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In This Issue

• The Spec Almost Led Me Into White Slavery
• Where Have All the Strippers Gone?
• Abused by Geriatrics Without Prozac
• Letters to the Editor(s)
• Marauding Interviewer
• Free to Speak? Shut Up!
• Where It's Safe to Sodomize
• Unionized Columbians Become Denizens of Primal Gangland
• CAVA Shifts Focus from Medicine to Profitability
• Garment Grabber Liberates Clothes From Floor
• Legless Pigeon Recounts Tales of Early Abuse
• Geek has +9 Indifference Cloak Against Discrimination
• Columbia Hits Me Where the Bruises Will Never Show
• We Have a Film Critic?
• The Future Is Now, and It's Pointing and Laughing
• Juice Review - A Mango Juice Odyssey
• Fed Favorites
• I Hate You Damn Happy People
• Your Pets Will Be Waiting for You in Hell
• Fruitloop and Dandy
• Wacky Fun Abuse!
• My AIM is True
• A Word from Our Advertisers
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 17.7

CAVA, Columbia's student-operated ambulance and EMT service, has found its budget put under the chopping block for the next fiscal year. To combat this problem, the administrators of the group have come up with some radical new ideas to cut spending and raise revenue.

CAVA spokesman Jacob Mendelsen (SEAS '02) was quick to highlight the more positive changes in service, specifically those that are planned to actually raise revenue for the organization. "Our ambulance, for example," said Mendelsen excitedly while patting the blue and white van that has become a staple of College Walk. "Normally, there is a sixty dollar charge for taking patients to the hospital. In our new plan, we'll also take you to JFK for thirty-five dollars, LaGuardia for forty, and Newark for forty-five, not including tolls."

CAVA has more new plans for the ambulance itself. Aside from acting as a portable emergency care unit and patient transport vehicle, the organization will also be opening an oxygen bar out of the back. This feature was originally planned to be available only when the ambulance was not in use, but the CAVA board quickly realized they could utilize patients' companions as customers as well. Mendelsen anticipates this new ambulance/oxygen bar will become "the most popular nightspot in Morningside Heights."

Pamphlets and postcards advertising the new nightspot will be distributed to the student body over the coming weeks. The literature explains that you should dial 99 on your ROLM phone if you have an emergency. However, you can now dial 98 if you just want to party.

Of course, not all of the new initiatives are aimed at raising revenue. Serious attention was paid to the idea of cutting costs, and in that vein CAVA has had to drastically reorganize its policies and practices. For example, in the past, a patient could call CAVA and simply say they were having a medical emergency, and a medical team would be dispatched. Now, however, CAVA phone operators have been given a script of "feeler" questions to ask the caller before determining that medical attention is absolutely necessary. The sequence of questions is as follows:

"This is CAVA. What is your emergency? Does it hurt? Yeah, but I mean, does it really hurt? Does it really really hurt? Couldn't you just walk it off? Are you sure? Are you really sure?"

Mendelsen assures that this new method not only saves CAVA valuable time, money and resources, but it also "forces the caller to reevaluate their definition of an emergency." Also, he adds, "it will seriously cut down on our trips to Barnard."

Other service changes CAVA is implementing include a completely revamped medical philosophy. Instead of the more conventional medical supplies and remedies that have long been a staple of CAVA, the organization will now be offering exclusively homeopathic medicine. Testing for this new practice has taken place over the last few weeks.

"I got really ripped at the 'Stend one night, and my bed wouldn't stop spinning, so my roommate called CAVA," said Becky Morgan (BC '04). "I told them I felt sick, so they put me in the back of the ambulance with this shaman guy who was, like, burning sage or something and chanting. Then they gave me this root and told me to chew on it. I felt much better after a little while."

To treat more serious injuries, such as broken bones and neck trauma, all CAVA EMTs have been trained extensively in administering guided meditations. Mendelsen stresses that this practice is particularly hard to master, especially for pre-med students used to the comparatively-simple CPR, and he expects it will be some time before all crew members are proficient at leading patients into a "subconscious world free of pain." Still, reviews from the public have been mixed.

"I totally wasted my ankle during a late night round of Frisbee golf. I was trying to bank one off Alma, and I guess I slipped on something," said Greg Moreno (CC '03). So we called CAVA, and when I told them what happened, this dude starts telling me to go into my mind-cave. What the fuck is that all about?"

These new initiatives are designed to help improve CAVA's financial situation, but if they do not, Mendelsen threatens that more severe action may have to be taken to keep the emergency response group in business.

"If none of this works, we'll just have to go with Noah's plan. And I don't really know how comfortable I am with the idea of selling the ambulance and switching to a donkey cart."