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In This Issue

• John Jay Elevator Acquires New Residents
• H.B. Reese Murders Lovable Monkeys
• Chief Editor Whipped On Fed Date
• Honest Fred: The Death of an Icon (who appears only in our print version as of yet)
• Reporter finds "Plantation Mentality" at Columbia Security
• Ruggles Haunting Investigated
• Sam Brown hates Picasso, Draws Better than Three Year Olds
• New Sandwich Names Makes 212 Even Worse
• Go Ask Alice, You Big Fucking Fattie
• Designer Vaginas: Everyone's Doing It
• Man Fights Cancer with Cancer
• Columbia, Hamiltron Defeat Burr, Princeton with Laser Cannon
• University Writing Just as Bad as L&R
• The Fed Kicks Yore Ass
• Anti-Life Comics
• Time Travelling Gussie
• Ragdoll Lollipop
• Adventures in Rush Week
• A Tribute to Edward Said
• Wacky Fun Whitey

Matt Holden

I arrived at University Writing, my first Columbia liberal arts class, on my first day of school. Frustrated with my science classes, I was thrilled to experience what Columbia's Core had to offer. I took my seat in the classroom ready for the semester, sure to be fun-filled.

Having heard from upperclassmen that the hated L&R class had been revamped, I was doubly excited for a new and innovative writing course. Maybe now I could show off my strange attraction to the gerund.

However, I soon learned that the class consisted only of a poor grad student forced to regurgitate a syllabus. Not even a good syllabus, either. It's the kind of syllabus that all the other syllabi point at and laugh. My teacher puts clear effort into the class, but this effort only manifests itself as making another list on the blackboard. The University Writing team must have had grocery shopping on the brain.

The only thing that they succeeded at was taking the Logic and Rhetoric out of the class. The most fiery rhetoric regarding the class is spewed by its disgusted members on the escape run down the staircase when the class finally ends. How could L&R possibly have been worse than this? I wondered. What had this board of "correctors" been doing the last few years?

How the University Writing board spent their summer:

I. Fucking (themselves and each other).

II. Eating (themselves and each other).

III. Sleeping.

At least I've learned the art of list-making from this course.

But the most horrifying aspect of the class is not the list-making. It's not even the mindless writing. The pain it causes is almost indescribable, like the soreness I experience when the Charmin runs out and the only thing around is the latest edition of the Spectator. It is the hour-long time block filled with nothing. It's the attempted discussion about the twenty-page article on "What is a citizen?" (To answer this question, I looked at my teacher with a sheepish grin, and proceeded to point at Omar, my Middle Eastern friend. "Not him!" I said.) Unfortunately, the written commentary on my definition of a citizen was less than thrilling. But the class discussion made me nostalgic, and the list we made on the board reminded me of second grade Phonics.

I am paying about $3,000 in tuition for this course alone. I do nothing in there but drift off and think about sex or hardcore Tylenol overdosing. The only good thing about the lack of mental stimulation is that I waste no creativity on my University Writing whatsoever. The result of this, however, is that my creative juices get flowing in other parts of my life where sometimes they aren't wanted. For example, the other day I was writing a letter home to my dear old grandmother, and wanted to add an anecdote to give her a laugh. This is what I came up with:

I was talking outside the door of my suite in Carman 10 last Tuesday. Alright, maybe I was talking to my door. In any case, some chipper young dame overheard my ramblings about my after-hours research back home with monkeys in the Baltimore Zoo. Amazingly, we both had ape-fucking in common. Seeing that I found someone that I actually shared an interest with, I asked her for a night cap. Though she failed to produce the appropriate piece of headgear, I decided to go out with her anyway. We caught a cab and went to the Bronx Zoo.

In closing, I have learned that all this course does for us is suppress our wonderfully disgusting and creative humors. There are only 3 ways I can think of to figure out how to deal with the course for the rest of the year. I'll make a list.

How to survive the rest of the year in University Writing:

1. Masturbation.

2. Bong Hits.

3. The Purchase of a Pet Monkey.