The Columbia University Marching band, or CUMB, just wrapped up their traditional Orgo Night performance in Butler 209 on the night before the Organic Chemistry final. If you’re finding your eyes are beginning to glaze over from studying, take a quick study break and read over the script from tonight. The band sure did CUMB through and PUNCHED UP. Below are a couple of our tweets from the night as well as the script. And remember: we’ll be bringing you our full review of this semester’s Orgo Night tomorrow!


[Roar] {MIKHAIL}

Ladies and gentlemen, and organic chemistry students, back despite the being beaten black and blue, it’s the most white (and gold) band in the world, the Columbia University Marching PENIS!

[Fanfare]

{ORLI}

Featuring:
J. Free Speech: Contested J. Anonymous: Arrested
J. Everything: Protested [Fanfare]

{MIKHAIL}
Welcomes itself back to spirited, saccharine, strangely antiseptic, sedulous, sententious, sesquipedalian, semicircular, semi­centennial, solipsistic, recently renovated, yet still in need of renovation! College Library, where the shelves are long­lasting, but sadly not the men, and the women are checked out but long overdue. As well as​Ollies blowing up, Barnard’s text­alert system breaking down, and 600 at an all time “about t o b e r e n o v a t e d ” , t ​h e B a n d n o w p r e s e n t s i t s 6 1 s t c o n s e c u t i v e , 6 9 t h semi­annual drive to lower the curve in Organic Chemistry while consummating the world’s largest simultaneous Orgo! And so, in the interest of everyone’s enjoyment:

{ORLI}
SEAS students, please turn off your electronic devices.

{MIKHAIL}
GS students, please turn up your hearing aids.

{ORLI}
CC kids, please set your phones to vibrate;

{MIKHAIL}
Barnard students, please set your vibrators to phone. Let’s start the show! [Who Owns]

{ORLI}
Remember that time that students tried to make something cool and fun happen and it was totally unimpeded by administrative fuckery? [Pause] We can’t either! Sure, plenty of things go on, from ( insert pointless protest ) to ( insert stupid thing), but anytime there’s a chance for something fun to happen it always seems to get killed in its crib, like a Princeton grad’s child with sub­optimally Aryan features. From Fall Bacchanal—the show that never was—to the Varsity Show’s Days on Campus performance—the show that never should have been—the administration continues to wage its war on fun, to ensure that you’re exactly as miserable as a football player in Lit Hum… or on the football field.

But nothing this year could top the unifying shitiness of the non­unifying concert that gave everybody something to complain about. When it came to “I Don’t Bacch With You,” everybody was bacching angry about something: Jewish students were upset that Bacchanal fell on Passover weekend while Catholic students were angry that the Jews killed Jesus. Low­income students felt alienated when they had to pay for a concert supposedly covered by our student life fees. But when that fee was refunded, wealthy students were angry that they would actually have to mingle with the peasants again. Finally, everyone on campus was angry with the Bacchanal Committee—the committee that fared as well under pressure as a Cornell student. But in the end, Bacchanal really unified us as a student body, in the same way that reconstructive surgery after a car crash unifies a body.

Seriously, this whole process was more fucked up than a closeted Republican Senator’s intern. For example, there was the issue of ticket sales. Seven dollars? That’s seven dollars more than any sane person should pay to see Big Sean. Moreover, Barnard students who wanted to
purchase tickets were forced to relive the nightmare of college admissions when they once again didn’t receive an email from Columbia.

Thankfully, when things got really desperate, students turned to our campus’ real movers­and­shakers—the student government. Bolstered by their long history of inciting change and making a difference, the student government’s combined efforts granted the Bacchanal committee an additional $25,000 to open the lawns. $25,000! To put that into more immediate terms, that’s a million gumballs. The cost might have been worth it, however, if the lawns were made of use. But alas, Butler’s grassy turf remained as empty as an Oriole’s­White Sox game. The student government shouldn’t feel all that foolish though—$25,000 to not walk on the Butler lawns is typically just called tuition.

On the day of the concert, Low Steps were buzzing with the hither and thither of paid employees. Between the performers, public safety, and the quote­unquote “Lion Tamers”, a passerby could almost mistake the event for being well­attended. The Lion Tamers were mandated by the deans to monitor the crowd’s health and hydration. They wore uniforms to distinguish them from the other students in attendance, because nothing says “I have authority” quite like someone in a visor.

In honor of our administration’s never­ceasing War on Fun, the band now forms an empty lawn and plays Bound 2 Get Cancelled Eventually.

[Bound 2]

{MIKHAIL}
This semester, we saw a lot of connections between what was happening on our campus, and what was happening in national politics: ridiculous satirical candidates launched their nonsensical campaigns, and after Rand Paul and Ted Cruz made their announcements, candidates at Columbia decided to join in. Parties running for student government whipped out their MSPaint logos, and so did Hillary. And the Lion Tamers’ overzealous crowd control inspired the Baltimore police.

