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In This Issue

• Stephan Vincenzo: 2 Legendary 2 Die
• Columbia College Graduation Replaced by Job Fair
• Confessions of a Poppy Seed Eater
• Senior Wisdom: The Adventurous One
• Senior Wisdom: The Nostalgic One
• Senior Wisdom: The Old One
• Warning: Social Ruin May Occur
• "39 Steps" to Successful Comedy
• A Letter to the T.A. Currently Fellating Me
• Bored at Butler
• God Ashes on Europe
• YEEAAAAHH
• got meth?
• Letter From the Feditors
• They Watch
• The Staff of the Federalist

Feditor '08

A copy of The Fed slipped under my Carman door one afternoon deep in the slog of NSOP. I opened it up. There was a cartoon of Columbia fucking "You." What irreverence, what undisguised immaturity! I never looked back.

The office of The Fed, you must know, is a cave of wonders. Editors of yore cry out to us from a bevy of yellowing notes, hastily scribbled and tacked for eternity on the monitor of our shabby old G4. Stop by and read them some time. You can pull up a chair during one of our marathon weekend layout sessions (BYOB).

Sift through the stacks of old cartoons and unprinted editorials, or the old Blue & Whites and Hustlers that lie uncollected in piles by the door (we haven't bothered to separate them). You'll find a briefcase filled with a trove of 60-cent knick-knack toys that we break out for Days on Campus (the kids just love ‘em). And there's the large poster-board mockup of our stick-figure sodomy logo (that adorable logo again!) that lets people substitute their faces for "Columbia" and "You." I love putting that thing on College Walk each Orientation. It is one of the things I will most dearly miss.

Then there's the archives, which chart The Fed's extraordinary 25- year evolution from its founding as the conservative counterpoint to the Spec to the loony bin it is now. Really, though, I don't think that much has changed. The Fed was founded as a forum for opinions that were not welcome in other publications.

Then it got a little more bizarre, venturing into tabloid territory. It settled into a nice little niche as the "alternative" newspaper, and even launched an arts and culture magazine (called The Polis) in the 90s. During one of The Fed's many near-death experiences, it churned out the infamous "Fashion Issue," consisting entirely of the sole two editors' midterm papers. It was then resurrected as a satirical paper, with a penchant for colliding Dante jokes with doodoo jokes.

At every phase of its history, The Fed was a paper buoyed by the passions of its staff, transformed by their particular interests, and kept on life-support long enough for them to pass it off to like-minded lunatics. The underdog paper. The little club that could. The one that keeps the light on for writers who have something to say.

In the last four years, I've been a writer, an editor, editor-in-chief, and now the resident crabby old man in the room, and I truly believe that The Fed is one of the most generous groups on campus. Now that I'm graduating, I think I've been interpreting The Fed's logo wrong all these years. Take another look. I'm pretty sure Columbia is fucking you with love.