BUTLER LIBRARY—Senior Anna Moore was nearing her breaking point. Despite being in the throes of midterms, a peak procrastination period, Moore had exhausted all of her trusty work avoidance strategies, honed over her nearly four years at Columbia. As she sat in 209 mindlessly refreshing her Twitter feed and coming to terms with the fact that she might have to resort to productivity soon, she was saved.
“I got a Facebook notification about a post in the Class of 2016 Facebook group. Normally I ignore those since no one has been interested in each other’s lives since we were admitted and began posting needlessly long and now-embarrassing bios that are occasionally dug up by trolls,” said Moore. “But this time, I clicked, and thank god I did, because I was saved!”
The post regarded what is now known as Tampongate 2016. CCSC had worked with Health Services to provide free tampons, but not wishing to back down from their sense of Ivy League entitlement, the class of 2016 did the institution proud by demanding more. Seniors did what Columbia students do best—they pulled controversy out of their asses (or “wherevers,” as leading Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump would say).
“One of our greatest strengths, something we can really contribute to the world, is the ability to get outraged about literally anything – or nothing,” Moore’s partner in procrastination Julia Quinn said. “I’m really going to miss this community of irrational hostility and anger when we all graduate in a few months,” she added, tearing up a little.
Displaying the full maturity, eloquence, and rhetorical skills one would expect from soon to be graduates of the Ivy League, the Class of 2016 attacked each other using memes and excessively punctuated sarcastic comments.
Specifically, students fought over a student representative’s request that the students he represents provide him with information about issues important to them. When CCSC member Ryan Addams asked if female students felt that pads would be necessary as well as tampons, students immediately jumped down his throat. Students contended that Columbia should not be interested in what goes in or near their vaginas, an argument that fundamentally differs from previous activist projects. At least this time, no one threatened a performance art protest piece.
“I mean, sure we say we appreciate representative government, but we’ve all gotten so used to the corruption and gridlock inherent to the American political system that the notion that we might have to put actual effort into influencing the government of Columbia is ridiculous,” said Quinn. “People should just, like, know what I want and give it to me, okay?”
Clearly her class agreed, as students suggested Addams employ Google to find his information, which would allow them to continue making unsubstantiated demands with the self-absorption and laziness we’ve come to expect from social justice warriors. The pads vs. tampons debacle set off a spiral of dischord, ending with students outraged about the outrage.
“It was amazing,” Moore said. “We all joined in on the conversation, collectively neglecting the work we’re here to do to argue over free health products. I was a thousand words below the minimum length of my essay for Human Rights and Human Wrongs, but my Facebook comments were plenty long, and many others were in the same boat.”
In a thread replete with accusatory language that made clear how much Columbia has victimized students by providing them with an education worth several hundred thousand dollars and the skills needed to get high paying jobs or attend similarly elitist graduate schools while failing to accommodate every whim of every student, the Class of 2016 made this storied institution proud by arguing over pointless and tiny details. Timestamps indicate that the thread remained lively for most of the night, which Quinn and Moore confirm. “Oh, yeah, that post was a goldmine for procrastination,” said Quinn. “It was a real lifesaver. Without something to inspire my white-privileged outrage, I might have been forced to do something productive that would actually benefit someone else. I mean, can you imagine the horror?”
