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In This Issue

• Fun Stuff to Do With Your Roommate
• Morningside Heights = Wormhole
• New York's Suprise Gift: Humidity!
• Letters to the Feditor
• Suggestions for Campus Political Dialogue
• Dodge-ing the Freshman 15
• First-Year Friendships Are For Fakeys
• Columbia's Least Employable Grads
• A Quick Briefing on Columbia-Speak
• Thirty Things To Do Before You Graduate Columbia
• CU is Like Folsom Prison
• Attack of the Killer Barnard Wymyn Blowjob
• Phil Steigman: Everyone's Class President
• John Jay Life Tried Without A Floor
• Some Stuff Your RA Might Have Left Out
• Housing and Dining Fed Fun Quiz
• Compliments of Health Services
• THEY WATCH
• What's a Fed Bash? Glad You Asked.
• The Staff of 21.0

As a first year, you are vulnerable to gaining the infamous freshman fifteen.  Strolling in to Summer ’06 with a new, glowing set of fifteen pound love handles is hardly a long shot, and can easily be attained through stealing from your roommate’s grandmother cookie stash, frequently chugging West End brews, and ritually attending John Jay Sunday brunch high as your new floor mate who, upon moving, managed to forget his toiletries but pack his vaporizer.

Fending off the freshman fifteen is one of the many non-academic battles you will face this year.  And lucky for you Columbia is on hand to help.  When I say help, I mean Columbia doesn’t offer a magical fitness plan organized by fairies and enforced by elves as much as it presents given incentives to exercise.  

The first such incentive is its premium Manhattan location.  A New Yorker will walk five miles on average a day.  Then again, five miles is a hundred times the distance you walk from your dorm to The Heights, so you are already at a disadvantage.  If you aren’t walking the distance, let Manhattan’s gorgeous residents and digitally altered billboards inspire you to maintain that sexy, barely legal, 18-year old figure.  So whether you are going for a super slim Mary Kate Olsen look, at which point you can finally wear twice your body weight in bangles, or the six pack boasted by Times Square’s jockey model, when you then can finally strut through John Jay breakfast in boxer briefs, letting your stomach muscles contract as you lift that heavy mug of “coffee”, Manhattan never fails to rouse the inner Jane Fonda.   

So now that you’re inspired, where to go?  Like most esteemed universities Columbia offers its students free, with a $40,000 deposit, gym membership to Dodge, the ultimate in fitness experience.  I’m not a gym person, but I know a fitness experience when I see it: barbells, open 24 hrs, mirrors, swipe card access, bathrooms, free paper towels. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been to another gym, but if that’s not a fitness experience then I’m a BC freshman moved by Barnard’s bullshit orientation candle ceremony. 

What really makes Dodge special is its community feel that permeates from a small space and the cries of students fighting over limited equipment.  In one incredible trip to Dodge you can pretend to stretch while panning the room for your CC crush, gouge the eyes of a lifelong learner unwilling to give up the elliptical at the end of his half hour time slot, be amused by your anorexic dorm neighbor struggling to hold on to her treadmill at top speed, and give an awkward hello to your English professor donning spandex, who also just happened to hop over to Dodge after skipping his 9 a.m. class.  

Of course, there are other options if you aren’t up for socializing.  You could start doing cocaine as often as you don’t think about visiting Dodge or make like our own Prez Bo and take to the streets.  Running, biking, or roller blading through New York’s renowned parks is the reminder Columbia forgets to give that Harlem is just a block away.  Or you former high school athletes might be tempted to join the club sports teams.  Pretending that you are still a real athlete wanes by second semester and you adopt the kind of warped nostalgia shared by your grandfather who after really only contemplating doing JV track his sophomore year in high school today claims that he was once an All American Heptathlete.  

Chances are, in a city that keeps you as busy as New York, you will probably escape freshman fifteen’s wrath.  If all else fails, you can soak in a tub of Dove firming lotion, and hope to emerge still heavy but as firm as your resolve to return home next summer more attractive than the people who went to high school with you.  Or I could say that your inner beauty is immune to any freshman fifteen.  But hasn’t CU orientation been the purveyor of enough first-year fabrications?