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In This Issue

• Election 2032: In which intrepid itinerant Benway Wharfinger reports his Chronicle of a Most Vacuous Contest
• Partying Hard with Lee Bollinger
• From the Archives: Volume 12, Number 3 — October 15, 1997
• Sarah Palin: The Next Elbridge Gerry?!
• Your Handy-Dandy Schematic for Bailout 2008
• TARGET(TM) Children's Music Festival Probably Enjoyed by Someone. Possibly by Children.
• OUR SCHOOL IS COLUMBIA; OUR LIEGE IS KALI-MA
• John Jay Food Exposed—through Science!
• A Very Sarah Palin Halloween Special
• Do-It-Yourself Particle Accelerator!
• 40s on 40 Through the Ages: A Thought Experiment
• White-Collar Hobos Gentrify Public Parks
• Costumes that Should Not be Sexy
• Non-Voters: The “Other” Demographics
• Playing in a Puddle of Predictions
• Where to Trick and how you'll be “Treated”
• There's No Place Like The GOP
• Partnership for a "Free Drugs!" America
• The Staff of 24.2
• THEY Watch

Dear prospective Columbia students:

As you have no doubt gleaned from the brochure you picked up in Low Library, Columbia is a haven of traditions. Aside from the occasional hard won progressive reform (requiescat in pace, “Major Cultures”), our Core stands proud and immaculate to this day. That includes the swim test; and given current popular opinions on climate change, we should be very proud to attend such a forwardlooking institution. And let us never forget our first Orgo Night, our first Homecoming game (also last), and our first time getting CAVAd (which we never really remembered to begin with).

Getting derided by snotty Kim’s employees for your rental choice might have made the mark, except that God, in His wisdom (according to His Unfathomable Plan) saw fit to foreclose on that oasis of rare classic DVDs, volumes of work from obscure directors, and every movie David Lynch ever made (including bootlegs!), and replace it with a Ricky’s Costume Store. Film buffs feel Job’s pain.

But, truly, among undergraduates there is no more venerated tradition on campus than 40s on 40.

Curiously omitted from that brochure of yours, 40s on 40 was an annual event in which graduating seniors sat on Low Steps, forty days before they were to turn tassel, and got properly smashed on fortyounce bottles of beer and malt liquor. Sounds dangerous, right? The University thought so too. And starting in 2007, they began to co-opt the event: A pen was erected in front of Low Library, two IDs to enter, and seniors were herded, slaughterhouse-style, to administration-sanctioned tables distributing administration-sanctioned beer and free T-shirts. And gone was that quiet April afternoon where the young nobly defied the powers that be by taking off their shirts and vomiting in broad daylight.

But what if the big, scary CU administration was just getting started?

Here is a thought experiment to see where 40s on 40 will be some years from now:

2011: 40s on 40 no longer involves alcohol. The glorious teets of Mother Alma squeezed their last precious drop of free Coors after a messy alcohol-induced clusterfuck some years before.

(See, what happened was this: John McCain had joined his daughter for a light dinner of chili-cheese-fried- gyros and ice cream floats at his favorite Morningside diner. Three bites later, Sarah Palin assumed the Presidency. In turn, every Democrat on campus who forgot to register back in 08 finally located their ‘nads and staged a sobriety strike on South Lawn, refusing to consume any nonalcoholic substance, except the occasional Roti Roll, until Palin was removed from office. After the first night of the strike, they decided the only thing left to do was burn Tom’s Restaurant to the ground and get over it. It was replaced with another Ricky’s.)

So from now on at 40s on 40, the class councils distribute Mott’s Apple Juice boxes and Fig Newtons while University proctors check to ensure that everyone is respecting the one-box- per-two-hours policy. Public Safety officers have standing orders to remove anyone from the premises at the first sign of a sugar rush. Frat boys trying to smuggle Oreos onto campus in paper bags are summarily executed. For the first time in history, Columbians begin to explore the universe beyond 110th St in search of a good time.

2032: At this point, it is physically impossible to pregame for 40s on 40 within a forty-block radius. CUIT has installed hidden cameras in every dorm room, classroom, and bathroom on campus. (Some suggest that this was done as early as 2006— “routine improvements,” my phonetapped ass—but such ideas are clearly the ravings of delusional paranoiacs.)

And ever since the Manhattan Valley Extension of 2030 (every Upper West Side block without a Ricky’s Costume Store, Starbucks, and Duane Reade was deemed “blighted”), CU Public Safety and Residential Life have expanded their jurisdiction: consolidating power, enforcing University policy, erecting more Ricky’s locations, and policing weekly study breaks as far downtown as 76th St.

2047: 40s on 40 is no longer held on the Low Steps because the Low Steps do not exist. Every building on campus—excepting the curiously indestructible Maison Francais—has been razed to make room for farms of computer servers and yet more Ricky’s. McKim, Mead, and White’s original campus has been integrated into a virtual online simulation of the University, through which you attend all classes and interact with all friends—CourseWorks and Facebook united at last. (Purists maintain that Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City had a more authentic rendering of the campus; they stage protests and strikes to no end, and all their friends “maybe attend.”)

All lecture notes, university memoranda, and club flyers are uploaded via V-Chip implants directly into your brain. But there is still no wi-fi in the dorms.

2054: All things return to nature. The last living alumnus celebrates Columbia’s 300th birthday by salvaging a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor from the Armageddonite rubble, raising it to the toxic sky, and reciting all that he can remember from “Roar Lion Roar,” which is not much. Every Ricky’s is turned to dust. Maison Francais stands.