In other news, Obama finally acknowledged Columbia by tantalizingly cockteasing us about establishing his Presidential Library here. Unfortunately, our drea0ms died slowly and painfully, like a woman in a red state getting a back­alley abortion. Instead of Columbia, Obama chose the University of Chicago—the Yale of the Midwest. It’s called that not because it’s a good school, but because of the gun violence.

Obama always wanted his Library to be in a park, where the quiet, open spaces—so symbolic of his Nobel Peace Prize—would serve as a beautiful backdrop for his Predator drone jungle gym; because for Obama, nothing goes together like drones and school children. The park will also have enough space to include Stressbuster Joe Biden’s massage station, and a high­tech aquarium, complete with exotic fish and Bin Laden’s corpse. To that end, the library is rumored to be built in spacious Jackson Park, which makes sense, because just like another famous Jackson, Obama started out as a young black upstart, and grew into a pop culture icon, only to become nearly indistinguishable from a white man—at least as far as his enthusiasm for murdering foreigners goes.

But how is Obama going to fill his days once Bill Clinton becomes the First Lady? As soon as he’s out of the White House, he’ll have to pull a ‘Dave Goldberg’ and hit the ground running. Yale is one option, but would Obama really want to work at the school known as the University of Chicago of New Haven? He couldn’t work at Penn because his Federalist sensibilities are not about state school’s rights. And he wouldn’t go to Dartmouth, because he was fucking President of the United States.

But Obama should just come here! He really is the quintessential Columbian: like most students, he started off as an idealistic activist, but then realized he wanted to accomplish something.
But s​ome​things have changed since he graduated in ‘83: Women are allowed in both the bedrooms a​nd​the classrooms east of Broadway, the Jews control this crazy thing called T​HE INTERNET,​and, according to the Varsity Show, there was a black President.

But he shouldn’t let these changes scare him away, though—there have been a lot of positive changes too: for one, the campus is more accepting of his dirty pinko views. Campus activists have finally resolved the Israel­Palestine crisis. And should he come, we’ll rename Bacchanal “Barackanal”.
In honor of the best possible legacy you could have, the band now forms Malia’s Columbia application and plays “Sweet Dreams”.

[Sweet Dreams]

{ORLI}
Recently, socially conscious, predominantly white Columbia students became outraged over horrific police actions happening in their own backyard. This forced them to confront a terrifying question: Now that Michael Getzler has been arrested, how will they get their drugs while continuing to avoid Harlem at all costs?

Getzler, formerly CC ‘17 and who we’ll call “Anonymous,” published a Spec Op­Ed detailing his thrilling life of crime; at least more thrilling than yours, which just involves torrenting Game of Thrones. In Anonymous’ article, Getzler emphasized that he cares about you enough to offer you happiness and well­being. Or as it’s known on Venmo, a $35 dollar slice of pizza.

Spec, in their crippling addiction to those sweet, sweet pageviews, was the gateway to exposing our very own Walter White—emphasis on the white. As it turns out, people do read Spec, it’s just that those people are the police. Which would explain why all the comments read like they were written on a Lionshead toilet stall.

Just a few days before Bacchanal, the NYPD was dispatched to McBain, Anonymous’ dorm, with a warrant for Michael Getzler. Officers stormed the building, texted their friends for sign­ins, took the elevator to the fourth floor—which is a dick move—and fought their way to Anonymous’ drug den by busting open the door that said “Michael” on it. It was a successful raid, though several officers were lost to McBain’s signature piss, beer, and mold fumes.

He had felt invincible, you know that feeling of invincibility that comes with being a white Columbia sophomore with a disposable income large enough to cover thousands of dollars in wholesale LSD, on top of Koronets…. WITH a topping. Anonymous had nothing to worry about—after all, what are Columbia’s marble facades for if not to shield us from the ~super~ ~scary~ people above 125th. Although we in the band find that kind of strange: those “scary people” were forced into selling drugs to support their families, and you Columbia students should know all about supporting families. After all, Mommy and Daddy’s money paid for your weed.

Unfortunately, now that Anonymous has been arrested, Getzler’s absence forces engagement with our neighbors. Now we’ll all have to buy local. At the very least we’ll be supporting small businesses, and you resume fluffers in the audience can rejoice in truthfully saying that on the weekends, you give back to your community.

Getzler’s story should be a warning for us all. When he posted Anonymous’s op­ed to his Facebook wall, saying “Look at this thing I ~definitely~ didn’t write *winky emoji*” he fell prey to his own delusions of grandeur, our very own Bong Quixote. The only thing worse than Anonymous’ Facebook was Michael Getzler’s Venmo feed which essentially functioned as the class of ‘17’s yearbook.

