[Roar] 

 
{KEANU} 
Ladies and gentlemen, and organic chemistry students, back despite failed 
negotiations with EU, it’s the most No-Deal band in the world, the Columbia 
University Marching Death of the British Empire! 
 
[Fanfare] 
 
{JANEL} 
Featuring: 
J. Beto O’Rourke: the male Jill Stein 
J. John Delaney: still growing a spine 
And J. Bernie Sanders: turning a hundred and nine 
 
[Fanfare] 
 
{KEANU} 
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 long 
lasting, but sadly not the men, and the women are checked out but long overdue. As 
well as American isolationism going up, refugee visas going down, and poor, huddled 
masses at an all-time deported the Band now presents its 69th consecutive, 69th 
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: 
 
{JANEL} 
SEAS students, please turn off your Android devices. 
 
{KEANU} 
GS students, please turn up your hearing aids. 
 
{JANEL} 
CC students, please set your cell phones to vibrate. 
 
{KEANU} 
And Barnard students, please set your vibrators to phone. Let’s start the show! 
 
[Who Owns] 
 
{JOKE 1 – CENSORSHIP} 
{JANEL} 
 
After two years, the country finally got a chance to peek behind the Iron Curtain and 
discover that in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Justice obstructs you! The Mueller Report 
failed to indict the president, but that didn’t stop Trump from trying to crush the 
investigation like it was his wife’s self-esteem. In true CU fashion, Attorney General 
and Columbia alum Bill Barr did something we’ve all done before: he rolled out of bed 
5 minutes before his seminar, slapped together a discussion post without having done 
the reading, hit submit, and rushed off to class without having brushed his teeth. 
Thinking that you understand the Mueller report because you read Bill Barr’s 
summary is like thinking you understand Hamlet because you saw the Lion King. 
Hundreds of former federal prosecutors are saying that if Trump were not president 
he’d be charged with obstruction of justice, which we in the band take to mean that 
after his term he will be appointed to the Supreme Court. 
 
But Trump’s problems go far beyond the Russia probe. It turns out that Trump's Art 
of the Deal is as a masterclass in negotiating in the same way that his hugs with 
Ivanka are "fatherly". Earlier this week, the New York Times released a decade of 
Trump’s tax information showing that he lost a billion dollars running casinos in the 
90s, which is the biggest crash and burn of the decade that didn’t involve Princess 
Diana. Trump did manage to make money by gentrifying people of color out of their 
apartments in New York City - although we in the band don’t understand why he 
went to UPenn to learn to do that when he could have learned it right here at 
Columbia. The president refuses to release the rest of his tax returns, probably to 
make sure no one finds out that he wasted his fortune turning Jared Kushner into a 
real boy. 
 
And it’s not just the president who deals in coverups - this semester, secrecy has 
touched Columbia like Joe Biden introducing himself to a female staffer. Columbia 
University mysteriously canceled a forum discussion on Turkish rule of law, allegedly 
due to pressure from the Turkish government. Canceling the forum was an unusual 
move for Columbia - usually when they want to silence criticism, they do it by cutting 
$15,000 from their critics’ budget. The forum will be rescheduled for an 
underdetermined later date, which will presumably be sometime after Turkey 
apologizes for the Armenian genocide, but before they grant full human rights to the 
Kurds. Honestly, the most surprising thing to come out of this scandal was learning 
that the government of Turkey is Columbia’s seventh largest donor, coming just 
behind the restless ghost of Allen Ginsberg, The Barack Obama White Guilt Fund, 
and the proceeds from auctioning off the leftover Manhattan Project uranium. The 
University’s donors are important because nothing is free at Columbia -- especially 
the speech. 
 
In honor of censorship, the band now forms [REDACTED] and plays [REDACTED].  
 
