By Professor Donald Nally, Northwestern Conducting and Ensembles

As some of you may know, a minor fracas occurred last week in one of my ensembles when a Masters student refused to sing an arrangement of a Walt Whitman poem, as his “independent research” had uncovered evidence that Walt Whitman was supposedly racist.

This student even went so far as to file a complaint with the NAACP when I refused to let him cherry-pick the repertoire pieces he wanted to sing for our next concert, and got a local news affiliate to sympathize with his “plight.”

Now, hey, I’m not denying that Walt Whitman may have been racist. It’s certainly plausible. But unless I ask you to sing a song about Blacks, Jews, and Asians deserving to get lynched because they’re sub-human cretins, I’m going to need you to shut the fuck up, grit your teeth, and let that magnificent bass voice of yours soar. Because you’d think a Masters student would have realized this by now, but most great artists are really shitty people.

Seriously, if you had a dollar for every truly great composer or lyricist whose work you performed, and who also happened to be a racist, anti-Semite, pedophile, wife-beater, drug addict, alcoholic, all-around asshole, or even a straight-up pimp (shout out to Jelly Roll Morton), you’d have more money in your pocket than you’ll ever make as a singer, especially if you spend your career as a reactionary, antagonistic twat.

So please, learn to separate the artist from the work, or else our next concert will be about 30 seconds long. If not, we’ll just have to do a full concert of Aaron Copland; he actually seemed like a halfway-decent dude. So let’s not read his biography.

Disclaimer: No, this was not actually written by Dr. Nally. Remember what website you’re on.

By Alexander Timothy Rawlings III, the British exchange student living on the seventh floor of Plex

I can’t believe this. I bloody can’t. A bloke who’s been the head coach of one of the most famous football (yes, real football, not that sodding joke of a sport that’s ripping off rugby) clubs in the world for TWENTY-SIX YEARS resigns and NOBODY in this country bloody notices? I mean, I’m pretty tolerant, so I understand that you yanks pay more attention to your baseball and other crap boring long games, but how can it happen that a LEGEND like Sir Alex Ferguson retires and I can’t see a bleeding line of text about it on the news?

He led them to NOT ONE, BUT TWO Champions League titles and THIRTEEN victories in the Premiership? Oh, right, you wankers don’t even know what the Premiership is, I bet you nitwits probably think it has something to do with our prime minister and sailing. Oh Lord. This lad was like a FATHER to legends like Cantona, Giggs, Schmeichel, and Beckham. Yeah, Beckham used to play pretty good football before he went Los Angeles to do knickers adverts for a living. I mean come on, there is a massive statue of Ferguson standing outside the home of Manchester United. Oh, and did I mention he was knighted by the queen?

But you lot just don’t seem to get it. You care about the Red Wings, but not the Red Devils. You care about your Wrigley Field, but not Old Trafford. I could go on, you care about – WHAT?! PAUL SCHOLES IS RETIRING AS WELL? Wow, this is huge, let’s see the coverage on the telly…

SERIOUSLY? NOT A MENTION? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE BLOODY KIDDING ME!!!

DISCLAIMER: The Flipside doesn’t even know Alexander Timothy Rawlings III is. He must have hacked our WordPress. Who is Sir Alex Ferguson?

The Flipside would like to apologize for exposing the world to so many evils: ignorance, people who spread lies on the Internet, and even The Flipside.

Look, The Flipside makes things up. People like the things we make up. For instance, we have received hundreds of Facebook likes on articles titled “Class of 2017 Holds Most Diverse Group of White People in NU History” and “New Sorority Pledge in Love With Her Sisters, Unsure of All Their Names.” Despite that our entire website contains only articles like these, many people believed the fake Dillo Day lineup we published this week was true.

How do we know? Try searching Dillo Day on Twitter. For example, @mamph20 tweeted, “Potentially fake Northwestern site has announced that Hanson is performing at Dillo Day I don’t know if this is true but please pray for me” and @cliplet added, “HANSON IS PLAYING AT DILLO DAY WHAT. never have i felt more cheated by northwestern in my entire life.”

