The Fed

From the Editor
Dear precious little freshman reader:

Welcome to Columbia University.  Right about now, if you are anything like I was, you are probably thinking “Oh God, why the hell did I come here and how quickly can I transfer somewhere else?”    It’s one of the many joys of college that you won’t find enumerated in the brochure: just about everyone absolutely hates it at first.  Everyone I knew freshman year was working     on an application to transfer somewhere else at some point during the first semester.  (Precocious as I am, I began transfer proceeding during, oh, the second week of classes.)  Yes, wee one, this too shall pass.  Everyone misses Mom and Dad, and home, and high school, and the ‘ol’ soda fountain down at the depot, ferociously and constantly.  Everyone has no friends and hates the people on their floor.  Everyone cries in the shower!  (hey, I still cry in the shower!)  There is so much pressure on us kids to choose “the right” college, that when you show up at C.U. and find that its not orgasmically pleasing 110% of the time, you freak.  And, it’s always difficult to leave home.  But, these things are normal and temporary.

You’ll be amazed in a couple of months how much you like it here, how much you appreciate things (like Ollie’s and malt liquor) that you couldn’t care less about right now.  Freshman year is a tough time; everyone has to go through it, but the passage of each successive class does not make it easier for the next.

That’s just one of the things they’re not going to tell you at Orientation.  We’ve devoted this extra-special Orientation Issue to freshman year: the real freshman year, the one you won’t read about in Facets.

Now that we’ve got all that stuff out of the way, my teeny tiny freshman friend, let me tell you a little about the publication you are enjoying this very minute, your big buddy The Federalist.

The Federalist has been around for a long time, almost your whole lifetime!  For most of that time The Federalist was very conservative.  Recently, a troop of crazy kids took it over, and the Fed changed its style.  Now, the Federalist has a new mission: to hand out candy-canes and raise hell.  And guess what folks.  We’re all out of candy-canes.

Broadly put, the Federalist was re-founded to foster constructive debate in the Columbia community (and to be fun to read).  Everyone is encouraged to voice an opinion in the Fed.  We print conservative opinions alongside liberal ones.  We print fiction and satire.  We print goofy pictures.  We print cartoons.  We printed an attack on the woman who cut my hair.  Hey kids, that’s the Fed!

The Fed subsists on opinions.  That’s what you’ll find in this issue: lots of opinions.  You may find some of them obnoxious and misbegotten.  Everyone does.  But we at the Fed think that opinions are fun to print, even if they piss people off.  And we strongly encourage everyone to respond to things in the Fed that they don’t agree with.  That’s the point of the Fed: to generate discussion.  Think of the Fed as a big angry party!

And remember: the Fed pledges not to take itself too seriously.  Frankly, that’s what we do best.

So little dears, welcome to your newspaper and mine, The Federalist.  If you are so inclined, I invite you to come and work with us on the Fed!  We have room for everyone, regardless of political bias, prior newspaper experience, or talent.  And we have a lot more fun than the competition does.  Come to our semi annual Recruitment Meeting.

Write a letter to the Feditor, or mouth off in the Speak Out.  Write to [email protected].

Thank you for reading, delicate little freshmen flowers.  Enjoy the rest of the issue, and please don’t be afraid.

Laurie Marhoefer
Editor in Chief

August 30, 1999