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In This Issue

• Water On The Knee
• The Annihilator of Mathematics
• Demonic Speak-n-Spell
• The Fed Interviews Jon Voight
• Letters to the Feditors
• Sam Jenning, or: Eating Children For Profit
• Immigrate This!
• Where In Our Hearts Is Carmen Sandiego?
• The Life and Times of Carmen Sandiego
• Redder Rabbit?
• Good Golly Fucking Gumdrops, I Like Candy!
• The City’s New Hot, Sexy, Superhot Nightclub!
• Where's Waldo?
• Logical Journey into Eugenics
• Think Columbia Sucks? It's Your Fault, Doofus.
• A Farewell to Harms
• A Farewell To Bill
• Tracy Briskit, Fed Queen
• Make Your Own Safe Space!
• Columbia Trail: Safe Space, Bathroom in 347 miles
• Cook with Barney!
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 21.8
• The Staff of Volume 21

MIchael Grinspan

That's right Tracy. We're with you. Just don't eat us.

Tracy Briskit, Fed Queen
Tracy Briskit

When I was 11, singing with the middle school choir was all the rage. Despite having a heinous voice, I was determined to sing alongside friends with actual musical talent and in the end managed to talk my way into the soprano section. It took me three years in choir to accept that mouthing the words and pretending to read sheet music was a waste of my time. The moral of the story is that, in retrospect, petty skills like knowing how to “sing” have never kept me from joining groups like “choir.”

I realize now that sticking to activities I’m not especially good at has been a recurring trend in my life, most recently showing itself in the four years I have dedicated to The Fed. As I bid a mostly-fond farewell to Columbia’s only humor/subversive/bad/alternative/hated on/sometimes funny/not intentionally racist/hilarious/self-referential paper, I wonder how I faked writing funny for so long. On the other hand, as our departing publisher Bill put it, since freshman year I have been fraught with a “Fed-inferiority complex.” I ask myself, in my last Fed article ever, am I being too hard on myself? Is it just that I have an inferiority complex or did Bill just say that to make me feel better? And is it possible that my alcoholism will ever again be looked at as a positive leadership quality?

While perusing The Fed’s online archives this afternoon, I surveyed my published work since freshman year. As a Google search of my name will attest, my Fed repertoire includes articles on tofurky, artichokes, Jesus, the mentally challenged, AIM perverts, fat people, Chihuahuas, shopping cart races, military dolphins, and Santa’s grottos. What the fuck was I thinking writing such absurdities? I often felt it was to my discredit that my best articles were a mere retelling of funny things that have happened to me. Then again, something could be said for writing about these experiences in a witty manner. Whatever the case, you can see that my Fed insecurities persist to this day.

That said, writing articles was a minor part of my Fed experience, and explains little about why I stayed with the paper for as long as I did. In sum, The Fed is fun. If there are other weekly meetings on campus that start with the leader on a table ranting with a fake shotgun in one hand and a flask in the other, I’d be interested to hear about it.

After writing for The Fed freshman year, I was given an editor position as a sophomore but made the paper a low priority behind Project Health, internships, and an off-campus boyfriend. Feeling like a Fed outsider during these years was largely my fault, and I regret not having gotten to know the writers then better. Junior year I went to London (God knows why. I’d like to take the opportunity to say in print: fuck you, London, I still back the burn.) and did not contribute much while abroad. When I came back as a senior and Head Submissions Feditor, I made a commitment to the paper and worked to connect with a new generation of Feddies that had emerged in my absence. I learned that submitting articles wasn’t enough, and that going to the bar after a Sunday night meeting often meant a whole lot more than contributing, dare I say, retarded content. Let me also not forget hysterical submissions meetings, Fed Bash, canceled Fed Bash, co-ed naked blood wrestling, snack room bounty, naked Twister, and end of semester rooftop debaucheries.

It comes full circle, then. Singing in the middle school choir wasn’t about singing. Writing for the Fed wasn’t about writing. It was and always will be about the people I write, sing, play, work, drink, and laugh with. Unfortunately, there are some truly awesome people on The Fed, this year and in years past, that I will dearly miss seeing on a weekly basis. Sorry this farewell article isn’t gut-busting hilarious. I thought it more appropriate to leave The Fed with an article that best served my own voice. I think, after four years, I‘ve finally succeeded.