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In This Issue

• Life After Graduation? You're Kidding!
• Touched By Tom Brokaw
• Mr. McLaughlin's Culturally Confusing Neighborhood
• Livejournal: Hardcore Gateway(TM) Drug
• Columbia Decompiled
• Looking Back At Evolutionary Monkey Business
• How Right You Are!
• The Fed Kidz Page
• Veganism Sucks
• iPod Shuffle Advisory
• The Great Debate: Tune In or Pass Out?
• Weapons of Ass Destruction
• Letters to the Feditor
• THEY WATCH
• The Blue And White

Edward A. Rueda

The ghost of Edward Said: ethereal iconoclasm a-go-go!

A documentary entitled Columbia Decompiled, centering around allegations of the Computer Science department's preference for students versed in Java over those who speak the more archaic--and increasingly rare--language known as C, was screened at an exclusive press conference over the weekend. The film was produced by the non-profit UNIX advocacy group, The HAL Project. The allegations have prompted one geek in some chat room to call for Columbia to fire one of the Computer Science professors mentioned in the film.

"It's not a preference, or anything like that," explained Richard Glass, SEAS ‘06, who spoke at the press conference. "We were born C programmers and we have a birthright." Richard, of course, speaks of the C programmers' claim to the Indonesian island Java, known as Unixland before the United States answered the Java programmers' call for a homeland following the 1995 Nerd and Indonesian War. The land is considered particularly desirable as there are no real girls on the entire island and the sole television station broadcasts only reruns of Star Trek episodes and soft-core porn. The conflicting claims coupled with the recent allegations have led to an increased air of tension amongst C and Java programmers in the Computer Science department.

One of the students involved in the production of the film elaborated on his perceived discrimination: "I was talking to professor Patterson after class one day about the merits of C's greater efficiency for about 45-minutes when out of nowhere he turns to me and says ‘Look at my eyes. Look at how thick my glasses are. I am a real programmer, you have no right to lay this claim,' and it wasn't even fair because I was wearing contact lenses. My eyes are just as bad as his." The administration initially dealt with these frightening allegations in much the same way it deals with every problem at Columbia concerning the undergraduate student body: by ignoring it. This strategy proved unsuccessful when, to quote Dean Galil, "the over-privileged little fucks at this school wouldn't keep their their pie-holes shut." So an ad-hoc committee was established to investigate the offended students' claims.

Professor Albert Hoffman, chair of the investigatory committee, spoke of their committment to resolve not only the current controversy but to work to assuage other problems concerning undergraduates in the department. "Many are concerned by the department's lack of female majors, and to this end we've introduced several new classes in the hopes of attracting more women to Computer Science. For example, we've already had the department add a two-part Online Shopping track. The first semester deals mainly with Amazon; in the second semester, advanced students will have the opportunity to learn to make purchases on eBay." And that's  not all the department's done: "We've replaced all the computers in one of the labs in Mudd with Barbie-themed, pink-plastic ones accesorized with mice shaped to look like little plastic convertibles in an effort to make the space more inviting to young women."       

While the committee is certainly making  strides in the right direction, President Bollinger's  nonchalance towards the troubles facing the CS department has come as a quite a surprise to many students. "Really I was thrilled at the prospect of a new controversy this semester," explained Bollinger. "I mean, it was either this or the one involving the East Asian Studies Department." Bollinger is referring, of course, to the allegations from a small group of students that the East Asian Studies department does not allocate enough time presenting a Western imperialist perspective in its classes, while unfairly concentrating on East Asian perspectives on their own civilization. "After students lost interest in the MEALAC controversy," said Bollinger, "it became clear that we were in dire need of something new to occupy their minds-when students stop protesting, their brains start working, and they start to question the value of their $160,000 education here at Columbia."