And, for a glorious 18-hour period, last.fm had published our lineup as if it was true.

And then the article went viral, receiving over 1000 Facebook likes. At first we were thrilled by the article’s popularity, ecstatic at the thousands of new hits on our website. But as we realized people weren’t realizing the words “(THIS IS NOT SATIRE)” in a headline do not necessarily mean the article is not satire—that is, as we realized people were taking the article seriously—a growing sense of shock and shame overcame us.

So The Flipside feels compelled to apologize for humanity. We are sorry to live in this age where people see something, completely ignore whatever context surrounds it, and assume it is true. We are sorry for everyone who doesn’t bother to check the purported sources of dubious information, for people who believe information that if you paused for a half second to think about it, some semblance of logic may hit you, and you’d realize hey, that doesn’t make any sense, Mayfest definitely can’t afford to pay for Carly Rae Jepsen and Hanson and Ludacris and Kid Cudi.

(By the way, did you hear that some website I’ve never heard of confirmed that Nelly is also coming to Dillo Day because he feels bad about blacking out on stage last time?)

There’s no question we live in a scary world where people everywhere have instant access to a form of communication that’s so shareable, one where professional news organizations misidentify killers and satire sites are treated as legitimate journalists. But hey, maybe they’re about equally accurate. For this, The Flipside apologizes.

I just heard about this absolutely fabulous social house (it’s not the same as a restaurant, but I won’t expect you to know the difference) from Stefon called Found. Once he said that it had both fried chicken and caviar on the menu, I knew I would die if I didn’t go there. So, this past weekend, my girlfriends and I decided to head over, and, let me tell you, it was the absolute best culinary experience I’ve had since my $275 pasta with truffle sauce from Nello in New York City.

I knew it was going to be a great night right from the moment I saw that the bar stools resembled folding chairs. It was just so avant garde. I mean, the symbolism of folding chairs at a restaurant as nice as Found!

For drinks, I ordered the Found Punch, which is basically their drink du jour, and it vaguely reminded me of Jungle Juice. It was amazing! Who would’ve thought that there’d be a Jungle Juice-esque drink at a place like Found!? The symbolism never ends.

When it came time to order, I was overwhelmed – I didn’t know what to get! I mean, I’d been craving chicken liver mousse with bacon marmalade all day, but the kale and Swiss chard salad sounded divine. They even had a baby lettuce salad! I’ve heard it’s so much better than adult lettuce. But alas, I ended up choosing the chicken liver mousse.

The chicken liver mousse had the perfect texture to be a mousse and not a pate. So many restaurants get it wrong, and it ruins my meal every time that happens. If I order a mousse, I expect a mousse. But hey, I guess that’s what separates a social house from a mere restaurant.

Despite my dish being so tasty, the best plate of the night was definitely the root vegetable and quark flatbread that Brittney ordered. At first, she was a little confused as to why the menu specified that the flatbread was made from quarks, because, obviously, all baryonic matter is made from quarks. How could the treasure that is Found make such an egregious error? This was all until I informed her that quark is actually a type of cheese. It’s very uncommon in the United States, but, being as cultured as I am, I knew what it was. The flavors of the root vegetables and the quark cheese melded so well together, it was as if I couldn’t distinctly taste each individual root vegetable (which is a great feat when dealing with a palette as finely tuned as mine).

Overall, our check came out to $127 before tax and tip –not bad at all. This place is a must-go, dear Flipside readers. 5/5 stars.

Yes – Raising Tuition is An Unfortunate Necessity in Today’s Economic Climate

By Morton Owen Schapiro

Every year, I am presented with the question, do we need to raise tuition by another four percent? Every year, the answer is yes.

As someone whose specialty is the economics of higher education, I know that there is simply no alternative to raising tuition. Let me outline just three of the many reasons for you:

1. Financial Aid – In order to pay for the tuition of lower income students, we must raise tuition for everyone else. Because tuition keeps rising, for the university to be able to provide the same level of financial aid, we need to keep raising tuition. It’s a vicious cycle.