Gawker and Gothamist were all guns blazing about kids blazing, asking “How could Columbia students be this stupid?” We in the Band would suggest that when it comes to drugs: just say “no…I’m not paying with Venmo, I’ll go to the ATM.” Because as we all know, it’s better to make a withdrawal than to go through withdrawal.

In honor of The Tuesday Turn­Up, the band now forms some dank nugs and plays Vape It Off.

[Shake It Off]

{MIKHAIL}
Columbia’s lack of focus on student’s financial issues is kind of strange given the 9.2 billion dollar​e​ndowment, and the donations by tens of satisfied alums. With all this money, you’d think they’d have a more helpful solution for homeless students than “If you’re cold and need a coat, just go to Cannon’s and wait.” This semester, we learned about the trials of homeless students through the new Columbia Class Confessions page. Although, things got pretty weird when a post went up saying: “Even as the third most highly paid University President, I can’t afford a decent haircut.”

To be clear: there are actually h​omeless a​nd s​tarving​students at Columbia. And by h​omeless,​we don’t mean you strong Barnard women who had to find a friend to stay with after the Ollie’s fire. And s​tarving doesn’t mean waiting for bagels at the SGA sympathy brunch the next morning.

It’s kind of strange that despite thousands of​Q​uality of Life surveys, n​ot a single administrator p​icked up on the response that said “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I’M HOMELESS AND I DON’T EVEN GET A SYMPATHY BAGEL.” I mean, as soon as students consider enjoying their time at Columbia, the administration comes down hard, like a plane in the French Alps. But when it comes to helping students l​iterally s​urvive on campus, Columbia is nowhere to be seen… like the actual pilot of the fucking plane.

Thankfully, the student body has picked up the slack, organizing a Facebook page called CU Meal Share, otherwise known as the only way of organizing a dinner date with a stranger now that Columbia Admirers is gone. It’s even better than Tinder; After all, you never get food out of a Tinder date, unless you count eating pussy.

Now, administrators will t​ry t​o convince you that they’re people too! Dean Valentini sent out a hip playlist about hope, dreams, and humanity, to remind us all that he has hope, dreams, and humanity. Dean Kromm wrote a hip op­ed, in which she mentioned her family, hobbies, and how good she is at listening to make it seem as though she’s human. And James McShane, the hip head of public safety, in order to endear himself to the students, just doesn’t kill people.

But we can’t be too hard on Columbia. Maybe they a​re u​sing their money for a good cause. Maybe Columbia bought a Netflix account for all of its trustees to watch “Orange is the New Black”—you know, to help them figure out what private prisons are. Maybe it’s going towards Asian relief efforts to help those who have suffered from devastating carnage—namely the owners of Ollie’s. Or maybe it’s all just going to a hedge fund—by which we mean paying people to trim the hedges for commencement.

In honor of a match made in meal­share, the band now forms a dinner date and performs “Hey Ya…got a meal swipe?”

[Hey Ya]

{ORLI}
If you project something onto Low Library, it had better be an important the message. “This is not a library” won’t cut it. Neither will “SEAS 150​ Anniversary” for 12 years in a row. That’s why No Red Tape’s recent projection of “Columbia Protects Rapists” and “Rape Happens Here” was particularly symbolic—just like Je Suis Charlie was symbolic of solidarity for people who bite fingers. It was a powerful statement, projected on the building at Columbia most representative of a sexual assault epidemic ignored by the administration. Or, second most representative, after Beta house.

But it wouldn’t be a Columbia anything without controversy. We in the band were always under the impression that protests were supposed to trigger change, not people. And for a group whose basic purpose is decreasing sexual assault at Columbia, it seems counterintuitive to broadcast the message “Columbia Protects Rapists.” You know who that helps? Prospective Columbia students who are rapists. An army of high school creepers is now thinking, “Yes, I will go to Columbia after all. The dining halls only got a B­ on College Confidential, but at least the admin will have my back on the rape thing.”

Then there’s the issue that most people, especially survivors, don’t want “rape” thrust upon them as they’re walking around campus at night. In fact, it seems like “People don’t want rape thrust upon them as they’re walking around campus at night” should be the first sentence in No Red Tape’s mission statement.

And despite the fact that a systemic problem like sexual assault is the accumulation of many terrible, heartbreaking stories, so much of the discussion at Columbia, and the New York Times, Jezebelle, Rolling Stone, Bro Bible, and Sleepy’s Mattresses Monthly Newsletter centers around only two people and one night: August 27, 2012. Yes, the 8​40th anniversary of Henry the Young King and Margaret of France’s coronation.

