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In This Issue

• Toddler Sex Toy Secrets Revealed
• Belgian Makes Fun of Belgians
• Sobriety: Mardi Gras Withdrawal
• Letters to the Feditor
• John Ashcroft = Scary
• Marauding Interviewer: Ass Virginity En Masse
• Inside the Real ROTC
• Columbia's Just Being Nice to Get You into the Sack
• Unleash the Flood Waters
• Your Local Forecast
• Oompa-Loompas' Fingers Too Short for Shocker
• Portrait of the Masturbator as a Young Man
• And Now, the Fed Translates the Creepiest Ad Ever
• Jacko Makes Cocktail Party Chitchat
• Spring Fashion: Haute Couture in Haute Alert
• At Your Local Supermarket
• Ode d'Orange
• THEY Watch
• Wacky Fun Whitey Wets the Bed
• An Outdoor Conversation
• Roboninja
• Poor Orange
• The Staff

Three supposedly isolated instances of flooding have occurred in Alfred Lerner Hall since the outset of the spring semester. Some would suggest that the recent rash of flooding in the student center is the result of shoddy workmanship, below-freezing temperatures, and a lack of insulated water pipes in what is a pretty crappy building to begin with. But to claim that the recent flooding was caused by neglect and substandard labor practices is far too simplistic, much like something a terrorist or Frenchman might say. Are you a terrorist? No, it is clear that a much larger agenda is at work here.

Taking their cue from the Department of Homeland Security, Columbia's own Department of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety (www.hr.columbia.edu/ehrs) has employed a new measure of defense: the aquatic preemptive strike.

Under this new program, areas designated as high risk for fire are periodically flooded. This has the two-fold advantage of keeping critical areas safely soggy while dampening the hopes of hostile combustion-based terror groups, or "flamers," as they have come to be known. While attacks were limited to Barnard residence halls during the fall semester, recent Lerner intelligence suggests that the flamers have a new target: books.

Of the three "accidents" at Lerner involving flooding, two were directed at the Columbia Bookstore, a veritable hotbed of potentially flammable paper products. Bookstore manager Chris Colbert was pleased with the precautionary measures taken. "We're really proud of everybody for turning this around," Colbert said. The damage to merchandise on both occasions paled in comparison to what might have been caused by an inferno attack. "I don't think there will be any impact on having books for classes," Colbert said, intimating that, had there been a fire, the consequences would have been devastating.

This new initiative goes beyond protecting retail manuscripts. In what could be categorized as the most consistent and long-standing preemptive assault on fire-causing groups, Columbia has been routinely flooding the first floor cataloging department of Butler Library for the past year, sometimes filling the offices with water for days at a time to insure the safety of the workers and books in the space. "In our case, the central administration saw fit to install an enormous water heater tank above a library workspace holding costly computer equipment and hundreds of newly acquired library books," said Roseanne Farkas, who works in the department. "How smart is that?" Very smart indeed.

The most recent preemptive flooding in Lerner shows the degree to which the Department of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety has the security of student organizations in mind. Toward this end, the department was generous enough to flood the libraries of the Philolexian Society and the Columbia University Science Fiction Society, located on the fifth floor of Lerner Hall. This defensive action unfortunately prevented the loss of thousands of volumes. The cost of such destruction would be impossible to calculate, but the two groups estimate it to be somewhere between an awful lot and a shitload.

Jeremiah Stoldt, Director of Special Projects at Facilities, whose title suggests a high-level involvement in the preemptive flooding initiative, would say only that Facilities Management has installed better climate control systems. Climate control systems that have the ability to flood a potentially flame-threatened space at a moment's notice? We think so. According to Stoldt, a system containing over 15 miles of pipes through a mile and a half of tunnels already exists at the university. With defense systems such as this, flamers do not stand a chance. Or do they?

"This is an industrial process that invariably has losses," said Joe Barkwill, director of the University power plant. But just what kind of losses is he talking about? Human losses?

"The damage wasn't too much in books, it was more in merchandise," said Roxanne MacNeil, the trade book manager in charge of non-textbook merchandise for the Columbia Bookstore. But just what kind of merchandise is she talking about? Human merchandise?

Thanks to the new aquatic initiatives by these various organizations, our campus is safe from these insanely zealous flamers. But for how long? How long will it be before an unsuspecting Columbia student, trapped in his closet, falls prey to these flamers? Only time will tell.