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In This Issue

• Hillary Clinton: Always a Political Bridesmaid
• Hipsters Demand Rights and Recognition as a Minority
• North Korea to Sponsor International Rocket Expo at Columbia University
• Bandirah
• The Columbia Commandments
• Reading Comprehension for the Modern Age
• Your Future's So Poor, You Have to Wear Shades
• Master Debaters
• got meth?
• The Fed Presents: Your Horoscope According to Weird Al
• The Fed has this to say
• They Watch
• The Fed's Staff

Brett Harding is here to help you. As a peer counselor for the Columbia Hipster Alliance, he aids troubled Hipsters in learning to accept both themselves and their community. While he is the first to admit that the job is not easy, he believes it is essential: "Hipster has been such a dirty word for so long that it's really hard to just go out there and say ‘I'm a hipster.' What we're trying to do now is take back the word from those who have used it to hurt us-just like what the LGBTQ community has done with ‘Queer' or the Frat Bros have done with ‘douchebag.' We're a distinct minority and that fact needs to be recognized."

While still young, the Hipster Empowerment Movement has had important consequences on and off campus. For one Junior, the effects have been revelatory. "I had always described myself as ‘funky,'" she says. "But after attending the first meeting of the Alliance, I realized, plain and simple, I was a Hipster, and saying anything else was a delusion." Some on campus, however, are revolted by the thought of Hipster equality. "They're just a whole bunch of pretentious brats," said one individual, sitting outside Butler Library, wearing a Columbia sweatshirt and plaid shorts

But the plight of the Hipster is real, says the chair of the newly created Hipster Studies Department, Alan Brinkley. "Hipsters are one of the most oppressed groups in American History," he wrote in an email. "They experience rejection from their peers, intolerance from the urban poor whose neighborhoods they gentrify, and, worst of all, utter hatred from their parents who maliciously chose to birth them into this vacuous, consumerist American culture."

As Professor Brinkley also makes clear, they share common traits with other oppressed minority groups throughout history. "The well documented phenomenon that a Hipster will never acknowledge that he or she is a Hipster-up until now thought to be rule-is disturbing. Various academic researchers have identified instances where an individual, unanimously described as a Hipster by his or her peers, would curse angrily about ‘Hipster scum' in their proximity. This astonishing behavior shows a deep insecurity on the part of the Hipster. Society is forcing these individuals to assimilate with disastrous psychological consequences. This business of denying one's Hipsterness smacks of the phenomenon of "crossing over," seen among African-Americans during the early twentieth century. Thankfully, the Hipster Empowerment Movement is working to change this."

Historians like Professor Brinkley trace the beginning of the movement to the circulation of an anonymously published zine, Hipsters of the World, Unite! Though decidedly radical, calling for parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan to secede from New York to form the "Autonomous People's Republic of Williamsburg and East Village," the zine's unwavering support for the re-appropriation of the word "Hipster" as a form of self-identification has inspired millions. The motto of the zine, "My t-shirt is vintage and I am proud," has since become a rallying cry for the movement.

Ultimate political goals aside, the overall change in Hipster Awareness in recent months has been startling. A Pew Research Poll several months found the percentage of students who self identified as "Hipster" was less than a tenth of a percent. A newer poll, released last week, has seen that number swell to almost twenty-six percent. Even groups who have previously denied their Hipster heritage have performed an about face. The Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society changed its official designation to the Alpha Delta Phi Hipster Society on Tuesday and Avery Library has begun to give away free 7-inch records from their extensive collection to anyone who stands outside the building with a cigarette and a fixed-gear bike.

A variety of new Hipster groups have also formed, ranging from power players such as previously mentioned Columbia Hipster Alliance (CHA) and HIP Barnard to fringe groups like Students for the Hipster Reich. While they have their differences-one member of the CHA explained that he had found it incredibly difficult to work with HIP Barnard because they believe Morrissey's solo work to be better than his work with the Smiths-the groups have made progress as a whole. Last week, representatives from each of the main groups presented to the CU Senate a "Proposal for the Acceptance of the Hipster Peoples." Explaining to the officials present that they were a distinct cultural group, they claimed that the University's policies were discriminatory. While the Senate scoffed at their demand for the right to drink Malt Liquor during class, the Core Committee has reportedly put under consideration their request for a Global Core class on Sonic Youth.

Other demands-including the right to smoke indoors-have gone over less well. Despite resistance, the CHA has continued an extensive lobbying effort, topped off by a speech by Vice President Josie Chan to the Columbia Council on Diversity, yesterday. Her final words were especially persuasive, leaving the audience in tears: "And so I say again: Smoking rolled cigarettes is a deeply important practice in our culture. Just as the CQA can hold explicitly sexual dance parties in Lerner or the Asian student groups can organize innumerable culture shows that no one goes to-both important customs in the LBGT and Asian communities-we demand the right to smoke in Lerner. We demand the right to practice our traditional customs unmolested by the tyranny of the majority! Is that so much to ask in this so-called democracy?"

But even if their customs are not officially recognized, many Hipsters are simply happy they can finally be themselves. Brett Harding, the peer counselor for the CHA, explained it like this: "Our people no longer have to live in shame at the question, ‘Why do you express your individuality and nonconformity by looking and acting like a whole bunch of other people?' I know now it's because I am member of a distinct socio-econo-cultural group. We're here, we're hip, get used to it."