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In This Issue

• I'm the Man in the Glass Box
• A Beginner's Guide to Smoking Cigarettes
• The Epic Drunken Email
• Letter From Some Dude
• 5 Easy Steps to Becoming a Barnard Girl
• The Cold, Harsh Reality that is SEAS
• Fun With Freshman Housing
• F.E.D.S. vs. The Fed
• First Year Friendships
• The Fed Guide to What's What: Points of Interest on Campus
• The Fed Guide to What's What: Where to Shop
• The Fed Guide to What's What: Where to Drink
• A Campus Club Wish List
• How to Win Friends and Alienate Your Parents
• Legalized Speed a Huge Hit in NYC
• Fed / Counterfed
• GLAAD vs. Kevin Smith
• Horoscopes
• News Briefs
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.1

College frequently serves as a means to distance yourself from your childhood home while you get your act together and stumble unwittingly toward adulthood. Unfortunately, overzealous parents often refuse to get out of the way while you discover that you really do like wearing silver vinyl pants and space whore wigs. Preserve your sanity by selecting and enforcing an acceptable limit - whether it's once a day or once a semester - for familial contact.

1. Bore Them to Death: If you've got enough patience to keep them on the phone, a strong dose of overexposure might just be enough to alleviate your parents' empty nest syndrome. When they ask you how your day went, take the opportunity to tell them more then they ever wanted to know. Describe in detail what you and each of your suite-mates had for lunch. Take an hour to recount what happened during a forty-minute class. Tell them about your reading assignments, offering - nay, demanding - to read them some choice excerpts over the phone. With luck, your parents will eventually realize that they only really want to live vicariously through you when you're being interesting, and that most of your daily encounters are just as boring as were their own college years.

2. Misdirect Them: If your roommate is willing to lie for you, then you can test his or her loyalty by letting them answer the phone whenever you can conceivably avoid doing it yourself. Your parents will have no idea what to think if your roommate insists each time they call that you're in class, or in the shower, or, really, anywhere that's not your room. If your roommate is especially swell or particularly masochistic, they may choose to engage in genuine conversation with your parental units, perhaps to amuse themselves with the alarming range of questions that an insane parent may ask their child's roommate, or just to serve as a constant reminder how lucky they are to have parents marginally more normal than yours.

3. Break the Bank: Come up with a reason to ask them for money every time they call. "Oh! While I've got you on the line, I need a few hundred dollars for textbooks. And an extra thousand to pay off my RA for room damages." You may have to contend with a few lectures on monetary responsibility, but it'll be worth it once they restrict their Calling Schedule to once or twice a semester for fear of financial ruin.

4. Pretend That You're Dead: This is a great way to get the folks off your back if you really need a few days of alone time. Unfortunately, once they start demanding to see the body, the gig is up. So as soon as you're ready to face the world again, insist that you fell into a coma. Or whatever. Just use this option sparingly, because it's unbecoming to play dead more then once every six months or so.

5. Convince Them That They Dialed the Wrong Number: Find a neighbor who can speak an exotic-sounding language with a convincing accent and have them record your voice mail message. Pick up a cheap, outmoded fax machine on E-Bay and hook it up to your phone line so that callers are greeted with an irritating fax tone. Or make friends with everyone within proximity of your room and have someone different answer each time call. If you've got a good enough imagination, you can spend weeks preying on the insecurity and gullibility of relatives with lousy numerical memories.

6. Deny Your Roots: If you're willing to cut ties completely, pretend that you never knew hide nor hair of your parents. As soon as you get to college, assume the local accent and act like you've always lived in New York. Take on an air of polite detachment every time your parents call, and deny all knowledge of your prior life. That oughta throw them for a loop for long enough to earn you a few months of peace.

7. Go to School in a Different Time Zone: If you attend a college that's half a world away, it's perfectly reasonable to be asleep or in class whenever your parents attempt to call you. Hmm... if you're already here, it's probably a little late for  that plan. But, hey, it's definitely something  to keep in mind if you ever get the urge to transfer. For future reference, New Haven shares New York's Eastern Standard time zone.

How many of these can you get through in a single semester? Try it out and see!