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In This Issue

• Jesus Spams
• Lifelong Lepers Supported
• A Porn Star Is Born
• Letters to the Editor
• My God Is Pissed
• An Interview with Daniel Radcliffe
• You Know, I Just Don’t Care About Floor Spirit
• Start Your Own Religion, in Four Easy Steps
• Flogging the Bishop
• Ask Professor Pete
• News Briefs
• Horoscopes: Like listening to a very senile Ben Franklin
• Drive-By Circumcision
• Columbia Student Is Next Plato, Columbia Student Claims
• Sin Big, Sin Real Big
• Top Ten Things That Make the Baby Jesus Cry
• CU’s Admissions vs. St. Peter’s
• Now Playing in Selected Cities
• God By Way of Drugs
• Jesus Saves A Buck
• Available at all Gentleman’s Daugerrotype Parlors
• CC Student Sees Shit While Shrooming
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.5

I made my way down Low steps, gazing over to the names of our most revered philosophers and teachers inscribed atop Butler. Feeling somehow inspired, I began to lecture my two friends on the nature of the female body, a topic about which I have no real knowledge. Following the example of Montaigne, I was progressing logically through an argument using as evidence daily observations throughout my life. Needless to say, I reached a point in my argument where I had completely confounded my companions. Looking at their puzzled faces, I was forced to admit that, "really, I have no idea what I'm talking about." Soon enough, the whole argument completely resolved and did not even remotely resemble my original thesis - which I think had had something to do with how extra sleep would allow my female friend's body to grow, but I am not entirely sure at this point.

That argument, I realized later, was actually a lot like other conversations I have had over the past year: Me arguing some ridiculous point about a topic that I have very little actual evidence for, and whomever I am speaking to becoming dumbfounded. I was suddenly taken aback by my own arrogance. I talked through this dilemma with my friends as we walked past Lerner and across Broadway. What I came upon was an entirely novel theory as to why I have been arguing bizarre and unfounded theories. I realized that my arrogant approach towards the dilemmas of life and love stems from the educational foundation that I am receiving at Columbia College. More specifically, because of Western Literature Humanities (Lit Hum), Contemporary Civilizations (CC) and Logic and Rhetoric (L & R), I now have the tools to argue completely unfounded arguments on topics I know very little about and make them sound cohesive and interesting, as well as slightly (if not extremely) arrogant.

I realized that many of those philosophers whose names are inscribed on Butler must have had some Athenian equivalent to L & R. Two hundred and fifty classes of Columbia College students have revered statements by Plato that ask-- rhetorically, of course-- "and isn't democracy's insatiable desire for what it defines as the good also what destroys it?" History has ingrained in our memories the great words of Montaigne: "I am free to give myself up to doubt and uncertainty, and to my predominant quality which is ignorance." We will forever be touched by the wisdom of Herodotus, who said, "No horse can endure the sight or smell of a camel." None of these men have any pure fact on which to base their arguments - no experimental or statistical evidence. All they have are a few oddball ideas, but as long as they argue them logically, they get the go ahead for the Lit Hum and CC syllabi. These greats, inscribed in our memories as well as on our awnings, are the ones who have led me to the authority of argument that I now claim as my own.

I understand now that if I have an idea and can argue towards its truth coherently, as the revered philosophers have done, then my idea is legitimate, regardless of how much it resembles intellectual manure. Consequently, this theory breeds an arrogant race of super-students who believe they have the authority to claim truth for whatever ideas they can conjure up. But this is certainly what Plato, Aristotle and the rest of them believe.

Columbia students are not simply being arrogant for arrogance's sake. They are continuing a proud tradition of smug self-importance. This must be why the halls of Hamilton are flanked with posters proclaiming myriad students' beliefs: ‘America sucks,' ‘America rules, and should therefore bomb the hell out of the rest of the world,' ‘abolish the death penalty,' ‘Kaplan can raise your test scores,' and on and on.

Columbia students know how to argue logically and so we do it whether we are right, wrong, or don't even care. I have figured out why I am so arrogant. I am now justifying it, and publishing it. Perhaps one day Columbia students will read and write essays on my unfounded arguments about the bodies of women and whatever else crosses my mind. Oh, and if Columbia asks for my input, I will argue to sand off Augustine's name from Butler's inscriptions so that HENRETIG can replace it.