[OLD TOWN ROAD] 
 
{JOKE 2 – BACCHANAL} 
{KEANU} 
This year, the Bacchanal committee tried a new marketing strategy: convincing 
everyone that Bacchanal would crash harder than a Boeing 737. The committee 
announced that the headliner pulled out due to a “contract violation” because a 
“certain sports media group on campus” prematurely ejaculated...sorry, speculated 
about it. We in the band are surprised that more people didn’t find this suspicious - 
calling “Barstool Columbia” a “sports media group” is like calling Julian Assange an 
“Ecuadorian houseguest.” 
 
A few days later, the Bacchanal Committee revealed the “cancellation” was as fake as 
your last Tinder date’s orgasm. Unfortunately, their stunt fell flat -- probably because 
the committee has the self-awareness of a Spec opinion columnist, and the comedic 
stylings of the Financial Aid Office. Other schools can pull performers like Playboi 
Carti, Mitski, or that yodeling kid, while all we get are the Kingsmen rapping over 
the screams of the BDSM club. Every year, we hope that Bacchanal will come 
through and book Vampire Weekend but they let us down harder than our high 
school sweetheart when they promised we’d make the distance work. 
 
Columbia students complained that this year’s Bacchanal acts were harder to identify 
than the mystery pills they just took from a dirty Ziplock bag. This year’s headliner 
was SOPHIE, a pop artist and producer who has made an entire career out of 
replicating the noises you’d get if you threw a typewriter down the stairs. She’s the 
most confusing phenomenon to come out of Scotland since they voted to keep 
putting up with Britain, and her music sounds like a horror movie soundtrack where 
the monster turns out to be your student loans. The Bacchanal Committee bragged 
about putting together an all-woman lineup, which would have been more 
progressive if they hadn’t put “womxn” in scare quotes. 
 
Still, we can’t place all the blame on the planning committee; they’re trying to plan a 
world-class event, despite having a smaller budget than Cardi B’s left nipple at the 
Met Gala. It doesn’t help that half their budget goes to boxes of stale bagels, goldfish, 
and water handed out by indifferent RAs. As Grandpa Bacchus used to say, there’s 
nothing like a little starch to save an overworked SEAS student who just tried cocaine 
for the first time. In fact, all the Bacchanal committee has left to pay the concert’s 
headliner is three meal swipes, a handle of Voda and a friendly fingerbang.  
 
To be frank, we in the band don’t really care if Bacchanal is any good. Next year, they 
could book the sound of the 1 train rolling into 116th Street Station 20 minutes late, 
and we would still welcome the excuse to get drunk and throw up on the lawn. Why 
else would we still be going to Columbia football games? 
 
In honor of an even more obscure headliner next year, the band now forms a 
Vampire Weekend cover band, and plays Shut Up and Snort Lines Off Me. 
 
[SHUT UP AND DANCE] 
 
{JOKE 3 – OPERATION COLUMBIA BLUES} 
{JANEL} 
This semester, the country was rocked by Operation Varsity Blues. The investigation 
revealed that rich parents had bribed admissions officers at some of America’s most 
elite schools… and Yale. The scandal proved that celebrity parents are just like our 
parents; they too produce disappointing children that will never live up to their 
expectations. To save their silver spoon-fed children from the “horrors of community 
college”, rich parents resorted to faking their children’s disabilities, writing reference 
letters on Benjamin Franklins, and photoshopping their children’s heads onto Tom 
Brady.  
 
But no two parents got as much attention as Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin, or 
as we in the band like to call them, Beckys with the Good Bribes. Felicity Huffman 
proved to be the most Desperate Housewife of all when she paid someone $15,000 to 
take the SAT for her daughter, which is a lot less money than we thought it would 
take to make Felicity Huffman relevant again. Full House’s Lori Loughlin is facing up 
to 40 years in prison for her daughter Olivia Jade’s communications degree, which is 
like sending yourself to a hard labour camp so your child can sing on a Kidz Bop 
album. But what we’re really upset about is the fact that apparently, no one thought 
Columbia was good enough to risk jail time; we were passed over for bastions of 
prestige like Harvard, Stanford, and UT-Austin. Still, we’re proud to say that 
Columbia admissions are still based on the things that really matter - grades, merit, 
and whether or not your grandfather went here.  
 
