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In This Issue

• Country of Cuba to be Bought and Renamed
• Frat Guy: Hot Bitches, Not Being Gay Crucial for Success in Next Four Years
• It's a Journal, Not a Diary
• Why Columbia Can't Stand Your Kind
• Magna Carma Libertatum
• Point-Counterpoint: My Roommate Keeps Having Sex in Our Room While I’m There
• How to Succeed in Lit Hum Without Really Trying
• (Taxonomy of) Hot College Coeds
• "Dear Mel"
• Class of 2010: Peer Profiles
• The Thinking Freshmen's Guide to Columbia's Libraries
• The Motorcycle Diaries
• Remembrance of Orientations Past
• A Brief Primer on the Basics of Columbia-Speak
• The Hierarchy of Columbia
• Facilitating Your Future Alcohol Addiction
• Orientalation
• An Illustrated Guide of the Columbia Hipster
• The Adventures of Ice-Bitch
• Points of Interest in Morningside Heights
• A Typical Night in McBain
• Portrait of A Loyal Member of Our Staff
• Get to Know The Fed’s Staff with Two Truths and a Lie

Kimi Traube

Kimi Traube

"Come on, high five!"

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my mother gave me some advice, as mothers are wont to do: "Not everyone has had the advantages you've had. Just remember that the next time you feel like criticizing someone."

I've been turning over her advice in my mind ever since, never truly understanding what she meant until I came to Columbia University. Being home-schooled in the Catskills of Minnesota or wherever, I was completely unfamiliar with the four big "isms" in the world. In an effort to help you poor first-years, I ask that you please lend your solemn attention to what I shall unfold:

Sexism

Barnard lying spread-eagle across the street, and females outnumbering males in CC, males experience a terrible sexism in almost all facets of campus life. I was unprepared for the treatment I received at the hands of both sexes. It seemed that every female went out of her way to tell me every time I insulted her intelligence (as if there were such a thing!). But then they got upset when I lied about drugging their drinks? Impossible double standard.

The males, sadly, were not much better. In class, males were content to allow the females to dominate class discussions, instead preferring to stare at the females, in turn causing me to fail every single class last semester. Damn sluts. The professors encouraged this behavior with their grading policies, and the administration has denied any female bias. But the admissions numbers say otherwise.

Thankfully, SEAS admits only males, helping to build male self-confidence in a hostile world. Hopefully this is just the first step towards a brave new world of equality.

Racism

Ever since arriving here from my isolated mountain dwelling, I have been negatively made aware of my white skin. I get strange stares late at night when I'm taking the subway through Harlem naked. During the day, no one will sit next to me, fearing that I will evict them and build a biotech lab in their former home. The administration helps maintain these hurtful stereotypes through their actions.

Hopefully, one day (my lily-white man-God willing) I will no longer be bombarded with hateful vitriol or historical facts. I will never have to think about myself as a white male. Instead, I'll can simply be one of those really cool white guys that everyone, even black people, high-fives.

Some of my fellow students have started to move in a positive direction in an attempt to alleviate some of the injuries I've personally received from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Please give them all the money you can spare. They call themselves "Columbia Student Council," and I assure you that the money will go towards giving me free food...for the uncreated conscience of my race.

Sexual Orientation Bias... ism

I am of the belief that what happens in the bedroom stays inside the bedroom. If somebody else wants to make tender love to a beautiful transvestite, then that should be their business. We Columbians love to congratulate ourselves on our higher than average acceptance of various sexual orientations. But vanity of vanities, says I, all is vanity. It is a thin façade of acceptance. For every time I orgasm I'm made to feel dirty, just because I afterwards attack people with chainsaws at the 110th Street subway station.

Perhaps one day, sexuality will be free and easy. For the time being, though, the administration's policy of calling my post-coital behavior a "dangerous pathology" stands in the way of equal relations for all sexual orientations.

Anti-Semitism

.... I'm not touching this one with a 10-cubit upright-pole.

Sexism, racism, sexual-orientation biasism, and anti-Semitism have darkened the waters of the world since time immemorial. But hope springs eternal within the human breast. Although we live in dark times, I will continue to shine the light in the darkness. No matter if the darkness comprehends it not.

I expect no thanks for my advice - so shines a good deed in a weary world. But perhaps you, my lost sheep in a flock of wolves, perhaps I have helped you tread the first steps on the golden path of acceptance. If so, then I have been recompensed ten times over for all my pain. Come, we shall walk together on the stones of truth.

At some point a naysayer may try and tell you, my prodigal child, that we chase ephemeral phantasms of insanity. The Evil Tempter will whisper that we dream impossible dreams. He will say that I have never been oppressed by anyone, ever, at any point in my entire life. But I tell you, without doubt or fear, that one day there will be reckoning, and the holy father will strike down with his wrath and set things alright (seriously, my dad is pretty rich).

Dare to dream with me, and your soul will be nourished with the manna of heaven. Success has eluded us in the past, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out farther, and one fine morning...

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the freshman class.