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columbia's "shoot first, ask questions later" paper
Issue 16.9: Action
Posted: April 23, 2001

Ed-in-Chief Joins Staff Diaspora

She's not even that Jewish

Anna Chodos

Dear Reader,

As always, thanks for reading The Fed and for continuing to enjoy it and/or not demanding we be shut down. We owe it all to you!

This last issue makes the last of nine fine looking newspapers we put out this year, and ultimately we did some pretty fly things that will be forever immortalized in Vol. 16 of our archives, if you'll just bear with me as I commemorate them.

There was the second annual Fed Date and auction, the first annual Fed Bash, pissing off the Spec with our April Fool's Issue, and our extensive coverage of celebrities on campus and gamete donation. Our news philosophy also progressed through an awkward ideological puberty to come out of it more secure than ever. Whereas we began as subversive, our growing apathy induced a move into unjournalism, after which a latent enthusiasm for the world around us surfaced and convinced us to pursue destructive journalism (although we had toward the end a minor relapse of one issue into subversivity because I forgot to correct the banner during layout).

Whatever our philosophy, and whatever it will be next year, you can be sure The Fed'll always be a dependably good read, as the staff for next year is far more experienced in Fed ways than any editorial board has been since the Fed's conception in its present state under EIC Emeritus Laurie Marhoefer back in 1998. Meghan, Ted, Ned and Paul are the new ed board and with a great staff they are prepared to take it all the way, baby! And, by God, if they aren't just Qualified to do it!

Well, on to the fond farewell, as my circumstances demand that I be out and move onto the next stage in a few short short weeks: the Real World (to be shot in the Upper Antilles). It's easy to get nostalgic fast, I find, for regret is such a part of graduating. I never saw Rent... I will never go to Cannon's again... I never got to know any of my teachers... I never found a husband. It highlights all those thing college coulda been.

When I first got here, college was a brochure. A bunch of faculty-student ratios and library hours that I had read somewhere were all I knew of college. As I became increasingly and appropriately disillusioned, it became a real coup de grace, a series of confirmations that I was not as smart or special as my forged SAT scores. And as I settled in, it was many things: a place to prove oneself, to stress out, to get away from family, to learn, to meet dope people, to develop bad eating habits and skin.

But, oh, the good times! I was once next to someone who found a hundred dollar bill in front of John Jay Dining Hall. And I went abroad, the best six-month vacation I have ever taken. I also learned a large number of words seemingly invented for the purpose of one academic paper and co-opted for use in one class lecture, but which I surprisingly use almost daily -- "gynecocracy", "uxoricentricism", and "compear" being some examples. This school has been good to me at times.

Ah, the end. To another year of The Fed and thanks for your readership!

Goodbye.