Several readers have tipped Bwog off that the cover story for this week's New York Times Magazine discusses transgender students, and centers specifically around Rey, a transgender student who enrolled at Barnard last year. The article takes a look at the treatment of transgender students at different universities--for instance, Wesleyan uses gender-neutral pronouns like "ze" and "hir"--as well as what it means to be transgender at a women's college.

Rey discusses his first week at Barnard, during which his room mate felt uncomfortable that she was "being asked to live with a man," after enrolling at a women's college. Rey and his parents met with Dean of the College Dorothy Denburg about the situation, and it was eventually decided that enrolling in the School of General Studies might be a better fit. Rey now describes himself as very happy after an awful first semester. The long-ish but incredibly interesting article can be read online in its entirety.

Also in the New York Times of Columbia-related interest is an article about everyone's favorite little-controversy-that-could Juicy Campus. The piece focuses on the aftermath of scandalous Juicy Campus posts regarding one student at Yale (who participated in an amateur pornographic film) and one at Baylor University (who was called a slut).

The recent attempts to "outlaw" the site at Pepperdine University were also mentioned, but ultimately the student leading the crusade against Juicy Campus expressed regret about drawing attention to it in the first place.

"Looking back, it was a mistake," said Austin Maness, a senior who wrote the resolution but now feels that it only increased students' awareness of Juicy Campus. "Curiosity killed the cat," he said, "and everyone started going to the site."

- JNW