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In This Issue

• Editorial Staff, Cartoonist Apologize for Comic
• Spec Buggers Queer Coverage
• Contraceptive Addiction: The Next Big Thing
• Letters to the Feditrix
• BOSS Leader on Racism
• Fed Editor on Racism
• Howard Dean Broke my Heart
• More on Columbia Security Department
• Lasers Make Atlanta Almost Cool
• Barnard Student Government Shows Resolution
• Jesus: Zombie Demigod Beloved By All
• Fundamentally Funny Bible Games
• Fed Fun Guide to Columbia Campus

In the three years I've written for the Fed, I've always feared controversy. In my first article I ridiculed my then Science of Psychology professor who later, ironically, became my employer. Last year I published a piece where I admitted to countless hours of making elaborate prank phone calls to many unwitting people I knew. Oh, and there was that time I outted myself as a necrophiliac. But nothing ever happened after any of those articles went out to the Columbia community - nothing substantial at least. That Psych professor never picked up a copy of the Fed - probably didn't even know it existed. My friends always foiled future prank calls, but no one ostracized me. And the swingin', apparently alternative-lifestyle-friendly Columbia campus seems not to mind my fetishization of the dead as long as it ain't their dead. Why no backlash? Well, we all know why Mail Services puts out the big blue recycling bin every third Friday.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when, for the first time, the content of the Fed made me fear for my safety and that of my friends. Members of the Fed's staff have been singled out and targeted with slanderous signs, harassing phone calls, and threats against their well being. And this is all because of a comic called Blacky Fun Whitey by Columbia alumnus Ben Schwartz that the Fed published in issue 19.5. This sort of response is as wrong as a Joey Butafucco fan club, and as immature to boot.

But then again, it was also wrong of Mr. Schwartz to target members of the Columbia community with his comic. The Fed's "journalists" were targeted because we write for the Fed, but the fact is, at any time we could quit. But Mr. Schwartz's targets don't have that luxury. They were singled out based on an arbitrary means of categorization: color of skin. Which is something entirely different from say, color of eyes - for while I'll never be able to trust someone with hazel eyes, they of the shrub-colored corneas have never been enslaved and subsequently spat upon for centuries on the basis of pupil palette. Though the comic may have attempted an attack on race as a construct, it did so by perpetuating the same racist imagery it meant to attack. If you put a stink bomb on the table and did nothing to defuse it, I'd probably wanna kick your ass too, Mr. Funny Pants.

Blacky Fun Whitey has been called many things. Offensive. Racially insensitive. Racist. But it remains merely a comic in a campus rag. Similar misguided projects currently being decried also must be seen for how small they truly are. The Columbia University Marching Band? A group of wild sensationalists who would poster with a picture of Mother Theresa's vagina if they could get a hold of one. CCCC? Columbia's copy-cat conservatives who don't know how to make a serious point without making serious asses out of themselves. My point is these are just the tip of the iceberg. The outrageous minstrel show of Blacky Fun Whitey is not something we see every day in Morningside Heights. What is campus racism? Fearful glances from a seemingly non-racist white girl who looks like a fool as she awkwardly scurries across the street from a couple of black kids who have one thing on their mind: crashing after a long night in Butler. Or thinking the Asian guy in the computer lab must be a SEAS kid and must be good at computers 'cause goddamnit, who else is going to help get this stupid PDF to print! This is campus racism in its most rudimentary, every day form. Or at least as I see it. But who am I to describe it? I really think we should talk about this.

Though a rather unfortunate means, Mr. Schwartz's comic has sparked serious discussion of many important, but until recently supressed, issues in our community. Students of color are proudly saying that they will not be silenced. Other students are doing a bit of introspective analysis, or mental spring cleaning, if you will - moving a chair and finding a big pile of unwashed undies from the first Bush administration called "subconscious racist notions." I know writing this has certainly been a soul-searching process for me - getting my mind around this horrible mistake I've been a party to, understanding that it wasn't merely a PR blunder, but a real momentary lapse of reason and sensitivity that entails a good deal of shame and remorse. That I'd find my mind before me on the page is no surprise though, for I've always thought of writing for the Fed as a means to exorcise my personal demons or ridicule myself back to reality-discussing everything from girl troubles and how much I hate my roommate to big issues like intolerance and religion. More or less, what I'm getting at is: the soul-searching, the anger, the many emotions that people are feeling about race and racism at Columbia right now - all of you can have a seat next to me on the pages of the Fed.

This is my call to arms for anyone who feels passionately about these issues or any issues at all. If you are willing to write about it-whether it be journalistic observation, editorial opinion, or scathing satire-the Fed is willing to publish it.