• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

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

On March 6th, campus security arrested fifty-two year old Elaine Schmitt in the act of climbing into a seventh-story John Jay window with the stated purpose of "rescuing all the poor clothes balled up on the floor."

Schmitt was released after her son, eighteen-year-old Josh Schmitt (CC '05) posted bail. Police believe that Schmitt is the so-called "Garment Grabber," the middle-aged woman who has been appropriating students' clothing all over campus, laundering and folding them, and then returning said clothing to the victims' rooms.

"When Josh came home over winter break," said Schmitt, "his clothes were a wreck. For Heaven's sake, they were all covered with stains, and they had tears in them, and they were all stretched out of shape. I told him that if he didn't start taking better care of his clothes, I would follow him to school and take them away from him, but he didn't believe me."

"He's been bad with stains ever since he was bar mitzvahed," continued Schmitt, "but at least I was there to wash them out, then. I would think that by now he would have learned to wear his sweatpants when he commits self-abuse. Oy, the kid never learns!"

Schmitt was first seen harassing students on the steps in front of Low Library. Amanda Porter (CC '03) said that a middle-aged woman accosted her on her way to class one day in late January and gave her a lecture about not stretching out her sleeves. "I tend to pull my sleeves down over my hands," said Porter. "So what? That's my freedom of expression. She looked really angry. She shouted at me, ‘What would your mother think? Ruining your clothes like that and walking around looking like a nibbish!' I don't know what that means, but it sounded awful. I shouldn't have to feel threatened just because of the way I wear my clothes. If keeps trying to stop Columbia students from expressing themselves, CSSN will protest to shut her up."

Many other students reported similar incidents. "I looked around," said Schmitt, "and I saw that the other students abuse their clothing just as much as Josh does. I could not even count the number of kids who I saw with their sleeves pulled down over their hands or tears in their jeans. I could not bear to see it. I had to rescue these poor abused clothes."

The first such incident occurred on February 2, when a woman grabbed a shirt with a hole in it off of a shocked SEAS student on his way to chemistry lab. That same day, a half naked Barnard student ran into Plimpton Hall and told a security guard there that a woman had tackled her on her way to dinner and stolen her pants. When later questioned by Barnard Security, she revealed that she had been wearing oversized pants, and the cuffs had been dragging on the ground. Over twenty similar incidents have been reported since then.

"I was walking back from Duane Reade pretty late one night," says Colombia senior Greg Thompson, "and it was cold, so I pulled my arms inside of my shirt. I know it was stupid of me to just wear short sleeves, but I was just running out to get some toothpaste, and I thought it would be okay. Well, I heard this woman on the median start to shout. I turned around, and I saw her running across Broadway toward me, through traffic. I turned and started to run. She was shouting, ‘Hey you, what do you think you're doing stretching out your shirt like that? I'll teach you to abuse your clothes!' I ran into Koronet's and asked the man at the counter to call campus security. I was lucky to get away."

In just the past week, students began to come back to their rooms to find their windows open and many of their clothes missing. The students in one East Campus suite woke up this past Wednesday morning to find that all of their clothes had been stolen in their sleep. Greg Tran, CC '03, has confirmed that Schmitt is the same woman who he found mending hot pants in his Schapiro single upon returning from classes the other day, though he says that she dashed out before he could grab her.