Think Columbia elections are boring? Varun Devatha, Cornell ’19, recently survived being disqualified over a supporter’s meme containing the Cornell logo to win the presidency by 48 votes after a last minute turnover of the student government’s ruling. Now you can thank the Columbia Elections Commission for such a boring election.
***
A widely denounced post cost US Senator Toqa Badran a couple of votes in the last election. Only, she liked the post before the original author edited in the content people would call out. Of all the things Facebook notifies you about, it doesn’t tell you, “Hey, political scandal, 5 o’clock.”
***
Teaching and research assistants at Harvard have voted to unionize, 1931 in favor versus 1523 against. We imagine representatives from Harvard will be watching the Columbia strike closely from the Harvard Maintenance truck that sometimes hangs around College Walk.
***
The member of SGB accused of sexual assault was not present at the SGB Town Hall. As the guard of SGB changes at Town Hall, we assume he resigned somewhere between then and Bwog’s report.
***
A Dartmouth freshman, Matthew Magann ’21, from The Dartmouth found himself the subject of a Letter to the Editor from Townhall columnist Bruce Bialosky after Magann reportedly misrepresented his argument. We’re too scared to ask what submissions Spec had to reject from their opinion pages.
***
Rumor has it, Mark Lilla will be the guest of honor at the Fall 2018 Veritas Forum.
***
The University Senate forced the Columbia Elections Commission to switch to a preferential voting system midway through the election season in violation of CEC’s Constitution. Since the University Senate definitely outranks the CEC, blame either the anti-democratic Senate or the unestablished Commission.
***
The confidential Student Well-Being Survey launched by Columbia University Life has a special feature; report enough “levels of psychological distress” and your friendly neighborhood LionMail will tell you multiple times that help is available and just a internet platform away. If Columbia’s definition of confidential has increased your “levels of psychological distress,” please call 212-555-2878
***
Apparently following the lead of last year’s Student Government Association, the Events Committee of the Yale College Council stands accused of spending about $1777 of student activities fees to buy custom-made Patagonias. So that’s where the money goes.
***
Your taxes, we mean, your Student Activities Fee, will likely go up by 3% this fall. First Years will still be expected to pay for clubs that they don’t politically agree with and clubs that won’t accept them if they tried, but now they’ll have more of it and Columbia can light one more tree for Tree Lighting.
***
A number of Toni Airaksinen’s columns from Spring 2016 are missing their first paragraph, over one year after the column expired, with no update notification, which is standard in other publications, and no notice from the author. #specsucks.