Thanks to Aunt Becky, Columbia’s students are wondering why we still have athletic 
recruitment at all. In one op-ed, a student - who studied abroad at Cambridge - 
complained that Columbia sports aren’t as inclusive as the walk-on sports offered at 
Cambridge, which made their entire Cambridge experience so much better. You 
know, at Cambridge. Where they studied. Abroad. Because if there’s any country we 
should turn to for advice on athletic achievement and social inclusion, it’s definitely 
the English.  
 
Still, they might have a point -- while the only boat Olivia Jade has ever been on is a 
USC trustee’s yacht, Columbia’s student-athletes are giving themselves concussions 
until they think “Instagram influencer” is a viable career. Columbia athletes don’t need 
recruitment to get the benefit of sport: If they want a close-knit community formed 
through mutual strife, they can go to their FroSci lecture. If they want to push their 
bodies to the brink of disaster, they can chug a 36 oz can of Red Bull while writing 
their thesis the night before. And to fulfill their boundless determination to master an 
art that will be useless in five years, they can major in English. 
 
Since D-list celebrities don’t want their children to even pretend to join our sadbois 
in blue, Columbia Athletics’ only reliable source of cash is Robert K. Kraft’s sticky 
fingers. Kraft is in danger of spending a year in prison and not because of the Patriots’ 
shady mishandling of balls. At least now we no longer have to pretend that this 
semester’s greatest athletic achievement belongs to anyone but the South Floridian 
day spa worker who managed to properly handle his balls.  
 
In honor of Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium at Baker Athletics 
Complex, the band now forms a massage table and plays Sad Blowmance. 
 
[BAD ROMANCE] 
 
{JOKE 4 – CATHOLIC CHURCH} 
{KEANU} 
To the great dismay of Art Hum professors everywhere, France recently discovered 
what happens when you forget to change the batteries in your smoke detector. 
France’s most famous cathedral decided to rehearse for the live-action remake of the 
Hunchback of Notre Dame by stepping into literal hellfire. People originally predicted 
that the blaze would change the face of France for decades to come, but we in the 
band know it’ll ultimately be forgotten in 5 to 7 years - making it the Emmanuel 
Macron of fires. The Cathedral lost its roof, the French lost their heads, and 
billionaires of the world lost interest in any charity that didn’t involve buying 
Parisians new stained glass windows. But even if the Cathedral survived, the Catholic 
Church might not be so lucky — in the wake of new child abuse allegations, the 
Vatican is getting its hardest nailing since Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. 
 
Yes, the Vatican’s sexual respect policy is more lapsed than most Catholics, and the 
Priests get shuffled around more than cops who “forget” to turn on their body 
cameras. Just this week, the New Jersey diocese released the names of hundreds of 
clergy members accused of child abuse since 1940, proving that God hadn’t quite 
finished turning his back on New Jersey. Pennsylvania and New York have also 
released the names of hundreds of abusers, because apparently even predators are 
eager to avoid traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel. We in the band had no idea that it was 
this difficult to find a priest who’s never prayed the rosary on a set of anal beads. The 
church tried to deliver justice by having a cardinal defrocked, because in the Catholic 
Church even the punishments sound like sex crimes. The church covered for his 
wrinkled ass for 50 years, because some bishops severely misinterpreted what Jesus 
meant when He said “let the children come to me.” 
 
It seems like the church knows their habits are archaic, but they’re clinging to their 
old ways harder than Queen Elizabeth clings to life. Communion wine is weaker than 
the punch at a sorority formal, communion wafers are dryer than a lesbian at a CUCR 
meeting, and women in Vatican City have fewer rights than a 6-week old fetus in 
Georgia. Pope Francis promised to do something about the continued abuse, but 
solutions are more elusive than the Holy Grail and full of more holes than Jesus 
Himself. Today, His Holiness announced a new law requiring clergy to stop 
covering-up abuse allegations because it took God 6 days to create the whole world 
but Pope Francis needed 6 years to do the bare minimum.  
 
