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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

Emily Hoffman

As we look out from the roof of IAB towards the outline of midtown Manhattan, the sky changing from burgundy to dark blue, Stephan Vincenzo, CC '12, hands me a Cuban cigar. "I know a guy who gets these real cheap," he says softly. This is my second interview with Stephan. The first, in Fall 2008, was inside of President Bollinger's office. "Lee still lets me use it for important meetings," Stephan says. "But I wanted to talk somewhere else this time. This is where I go to think." The contemplative mood is fitting.

From the jubilant naiveté of the NSOP '08 soiree, Sexxx in the City, Stephan has matured. Tempered by the fires of adversity, he has emerged a man far more comfortable in his shoulder-length hair. Yet that Vincenzian pattern-the unquenchable desire to make those around him happy in this cruel, cruel world-still persists. He is no mere party organizer. Like the protagonist of comrade Mikhail Lermontov's seminal bromance, he is A Hero of Our Time. While many must face the "sophomore slump," none have endured one as terrible as Stephan's, nor triumphed so majestically as he has. With that known, let us now begin the story of his past year (soon to be a major motion picture starring Vin Diesel and Megan Fox) by returning to the heady days of a lost age: Spring 2009.

Following the break-up of his first New York production company, 11th Floor Entertainment, Stephan started the now legendary Official NYC College Events with his childhood friend and bodyguard Matt Cuba. Spending the summer in the city, Stephan continued to plan parties. Amidst a life of gallery openings, haute cuisine and symphonies, the idea for a new magnum opus drifted into his head: a warehouse party in the middle of hipster Brooklyn, tied in to the hit comedy film "The Hangover." While the party was a success, drawing 1000 attendees from all over the tri-state area, a discrepancy arose in the revenue. One of the investors was less than reputable. "I thought he just had mob connections-and I can handle mobsters-but this was something else," Stephan tells me. "This guy was deep in some conspiracy, like Dan Brown-Illuminati shit."

Before he knew it, Stephan had been drugged and was lying on his back in an abandoned church with a pentagram drawn in blood on his stomach and a hooded figure hovering over him with a knife. "I can't tell you how I got out of there," he says, the old fear a distinct undertone on his voice. "They-whoever they are-might come after the guys who helped me."

Fleeing the city, Stephan spent the rest of the summer in Atlanta with his grandmother, working construction. Despite the horrors he had experienced there, he knew his destiny laid in New York City. Settling for nothing less than a glorious return, Stephan planned an orientation week's worth of events. But, just as he began to reassume his old stride, tragedy struck again with the death of his grandmother, diagnosed with leukemia the day before Stephan returned to college.

As difficult as the times were, Stephan persevered, and his fame spread throughout the city. "We became known for doing events in synagogues, warehouses, lofts and spas, any feasible place," he says. A planned event in a crematorium fell through, however: "The proprietor was from Hong Kong. My Mandarin is good, but my Cantonese is just so-so."

While the indomitable will of Stephan Vincenzo seemed to know no bounds, fate had a different plan. After experiencing a falling out with business partners in December, he returned from Winter Break to a crueler surprise: the death of his close friend JD.

"JD was the first friend I met at Columbia and had always been there," Stephan says. "I had to learn how to smile again after he died."

And smile again Stephan has. Stephan-watchers were overjoyed to see posted on his Facebook, on April the 10th, a message of new determination: "Stephan Vincenzo is going to use the drive he used to get to Columbia to get through the rest of his life. I found the old me."

Equipped with a new raison d'etre as formidable as his award-winning chili recipe, Stephan has continued to break new ground. He continues to enlist more and more high-profile celebrities to appear at his events. While he considered a plan to secure the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur-"my boy, Prof. Schattschneider, over at SEAS had been working on this time travel technology and I thought about using that for a while, but I saw ‘The Butterfly Effect' and know what happens when you mess with the timeline"-he has decided to stick to only currently living celebrities.

His production company has begun to branch out into new areas, too, such as talent management, bat mitzvahs, and life counseling. With his rising celebrity just now passing the 10 AM mark in what must surely be a perpetual noon, it seems that Stephan's sophomore slump-appropriately arduous for a man who manifests the hopes and dreams of 2012-is finally over.

As the interview concludes, the significance of our location assumes the fullness of its meaning. The roof of IAB is at both the periphery and the center of Columbia's undergraduate experience. Even though it is a grad school building and trespassing there is punishable by expulsion from housing, everyone still does.

So too is Stephan, at once, near and far. He is a joke to some, but in this dead campus, inhospitable to even the most stalwart, Stephan provides a sense of community the administration never could. In twenty years, you'll have forgotten that stupid CCSC event, but Stephan will be etched into your memory forever, whether or not you spend only three seconds looking at his Facebook events before clicking "Not Attending." Stephan is the real Columbia lion, more so than that scoundrel in the Roaree costume ever could be.

And so I say, Roar, lion. roar. Wake the echoes of the Hudson Valley.