Today in news you didn’t know could make news: Nutella theft at Columbia University has reached catastrophic highs. Since Nutella became a regular amenity in Ferris Booth Commons (like the Sharpe Refectory, but with more affectation), Dining Services weekly costs have supposedly jumped up by thousands of dollars. Yes, the simple and addictive chocolate-hazelnut spread was disappearing at a rate of about 100 pounds per week (i.e. the amount of weight one could feasibly put on by downing tubs of Nutella regularly). The New York Times claims that these numbers are up for debate, but maintains that students fear that their spread hoarding will limit future improvements in dining services. Colleges have a tendency to make the trivial monumental within the microcosm of campus news, but now the Times has been sucked into a story that has essentially zero connection to Columbia’s Morningside Heights neighborhood, let alone the NY metropolitan area. I guess the relevance is that this whole ordeal makes a good case for Nutella’s drug-like qualities. Nevertheless, I believe this kind of gluttonous thievery would never occur at Brown — could you imagine the look on Gail’s face? Of course you can (see far right).

Image via.

It could happen here too.

So a 20-year-old was arrested for pretending to be a Columbia University student. Since Columbia needed 9 months to catch this phony undergrad, and we do go to Brown, the Blog figured we’d give the student body a handy guide to identify any would be Brunonian impostor after the jump:

[Read more →]

We might have lost to Columbia today, but our band still wins in creativity, wit and the ability to draw phallic imagery on the field.

After shooting themselves in the foot ridiculing their own team, the Columbia University Marching Band (CUMB, yes, really, CUMB) was barred from performing in their game against Brown yesterday. The offending lyrics were sung after a 62-41 against Cornell.

(As a side note, the parody wasn’t even funny. Really? The best you’ve got is “We always lose, lose, lose; by a lot, and sometimes by a little”?)

However, after applications of the First Amendment that made our Founding Fathers repeatedly facepalm in their graves, the band was allowed to perform again in yesterday’s game.

Oh yeah, and then there was a football game itself. We lost, 35-28 in double overtime.

Image via.

Image via http://gallery.columbia.edu/

What a week our fellow Ivy Columbia is having…

Multiple news sources are reporting that the NYPD have arrested 5 Columbia students for dealing drugs as the conclusion of a 5-month long investigation dubbed “Operation Ivy League.”

For complete details and continuing coverage of the situation, be sure to check out Columbia’s student run blog, Blog Daily Columbia BWOG.

A couple days ago, New York Times blog The Lede posted an e-mail from Columbia’s Office of Career Services to the student body. The memo reported that an alum of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), currently employed by the State Department, called the office with a message to prospective government employees replete with so much quasi-totalitarian repression it could put a smile on Joseph McCarthy’s long-deceased face: don’t share WikiLeaks documents on social networking websites because it reflects one’s poor “ability to deal with confidential information.” The full text and the letter’s dire implications after the jump.   [Read more →]

Yesterday, The Columbia Spectator, published an opinion post that compared Ivy League universities’ endowments with the GDPs of real world counties. The author obviously admitted that the comparison is “an idiotic question.”  His calculations showed that if Harvard, which has the highest endownment out of all of the Ivies, were the United States, the country with the highest GDP, then Brown’s endowment would compare to that of Australia and Singapore.

While the findings might be interesting, if we were to assign a country to Brown, we would pick Denmark – the happiest country in the world.

Sarah Forman writes in today’s Brown Daily Herald about the University’s spike in applicants in the last few years. But the article notes that most other highly selective schools are getting similar attention, leading to a decrease in matriculation rates. A prominent college consultant told The Herald that about 95 percent of her students would choose Yale over Brown if they got into both schools. There’s no way to know for sure, but this 2005 study details preferences more specifically. Faced between Princeton and Brown, 73 percent of admitted students would choose Princeton; between Brown and Columbia, 56 percent would matriculate to Brown, according to the mathematical estimate. Read more in the next few weeks about how Brown is branding itself.

The most urban of Ivy League universities has been overrun with coyotes! Well, three coyotes were spotted on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University on Sunday morning. An NYPD officer confirmed the sighting.

Barnard’s Director of Public Safety, Dianna Pennetti, sent a campus-wide email requesting students to report further sightings. She wrote, “All members of the community are advised not to approach these animals” although coyotes typically don’t attack humans.

Though it seems surreal that there’s wildlife wandering around an urban jungle, coyotes have been known to adapt to urban environments. Coyotes survive in cities by foraging in garbage and going after rats or squirrels. New York has had its share of coyotes: one made its way to Central Park in 2006.

Until the coyotes are captured, it looks like Columbia students will have to watch out for wild animals in addition to urban crime.

— Goda Thangada

Brown defeated Columbia in the last game of last year's football season to secure a share of the Ivy championship.

Yes, believe it or not, Brown does have varsity sports teams — and a handful of fall teams have been nationally ranked and competitive in recent years. Sports editor Andrew Braca gives a run-down of games to watch this season in Tuesday’s Herald.

The football team is ranked third in the Ivy league for the season, behind Harvard and Penn, after coming off a co-championship season last year. (And they beat co-champs Harvard head-to-head, so the Crimson’s championship rings don’t shine quite so brightly as Bruno’s.) The Bears will be preparing to face off against intrastate rival URI in their homecoming game this season:

Football, Oct. 3:
Homecoming games are often exciting, but last year’s 24-22, rain-soaked triumph over Harvard will be hard to top. This year, the Bears will square off against the University of Rhode Island in the battle for the 94th Governors Cup, seeking to avenge a 37-13 loss to the Rams last year.

Six All-Ivy selections return from last year, but Bruno will be breaking in a new quarterback.

Are the third-ranked Bears underrated or past their prime? We’ll have to wait and find out.