It’s time for the Church's biggest wake-up call since the resurrection of Christ. We in 
the band hope the Notre Dame fire is a message from God Himself, giving the abusive 
clergy a preview of their nine circles of hell. Or maybe the fire was a way to send up 
white smoke to indicate that the Vatican has chosen a new excuse for why they can’t 
do better. 
 
In honour of an $8 billion dollar repair job, the band now forms a collapsing church 
and plays “You Probably Deserved This Fire.” 
 
[WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE] 
 
JOKE 5 –GAME OF IVIES 
{JANEL} 
After years of tension, everyone’s waiting to see how we’ll solve our most pressing 
problem concerning illegal immigration and a giant wall - that’s right, we’re talking 
about Game of Thrones. In just a few weeks Game of Thrones it will end, forcing us 
all to log out of our dad’s ex-boyfriend’s nephew’s HBO account and start talking to 
people about something other than which aging British actor’s genitals we’ll get to see 
this week. But there are still so many questions left to answer! Like does the Night 
King piss snow? Why do the dragons sound like a blender full of hamsters? And will 
George R R Martin finish writing the books before he fossilizes? The Iron Throne 
will soon get an ass to claim it, so as a public service, the band now presents a 
rundown of why the dickbags of Westeros have nothing on the Ivy League. 
 
Harvard, everyone’s favorite stick-up-the-ass, would try to claim the Ivy Throne as 
House Targaryen. Like the Targaryens, Harvard is completely fireproof - they’ve been 
tossing Asian students’ applications into the flames for years and they still haven’t 
gotten burned. They’ll march right up to the Ivy throne on the back of a three-headed 
pilgrim and bang their nephew before you can say Dracarys. 
 
Now Princeton is rich and ruthless, and their student body has less genetic variation 
than the town of Sisterfuck, West Virginia. Who else could Princeton be but the 
Lannisters? They’ve been the bane of the Ivy League for years, cucking Yale and 
“paying their debts” with Daddy’s Valyrian steel credit card. Blonde hair and a sense of 
smug superiority are mandatory; hiding your alcoholism behind a preference for 
“fancy wine” is optional but encouraged.  
 
And then we have Yale brandishing the flag of House Baratheon. They think they’re 
as graceful and mighty as their precious stag, but they actually look like the ass-end of 
their own bulldog. Their claims to the Ivy Throne are as questionable as George W. 
Bush’s claim to the state of Florida in the 2000 election.  
 
Cornell is the Freys! They’re begging for a red wedding just to liven up the frozen 
hellscape that is Ithaca and they have a population capable of taking out the entire 
state of North Dakota. Just like the Freys, Cornell students are willing to stab their 
own mother to be a real Ivy.   
 
Like House Martell, anytime Brown students get overconfident and try to do 
something difficult - like defeat the Mountain or do subtraction without using their 
fingers - they end up getting their minds blown. Their paradise and parties are 
overflowing with Green, so they have a hard time giving a shit about what anyone 
else is up to.  
 
Dartmouth doesn’t really care about the Ivy Throne, and instead drunkenly stands on 
the border, defending the wall from the frozen heathens of the North: Canadians. Just 
like the Starks, they live on the fringes of society practicing some pagan religion 
involving banging wolves and drinking enough liquor to kill a small giraffe.  
 
Columbia is Lord Varys, we claim that we’re trying to do what’s right, but at the end 
of the day we just don’t have any balls. Although the other Ivies get to be houses, 
Columbia is an individual - because Columbia hasn’t felt like a community since the 
Revolutionary War, and now it’s every man for himself.   
 
And Penn is simply the spitting image of House....Slytherin! Because they’re snakes 
and they don’t belong here. 
 
