares that he is a "jealous God". Could this be true? Is this why the Jews received a grand total of 613 commandments—to keep them in check?

Also, each program will have only one hour dedicated to an activity, and the other hour is dedicated to PHOTO-VOICE!

Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Vaclav Havel: Which one of these things is not like the other?

New football coach offers idealistic promises that won't pan out; will be followed by a return to normalcy

Professors must find a new forum for controversial, condescendingly-expressed opinions

For those of you who aren't fine with a T-shirt and a dirty pair of jeans

So have you finished those first six books yet? No? Bwog's resident epic poetess Anna Corke gives you the quick and dirty version. Now don't say we never gave you anything.

Book I: In Which Our Hero Loses His Woman, Cries to Mommy, Rages.

Book II: In Which Zeus Lies; Agamemnon Tries to Chicken Out of the War; Odysseus Changes His Mind, Beats Up An Ugly Guy; And Our Narrator Gives Us The Catalogue of Ships.

Book III: In Which Helen Calls Herself A Slut, Menelaos & Paris Fight Over Her, Aphrodite Whisks a Wimpy Paris Away from Battle to a Billowing Bedchamber, Helen Tells Paris She Wishes He Had Died, And They Sleep Together.

Book IV: In Which Hera and Zeus Fight Again; Zeus Describes Hera's Hatred As A Thirst For Raw Human Flesh, and Lattimore Uses the Word Niggling.

Book V: In Which Diomedes Kills Several, Wounds Goddess, Wounds God.

Book VI: In Which Glaukos & Diomedes Are Evenly Matched, Trade Armor; Women of Troy Pray for Peace, Are Ignored; Hector Makes His Son Cry, Laughs.