Columbia Journalism School Dean Nick Lemann pulled a hilarious oopsy-daisy the other day when he mistakenly sent his personal evaluation of himself and the future of the entire school to all his students, rather than just to his boss. It would have been more hilarious if it was forwarded pictures of Ken Auletta in a tutu or something, but whatever. Lemann basically says that, yes, we have a ton of money and we are the most elite elitist journalism institution in the history of elitism, but it's not all good because, you know, at some point kids are gonna figure out you can't make any money doing this stuff, and they'll probably go to cheaper schools, so let's figure that one out pretty soon. The evaluation is essentially exactly the same as a New Yorker article by Lemann on the current state of Columbia J-school would be, except nobody would ever pay for such a thing. For a better understanding of what Lemann means when he says "mercifully brief," the entire memo reprinted [via Romenesko], after the jump.

What with Super Tuesday and the Super Bowl parade going on yesterday, how to decide what to watch? It's enough to flummox an Ivy Leaguer! "Having two events with the word 'Super' in them is confusing," Columbia student Julie Schneyer told the Daily News. "Frankly, I'm voting for the Giants." Haha, politics is boring. We feel the same way sometimes. But then again, we're not President of one of the most vocal political activist groups at Columbia.

Despite the heroic hunger strike by Columbia students, the NYC Planning Commission voted yes to Columbia University's expansion into Harlem. Now it only has to go before City Council for final approval. According to the NYT article, the hearing got pretty rowdy! "We'll stand in front of those bulldozers," said the leader of an opposition group.

Woman down! Columbia's hunger strike is one less strong, after Barnard student Aretha Choi collapsed in the library Saturday on the fourth day of the student protest against something or other. It seems Choi isn't new to this particular form of protest—the one-time Phillips Andover student spoke to Asian-American women's magazine Audrey for an April story this year about her longtime struggle with anorexia. This poor girl needs to make some new friends, stat, because the ones she's got didn't seem too concerned about her participation in the five-student strike. (IvyGate, which posted an item about Choi yesterday, seems to have pulled it today.)

Four Columbia students have announced an immediate hunger strike, posting a list of impossible-to-measure benchmarks that must be met by the university before these anonymous people will once again begin making their brave trips to the dining hall. At issue is, uh, everything about the school, more or less, but especially the recent business with nooses and Nazis.

We hear that three of the editors of n+1, the most important literary journal of our generation, will be teaching as adjuncts at Columbia's MFA program this fall. (More bang for your $35K!) Ben Kunkel, Marco Roth, and another—we think Mark Greif? This line has some static—will be tag-team teaching a class on political writing. Or apolitical writing! One of those.

Attention, war-haters: tomorrow from 11:00 to 3:00, Columbia students will be holding a cell phone telethon for peace on College Walk. "Together, Columbia students will show that the student voice is not only passionate, but ready to fight for real, not symbolic, action to end this war." Real, not symbolic, action! Sort of like a cell phone telethon, only, you know, actually the opposite of that. Okay, but for real (not symbolic) we're happy that Columbia students are making the ultimate class-skipping sacrifice in order to support our troops, and we're sure that every penny of the $6,550 they aim to raise for UNICEF—one cent for every death caused by the war in Iraq as of March 20!—will make a big difference. We just hope that no one shows them this week's Shouts and Murmurs column, which kind of rains all over their class-skipping activist parade.

Our feverish excitement about Fash Week has led us to peek into some darker nooks and crannies of the internet than usual; here's a nugget we turned up about socialite Claire Bernard, who mingled with the 'Tinz et al at that One Scottsdale/Vogue Italia party last night.

It's not news that the Modern Love column is typically an example of the Times turning into the world's creepiest personal ads section. But this weekend's entry was probably one of the off-the-charts ickiest; it concerns Columbia student Ashley Cross, whose affair with an accused rapist changed her mind about a lot of things:

Well, "my 2007 is going swimmingly" era has ended, but I will bounce
back. I hope. My next Voice column (running in next week's paper
though probably online tomorrow evening) will be my last, according to
a phone call I just got from the editor in chief David Blum (they are
hiring someone else to write those weeks but I don't know who that is
though I guess we'll all find out very soon).

We've always been slightly confused/mildly curious about who joins a frat or sorority at Columbia—we always assumed Greek life was more for schools in the middle of nowhere, where people had nothing better to do with their time than do haze their fellow students in the middle of a cornfield—and now we sort of have an answer. Bwog—the Columbia blog for the student magazine, the Blue & White—has a feature where they profile two students each week as a sort of personals service, and this week they've done us the favor of profiling a sororitard and a frat guy. After reading the words of wisdom to emerge from their mouths, we've come to the conclusion that Columbia frat guys and sorority girls are just as boring as their counterparts at "lesser" schools. Oh, and they have awful taste in music.

In the past, we've certainly had our suspicions about the horniness/party animalness of Columbia co-eds. We'd assumed, based on a potent mix of vicious stereotypes, personal experience, and stories in their paper of record, that Columbia students were just dorks whose idea of a raucous good time was reading excerpts from dirty poems aloud. But according to the Daily News, we were so, so wrong. Apparently, Columbia is a regular 24/7 bacchanal (if by bacchanal you mean "average American college")! They don't just show homemade, boring porn on their school TV channel, they have "clothing optional" parties and an S&M club! And just listen to this scandalously ribald quote:

Students in Morningside Heights have recently discovered the fine art of throwing parties, according to their campus rag. It's too bad that their parties sound like possibly the lamest things ever, in the history of all of man:

More from that quiet Ivy school uptown:

Update: Because the children won't stop emailing, we'll note that the Chicano Caucus is claiming they had nothing to do with the events — i.e., the protest — that caused the event to be canceled. The Caucus does, however, take responsibility for being the chief organizers of the protest. Hm. Big difference there, kids.

Lord knows we took plenty of fucked up, jackassed photos when we were in college, so we're happy to see that Bee Shaffer, spawn of Anna Wintour, is enjoying a typical undergraduate experience at Columbia. This photo from her Facebook profile, however, is sending a dangerous message. It's not that Bee's holding cigarettes — it's that she's holding, of all things, Newport Lights. For shame, rich girl. For shame.

There's an interesting report today on a Columbia undergraduate publication's punnily and speech-impedimently named blog, the Bwog, regarding an old trove of slush-pile submissions to The New Yorker's poetry department:

There is no more important training for a young journalist than a lesson in how to hold your liquor. And there is no better way to learn to hold your liquor than at an open bar you can't get from. Hence the annual Columbia J-School booze cruise, at which this year — this is our favorite part — it seems the cocktailing will begin at 4 p.m. Of course, while an open bar would be ideal, the j-school currently charges its students a mere $38,500 in tuition and fees, and so it can afford only a cash bar. And, even better, a "cash food bar" — unless students shell out six bucks for the buffet, they're stuck with only "chips and salsa, and crudite with herbed dipping sauce." Dress is "reporter semi-formal," which seems easy enough until you remember how reporters dress, and the full email announcement is after the jump.

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announces the winners. Actually, and disappointingly, he merely announces the winners are being announced. The World window, behind him, is the highlight of the experience.

From an email sent to Columbia's job-recruiting email list with the subject "JPMorgan Recruiting Event for LGBT Students":