Ultimately, when you reduce your movement to a single case, t​he scope of your message becomes as narrow as a twin­XL.​You see, f​ocusing exclusively on those individuals and that one night allows click­baity outlets to hinge the movement on the success or failure of one case—like a Brown student taking their one test in Cannabis 101: Puff Puff pass/fail. Writing listicles titled: 1​2 Disney Gifs that Prove That Emma is the Only Person Fighting Rape, o​r 5​Reasons Emma’s A Slut If Columbia Loses Its Case Against Jean­Paul d​oesn’t really help the cause. But lucky for news websites, just mentioning her name brings in a metric dick­ton of clicks from meninists, women with undercuts, and sentient fedoras.

To be clear, we’re not discrediting Emma or her case—it’s hard to believe that any survivor would pull a ‘Brian Williams’. But leaving it up to administrative decisions also isn’t smart: the administration treats sexual assault hearings like the infamous dress—everyone has an opinion before they’ve heard any of the facts, they debate it over the course of a few days, and then they totally forget about it.
In honor of slowing progress, the band forms a perfect union of bloggers and admins and plays Happy Together.

[Happy Together]

{MIKHAIL}
In order to graduate from Columbia University, one must master the arts of literature, philosophy, art, music, and… swimming. The Core Curriculum was founded in the olden days, when Bernheim and Schwartz were just two guys fighting on opposite sides of World War II, and a Barnard degree meant knowing never to talk back to your husband. Columbia Men studied their fellow great white men and a token lady writer in order to assert their dominance over the lowly plebeians who thought Hegel is how you tighten your vagina.

But this year, the university added an additional requirement, the Sexual Respect and Community Citizenship Initiative, or Sex Hum. This seems to contradict some of that old stuff we’ve been Sparknoting; from Lit Hum to Art Hum, the Core celebrates sexual assault. Titus Andronicus revels in rape more than Titus Andromidon revels in Pinot Noir! In fact, none of the artists we study would be able to submit their masterpieces for the sexual respect requirement—Bernini’s sculpture the “Rape of Persephone” is as subtle as its title, Ovid’s M​etamorphoses i​s essentially “Assault’s Greatest Hits”,​a​nd Schoenberg’s “Twelve Tones” is a rape on the earholes.

That’s right—the very same administration that pushes “rape” upon you as early as freshman year now requires all students to passively endure a cock­​amamy sexual respect program. Some students revisited their high school days, apathetically watching a documentary under the guidance of equally­unenthused guest facilitators. Others opted to stay at home and watch that three­hour epic filmed in New Zealand—the bystander intervention YouTube video.

Some people would argue that the administration did provide an alternative which allowed students to explore sexual respect in a more intimate way: by being forced to endure the totally ineffectual judicial process. Seriously though, the arts option was inspired by the random doodles scrawled by judiciary hearing panels when they pretend to listen to survivor’s stories.

Many students took the project seriously. Some submitted finger paintings about fingering, while Prolific Spec Commenter, “The Bollinger Administration,” compiled a found poem composed all of their one comment. One student, an a​lleged​rapist, even submitted the following haiku:

I am so sorry
Rape is very very bad Let me graduate

As inphallicable as it may seem, the arts option certainly wasn’t without its faults. Its biggest critic, of course, was No Red Tape, who held a satirical “art workshop” where they passed out crayons and laughed about the inadequacies of art as a response to rape on campus—unless it involves a mattress.

Worse yet, none of this even addresses how ineffectual these seminars are. Let’s just make people sit in a room for 45 minutes and tell them about how bad rape is… because, if rapists are good at one thing, it’s listening. That’d be like rehabilitating murderers at Rikers by scheduling mandatory Law & Order screenings, or forcing macaroni art on drug kingpins and being surprised when they end up huffing the Elmer’s.

Instead of all this bullshit, the administration should focus more on fostering a community which protects and supports survivors. For our part, we in the Band submitted this very joke as our arts option. Hopefully we get featured on the website!

In honor of tracing your hand for a Kindergarten craft, the band now forms a turkey with four penises and plays Any way you want [to fulfill this requirement is adequate].

[Any Way You Want It]

{MIKHAIL}
Well, that’s all for us tonight, folks. But before we go, we’d like to leave you with a few study hints for the big Orgo exam tomorrow:

{ORLI}
In chemistry, free radicals are molecules that are extremely reactive. At Columbia, free radicals are students that are extremely over­reactive.

{MIKHAIL}
The amount of a substance dissolved in a liquid determines the concentration. The amount of Adderall dissolved in a Columbia student determines their concentration.

{ORLI}
Chemists write the assignment of structure to chiral atoms using the RS convention. Here at Columbia, students write their LitHum assignments using the BS convention.

{MIKHAIL}
And finally, in chemistry, elements that are not part of the solution are part of the precipitate, whereas, at Columbia, students who are not part of the solution are part of the Band!

{ORLI}
Thanks and good night folks! Try not to break any bookcases on your way out!
[Raw]