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In This Issue

• Blind Guy Shows Us the Way
• Columbia's Cruel Iron Maiden
• Letter From the Editor
• Daddy Was a Shrink; Momma Was a Street Corner.
• Columbia Socialist Pronounces ‘Bourgeois’ The Right Way
• Holiday Thoughts for the Dysfunctional
• Dear Alma Mater
• Columbia Vs. Colombia
• WHAT TYPE OF DYSFUNCTIONAL IS YOUR FAMILY?
• Uncut Tales of Dysfunctional Literacy
• White Boys Need Money
• I Am So Not a Man
• Thanks, My Ass: Mohican Joe speaks out
• Press 'M' for Mezzanine... if Ye be Brave Enough
• Your Daily (read: Monthly) Horoscope
• Wacky Fun Whitey: Evil Just Like your Mom
• Newsbriefs
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.4

For better or for worse, at about this time in 1999, I was working on my application for admission into the illustrious halls of Columbia University. If I knew then what I know now, I would have joined the military or gone to clown college.

In a little under three semesters, Columbia has rendered me utterly and totally dysfunctional. I used to consider myself pretty well-adjusted, and in retrospect, I think I really was well-adjusted. I grew up in a very small town, but this had not driven me to sacrificing small woodland animals. I knew people who did drugs, but I merely smoked cigarettes. I even knew virgins, and I certainly wasn't one of those horrible people. Nothing bad could possibly happen to me at college, right? Especially at an Ivy League school like Columbia, what with their reputation of upholding traditional values like truth, justice, and the Starbucks-Citibank-Nike- Vietnamese-child-labor way. The worst that could happen, I thought, was that I'd become so normal and boring I'd turn Republican.

However, my transformation from mild-mannered, slightly liberal homo to raving-mad, borderline Communist faggot started almost immediately. Upon my arrival at Columbia, I began to suspect that the school hated me. I believed, and still do believe, that I have ample grounds to support my claim that Alma Mater not only knows who I am, but wants me to die slowly while writhing on a spit over an open fire. Sure, some of my evidence could be mere coincidence-- like the fact that my ID is printed upside-down, with the Columbia strip on top on the back-- but I think it's all part of Alma's treacherous little plot to bring about my personal downfall. I know what you're doing, Columbia, and you won't get away with it!

Exhibit A: When I moved into my dorm after pre-orientation, no one told me that only one elevator in John Jay went to my floor, the 14th. I carried my belongings, all by myself, into my new home, proudly presented my bizarro ID card to the guard, and proceeded to the elevator. I rode it all the way up to the 13th floor, and immediately on exiting thought that I had to be in the wrong building. This one was clearly under construction. (Little did I know that everything here is under construction.) So I lugged my belongings over furniture, rolled up carpeting, and other debris all the way around the corner, up the stairs and down the hall, to the room marked 1424-which my key, for some reason, would not open.

Exhibit B: Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night will keep Archer Mail Services from screwing up Columbia's mail. Early in my freshman year, I presented myself at the package room (after figuring out which package room was in fact the package room) to pick up my key, only to be told that they'd "lost" it and to come back later. Of course, it turned out that they hadn't lost the key, they had given it to someone else. Once I figured this out and wrote a nasty e-mail to the Powers that Be (who I now know are also the Powers that Don't Give a Shit), I was assigned a new mailbox that was forever being filled with someone else's mail. That could have something to do with the fact that the other person was still in possession of the box.

Somewhere in this game of musical mailboxes, I made the mistake of applying for a credit card. Lower interest? Higher credit limit? Stupid freshman? Sold! Also sold were over a thousand dollars worth of merchandise from various women's and children's stores to a woman claiming to be me. Enter the Fraud Department for NextCard, who sent me, via registered mail, not one but two fraud affidavits, only one of which got to me. At this point, frustrated and fed up, I marched myself to none other than President Rupp's office, where I was told, after I threatened to set the secretary's desk on fire, that Dean Colombo's office had someone who deals with mail services. I told him what was going on, I threatened to sue, and Columbia finally relinquished three months of mail.

Exhibit C: Not only is Lerner Hall the ugliest building on Earth, it's also quite possibly home to the most inane and stupid bureaucracy that mankind has ever produced. Somehow or other in my run as a student group executive board member, I've had the distinct pleasure of watching Lerner Hall attempt to sabotage everything positive I've ever tried to accomplish on campus. Now, I'm a rational person, so I don't think this is the doing of the higher-ups in the administration. I suspect that it's just general ineptitude in their underlings. Things like alcohol proctors that all but stare down the clientele, security guards who show up three hours late for a four hour event, and facilities people who are determined to pressure-wash chalk that I've already paid to have left on College Walk, just shouldn't be happening, period. The last of these is a particular grievance of mine, given that it's caused me to spend two National Coming Out Days in bed asleep after guarding Low Plaza all night long.

The big one is still to come, though. My student group was allocated $1,900 by the Activities Board of Columbia last year. However, we made a large profit from our events, and ended up spending nearly $10,000 - almost $8,000 of which went to the school. That's a more than 400% return on investment, and never mind my tuition. What does Alma think I am, some kind of sweatshop worker? It's un-American to turn a profit off of my labor! Columbia, leave me alone!