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In This Issue

• Gilded Age Remembered
• A Dutty-Dance with Death
• Cracking the Porcelein Castle
• The Fed Presents: Lessons in Parenting
• The Dodgessy
• A Collection of Haikus
• The Winter In My Soul
• Sometimes Misinformation Can Be Quite Deadly
• The Potomac’s Constitutional Sewage
• Missed Connections
• Bail-outopoly
• The Short List of Columbia University Clubs
• Beastiality Ever-After
• The Party Doesn’t Stop During a Global Recession
• got meth?
• Getting Ass in Class
• From the Archives
• THE FED has this to say
• They Watch
• The Staff

Jochen Kang

Dear Mom and Dad,

They say you can never know college until you get there, but I didn't realize how true that was until I landed at Colombia. First off, Colombia campus is massive (the pilot told me 420 square miles!), and the weather is oppressively hot.

I requested a single in John Jay, but seem to have been assigned to a room with only one bed and eight people. Further, though I wished to be living with freshman, all of my roommates seem to be either GS students (some in their 40s?) or small children (child prodigies?). I heard Carman was unhygienic, but this morning I found poop in my shoes. I'm pretty sure it was Pablo (he wears a diaper). I think he has Crohn's. At least I'm making friends.

I was also surprised by the foreign language requirement. I knew I would have four semesters of intensive study, but it seems that pretty much everyone speaks Spanish, all the time. If I speak English, my only professor (who doubles as the RA of my dorm) slaps me across the face and spits in my cereal.

In general, the core curriculum is a bit less flexible than I imagined. I didn't even get to register for classes! My classes also vary in their meeting times, and many of them meet late at night. I'm taking what I can only assume is a biology class with Hugo, which meets Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday, from 2-4 AM or any time in the mid afternoon.

During a recent lab, Hugo showed us how to fill a condom with flour and swallow it whole! I can't wait to visit home! A whopping eight hours of each day (except Sunday), is spent in Shop class where for the last week we've been making small wooden Pinocchio dolls. I feel like my artistic freedom is being squelched.

I also can't get over the Colombian activism. I had read about the hungers strikers at Colombia, but it seems about 70% of people are always on hunger strike. I'm not sure how, but I've fallen in with a group of strikers calling themselves the Diablos. I guess they're a fraternity, because last Sunday they blindfolded me and forcefully took their dues.

My new friends have a pretty intense list of demands (I can't read them, but I've been hoping they contain housing and core reforms). Lately, I've been getting the sneaking suspicion that I may be in the wrong place. Yesterday, the Diablos and I took over the central campus building, by force, and we've been staging a protest in there (with hostages and everything!) for a day. I hope I'm wrong, but...I think I may be at NYU.

Love you and send food!

Jeremy