Bwog apologizes for the delay in Barnard class day coverage. Our camera wasn't working and we couldn't have you just take us at our word.

On Tuesday morning, as a faint drizzle turned into a steady downpour, 597 "awe-inspiring women" graduated from Barnard, along with their president. Let me the spare you the burden of reading the rest of this post: Barnard class day won this year.

Although the college had boasted of a star-studded class day with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Billie Jean King (tennis star), David Remnick (New Yorker editor-in-chief) and Thelma Adair (Head Start founder), only hizzoner addressed the graduating class. The rest received Barnard medals of distinction. New Yorkers are accustomed to seeing Bloomberg on TV for the occasional press conference, and he usually appears somewhat lovable, schlumpy and uninspired. But during his class day speech he was practically animated—funny at all the right times, legitimately inspiring at others—and reminded everyone why he's Joel Klein's boss and not vice versa.

He began by mocking JShap's poodle, Nora, who he called a "one poodle canine security patrol" and questioned the dog's legal right to parade about an otherwise dog-free campus. He then addressed the subject of the wall around the Vag's construction zone with the tone of an amused civil servant. "You've all spent your senior year learning to be graffiti artists," he said. "May I remind you—your tagging days are done. What happens at Barnard stays at Barnard."

Last week's haiku contest proved a jolly good time, so we thought we'd share with you which haikus H-dad liked the best. We'd been corresponding with him via gmail up until yesterday, when we received this report. Is H-dad dead? Prove that he is/isn't by sending pictures and sightings to hawkmadinejad@gmail.com

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

Elizabeth Rice, SEAS '11, is the champion.

Learned Foote and Tom Amegadzie of Class Action! The ticket triumphed with 42% of 483 votes. Sean Udell (Representative — iColumbia) was the only candidate to break into Class Action's slate, garnering the most votes of the representatives with 168 (probably because of the awesome carnival that he proposed in the debates). The only Class Action candidate not to be elected was Noah Baron.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that despite RealColumbia's strong showing on Facebook, they seemed unable to turn out their base. Vesal Yazdi and Tania Harsono came in second, 17 points behind Foote and Amegadzie.

The turnout overall was pretty low (even for American standards) and with under 50% turnout, Class Action's "mandate" is weakened substantially.

In other election news, an anonymous tipster reported the tearing down of a poster and remnants of torn posters in an eleventh hour campaign scuffle between Columbia's 711 Open 24/7 and Fight for Your Right.

Read more and you can find the complete results as well as the answers to iColumbia's Sudoku.

Columbia won (gasp!) the men's water polo championship, beating West Point 6 to 5. The team goes to nationals in Miami, Ohio in two weeks.

Now if only Bwog could remember where it put its school spirit...

Last night in London, it was announced that Kiran Desai, a creative writing MFA student at our fair University, has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. From the press release: "Her winning book, The Inheritance of Loss, is a radiant, funny and moving family saga and has been described by reviewers as 'the best, sweetest, most delightful novel.'"

Desai, at 35, is the youngest woman to ever win the Man. In a bit of a twisted coincidence, it turns out that Desai's mother, Anita, "has been shortlisted for the prize three times since 1980 but has never won"...which is going to make dinner tonight reeeeeealy awkward. Especially since, rumor has it, they're planning on inviting Jhumpa Lahiri.