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In This Issue

• Manhattanville! Because Complaining Never Gets Old
• Some Crotchety Old Man Stole My ID
• Thoughts While Bronzing on the Steps
• Greetings, From Public Safety
• Dear Mahmoud
• Get Your Horcrux Off My Desk
• Presidents: "We're a BFD"
• The Overachiever's Guide to Breaking the Ten Commandments
• Jew Hater Born a Jew
• From the Barnard Office of Health
• Sexed Up Haikus
• Core Turns Hardcore
• The Netherlands Corner
• An Apology to Our Readers
• They Watch
• The Staff of the Federalist

Emily Hoffman

Dear Diary,
As the summer draws to a close, I sit here and reflect on how lovely this campus can be. I love summer. The days are longer and the campus is much more peaceful. There is probably a third of the number of students parading down College Walk as there are during the school year. The quiet gives me the opportunity to contemplate the beauty of life, but soon school will begin and the aura of anxiety will fill the air. I'm actually quite nervous about the first day of school. Will people still look up to me as their mother away from mothers? One hundred six years at this school and the first day still gives me the jitters.

Diary,
The new freshmen have arrived at Columbia. It really is great to see generation after generation of the world's best and brightest come through the gates year after year. But...I don't know. Fresh faces and bright spirits usually cheer me up. However, this year I just can't seem to get into it. It's not so much that I'm not enthusiastic; it's just that these kids still think finding the owl first will actually make them valdictorian. Really? Really? And staring alone doesn't sate them. No. They get fresh with me below the belt! It truly is molestation. And every, EVERY, year the tour guides still tell the prospectives, "if you find the owl first..." Stop it! What actually gets you to the top of the class is reading the Aeneid over and over again until your eyes bleed and you've lost all hope of fornicating freshman year. It's not by looking up my big
bronze skirt. Have some dignity!

Diary,
I didn't think I could get any more depressed; yet, here I am. I was listening to a couple of boys introducing themselves when one of them asked the other why he decided to come to Columbia. I'm usually so eager to hear the answer to this question-but then I heard the response. He said "Actually I couldn't get into any of my top choices. You know, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, so I came here. Kinda a last choice." Kinda a last choice? Excuse me, you little twit! Not only was that more pretentious than ordering champagne at 1020, it wasn't even a complete sentence. I would have kicked you in the groin were I not immobile.It was almost like he said that on purpose to hurt my feelings. Just because I'm metal doesn't mean I'm not human. Insolent Beast.

Dear Diary,
I wonder if I'm some sort of celebrity in Japan. There must be four tour buses a day, at LEAST, which come through here, and all they do is take pictures with me. I wonder if I have a fansite...

Dear Diary,
I have NO privacy. Not only do I have barely legal teens taking upskirt pictures of me, but these children insist on sitting in my lap like I'm a Mall Santa! I would love to nurture them, lend a lap to sit in, a shoulder to cry on. But no! All they want to do is put tacky plastic leis or mardi gras beads around my neck and awful hats on my head and drink their PBR and smoke their cigarettes and then put them out on my THIGH! There are plenty of other places on the steps for them to burn and molest! I get absolutely no respect anymore. That creepy Pan statue gets more respect than me. I need to talk with Hamilton about this.

Dear Diary,
Today a pigeon defecated on my head. I think it had eaten blueberries. I can't decide what's worse, pigeon waste or a blue lei and a fraternity lettered cap. My head might as well be Campo.

Dear Diary,
Exciting news! I was listening to a several of freshmen girls talking (how could I not, they were sitting on my stoop and blathering incessantly) and apparently Nate from Gossip Girl is coming to Columbia! That just gives me butterflies all over! Chase Crawford is so smart and attractive. Maybe this time when they come film, since they're not doing something silly like pretending this is Yale, they'll actually show me and I'll get to be in a scene with him. I've never been a leading lady before, and I haven't starred in anything since Ghostbusters.