Following a student activism campaign, Columbia University says it will divest itself from about $10 million in stock in private prisons. College divestment campaigns may be mostly symbolic, but at least their symbolism is on the right side of good and evil.

Capital New York reports that "Columbia University students are bugging out" after their favorite, smartphone-compatible drug dealer was busted by the cops. You'd think a bunch of Ivy Leaguers wouldn't need to be reminded, but paying for drugs with an app that logs the exact details of a transaction is a bad idea.

Columbia is reporting a rash of thefts on campus that have resulted in an estimated $5,000 worth of lost property each week.

Seated next to many of the same kids he spends a third of his day cleaning up after, Columbia University custodian Gac Filipaj finally realized an accomplishment 12 years in the making: A bachelor's degree in classics.

A friend and graduate of Columbia's journalism school noticed this incredible update in his monthly alumni update email blast today, and thought to pass it along, because oh my god, it is fantastic. Amidst the general, self-congratulatory notes—"Peter Hoffmann '60 has revised and expanded his 2001 book," "Anusha Shrivastava '02 was elected president of..."—lies this gem:

Apparently Vinny Guadagnino, the big-dicked guido from Jersey Shore, the greatest sociological experiment of our time, was a guest speaker at a Columbia sociology class yesterday. And it sounds like the students weren't too happy about it.

The number of applications to Columbia University shot up by 32% this year. Why? Probably because state schools suck and other NYC colleges are banning smoking, while Columbia has readily available drugs and awesome professors. Plus, Columbia=cool.

One Columbia senior wanted to know how his fellow students were able to get so high, yet still do well on exams. So he went straight to the source: the school library. It's "study drug time"!

[Despite recent rumors, Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy looked quite happy leaving Columbia University today, where the French president gave a speech to students. Image via Getty]

If you're a journalism Brahmin who's simply appalled at the prospect of the National Enquirer winning a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of John Edwards' atrocious moral life, look out—they're going after your young now!

This week, Gossip Girl will film at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus. This morning, three coyotes ranged the university's stately grounds. Coincidence, or dark omen?

An appeals court ruled that Columbia University can't use eminent domain to grab property it wants for its expansion just by calling its neighborhood "blighted." The judges pointed out: Columbia is so freaking shady.

Look what popped up on Simon & Schuster's YouTube channel tonight! It's Glenn Beck, imploring the masses, including liberals, to buy his book so he can send his daughter to Obama's alma mater, that noted communist think-tank, Columbia University.

Dear Facebook employee: If you're going to do something obvious and cliché like wearing cowboy boots to SXSW's geek spring break, please have the decency not to tell Twitter about it. Other Twitter idiocies today:

You know the old joke about how a recession doesn't turn into a depression until an economist loses his job? Economists are losing their jobs. Run for the hills!

Full disclosure: I graduated Barnard College in '05, and while there, wrote for the campus newspaper, The Columbia Spectator.

Columbia University prides itself in being in the city of New York; that's literally their slogan. Even if Morningside Heights is Manhattan lite, there are very real elements of New York living there. For one, with Barnard, the female to male ratio is two to one, giving Columbia females a head start on real life New York dating. For two, Columbia student journalists take themselves as seriously as real New York journalists do. From the years I was at the Columbia Spectator, two reporters went onto Newsweek, one is tenured at the Washington Post, someone else is at Fortune and another has his own blog at Slate. That's why the latest campus controversy over the Bwog, the blog of the campus publication the Blue & White is no surprise. A tipster writes about upheaval on the site: The new editor is alienating writers, the Bwog has lost its focus, along with its campus cachet. Sound familiar?

Lee Bollinger—president of Columbia University and friend to the Bush administration? We were not aware such an oxymoronic existence was possible, but it seems Bollinger's little performance during the recent visit to the school of a certain Iranian dictator has his faculty all atwitter.

Up at Columbia University, first they came for the blacks but no one said anything, except they totally did say something but Columbia wouldn't give the police their security tapes that may have showed who hung a noose on an African-American professor's door. And now they have come for the Jews! A swastika was found painted on the office door of a Columbia Teachers College psych professor who researches the Holocaust. You know, we've long complained that the students today are politically apathetic and that they should get off their privileged asses and do something. Guess we should have been more specific!

Tonight's the last of n+1's master classes at Columbia. (n+1 is the most important literary journal of our time.) The email students received from the school transformed characters into question marks, thereby generating an unintentional uptalk? Related: What costumes will everyone be wearing???