On second thought, we in the band think that the Ivies arguing over rankings is as 
pointless as pretending that “not watching Game of Thrones” counts as a personality. 
An Ivy League degree won’t stop the tides from rising, the bee population from 
collapsing, or New York City from falling into the Hudson. Winter is fucking 
coming. 
 
In honor of saying screw it and melting down the Iron Throne, the band now forms a 
nuclear winter and plays “George R.R. Martin, It’s Time to Retire.” 
 
[GAME OF THRONES] 
 
{JOKE 6 – RACISM} 
{KEANU} 
This semester, the Virginia State Legislature aired out some dirty laundry and it was 
mostly white sheets. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam admitted that he’d posed in 
either black face or a KKK robe in his yearbook, whichever one you think is less 
racist. Still, Northam kept his job and his wife kept us all from witnessing the whitest 
moonwalk since Neil Armstrong. Northam claims that he’s still the right person to 
heal Virginia because he’s a doctor, which is like claiming that Kellyanne Conway is 
the right choice for your proctologist because she has her head up her own ass. 
Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to wearing blackface which is 
unfortunate for Virginia Democrats because you can’t smear Republicans for racism 
when you’re too busy smearing shoe polish across your own face. 
 
Speaking of racism...Barnard! This semester, Public Safety at bold beautiful biased 
Barnard asked a Black Columbia student to show his ID at the gates, a policy that’s 
similar to random airport screenings and mandatory minimum sentences: mostly 
optional for white people. When he declined to show his ID, Public Safety followed 
him to the Milstein Center where they pinned him against a counter, reminding 
Barnard students that your college isn’t woke just because your first-year writing 
professor assigned Maya Angelou. Public Safety then confiscated the student’s CUID 
to verify that it was real, because everyone knows that Columbia ID’s are the most 
sought-after fakes, right behind a medical marijuana card, your older sibling’s expired 
driver’s license, and a Costco membership. 
 
The next day President Beilock sent out an email about that “incident,” a word that 
could mean anything from stolen Mario Badescu cleanser to literal assault. 
Administrators also held a “listening session” but quickly proved that they understand 
students’ problems about as well as a GS student understands TikTok. Administrators 
caved to some of the protesters demands by putting the officers on paid leave -- or, as 
we like to call it, Barnard’s 3/5ths compromise. 
 
It took Beilock three whole days to acknowledge that racism was involved, which is 
three times as long as it takes to get a copy of ​Uncle Tom’s Cabin​ from Amazon. Even 
then, Beilock only apologized that her students felt the assault was racist; if we 
wanted to hear that kind of gaslighting, we’d ask our dads if they’re proud of us. A 
few days later, Beilock also announced the new VP of Inclusion and Equity, who we 
in the band know will fight hard to foster justice on their campus. That’s right. That 
means EVERYONE can eat the Kosher brownies in Hewitt.. 
 
President Beilock, we in the band have a recommendation for you: the best way to 
acknowledge your institutional racism is to call it racism. Unless you face the 
oppression on your campus, any “inclusion and equity” you create will be as empty as 
Barnard’s endowment when Diana Vagelos and Cheryl Milstein go on to the great 
golf tournament in the sky.  
 
In honor of distracting us with free laundry, the band now forms institutional apathy 
and plays “The Oppression That I Get.” 
 
[THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET] 
 
{KEANU} 
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: 
 
{JANEL} 
Your molecule is chiral when it has an asymmetrical structure. Your partner is viral 
when they have asymmetrical bumps down there. 
 
{KEANU} 
A carbonyl group consists of a carbon double-bonded to an oxygen. A carb-loving 
group consists of students who think JJ’s 3 times a day is “self-care.” 
 
{JANEL} 
An oxygen found with an alkyl or aryl group is an ether. A Barnard student is usually 
found with a vibrator beneath her.  
 
{KEANU} 
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! 
 
{JANEL} 
Thanks and good night folks! Try not to break any bookcases on your way out! 
 
[RAW]