2. Free Stuff – All the free things students here get aren’t actually free. We just charge more for your tuition. Free t-shirt? That’s $15 of your tuition money. Free shuttle service? $500. What’s that, you want free printing and u-passes for the El? That’ll be another $1000.

3. My Salary – I do my part for this school, my job is basically fundraising, and that exhausting endeavor deserves a commensurate salary. Look, I only make $212,000 a year from my Board of Directors stint at that insurance company Marsh & McLennan Companies. A couple million more from Northwestern is only fair.

And so, it is clear that from the financial realities of the modern world, for the University to be sustainable, we must continue to raise the sticker price of attending this fine institution.

Counterpoint:
HELL YES!!! – Have You SEEN the Prices for These Fucking Flowers?!?

By Morty Schapiro

Holy shit these flowers are expensive. Jesus! You don’t want to know how much it costs to keep this place looking presentable! Before I took this job, if you had told me that being University President boiled down to being a glorified botanist at the expense of improved campus facilities and mental health services, I’d have told you to take this job!

Wait, the saying’s “take this job and shove it?” Why would I want to do that? I’d tell you to take this highly-paid, respectable job! The whole thing’s like one of my beloved Economics problems come to life! I get to explore supply, demand, and investigate an intriguing market bubble!

Do you know what a bubble is? It’s when a good is continually sold for an amount that far outweighs its intrinsic value, eventually leading to a complete market collapse! And did you know that if tuition continues to grow along at current rates a single year at Northwestern will cost well over $70,000 by 2030?

Two completely unrelated facts, of course, as anyone who’s spent time with me or our fine University’s Board of Directors already knows that Northwestern’s tuition rates are pegged directly to the Florists’ Transworld Delivery exchange downtown in Downers Grove. You want to complain to someone, go talk to their President! He’s the head honcho! He’s the jackass who decided to price a single goddamned box of tulip bulbs at $40!

And, yes, we may technically have more money that we know what to do with, but that doesn’t stop us from needing more! We need to build a nest egg for our University to rely on during tough times! (Like when outrageous tuition costs lead to dire financial collapse at America’s oldest Universities.) Won’t you be glad that we’re prepared then?

Having learned of the School of Education and Social Policy’s new course on the history and ethical dilemmas associated with philanthropic donations, the Northwestern Flipside would like to submit the following petition for the fund on our own behalf:

Dear students currently engaged in the course “Learning Philanthropy and Engaging in the Study and Practice of Giving”—

We’re sorry. We’re sorry we ever made fun of SESP. It’s just that after our twelfth straight hour on the same Quantum Mechanics problem set, we got a little jealous of “Lecture 5: Effective Handholding” in Marriage 101. (Okay, okay. We get that isn’t a thing, but really, we’re pretty sure we learned everything we ever needed to know about child psychology by our 15th YouTube view of “David After Dentist” and “Charlie Bit My Finger.”) We’ll neglect to point out the glaring economic inefficiencies involved in deciding how to donate funds that were previously donated to you from a charitable foundation that relies on other philanthropic donations. We’ll even promise to never make another SESP joke again (look out Bienen, from now on it’s just you) if only you’ll consider The Flipside’s case in deciding how to distribute your 100,000 dollars.

The Flipside makes Northwestern campus life better every day by providing students with a borderline intellectual way to procrastinate; and through a pioneering distribution model, we reach an audience which other campus publications might write off as immature or completely illiterate. (Translation: one time, we taped issues up on the bathroom stall doors on the second floor of Bobb.)

Our cinematic ventures (see Act 5, Scene IV: “Keystone Fireworks” in our critically acclaimed video “All of the Scandal”) combine the acting, vocal, and beer-shaking talents of students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to highlight the finer points of campus culture and provide thoughtful discussion pertaining to real issues (see Act 1, Scene I: “Evict You” for an unbiased musical adaptation of Evanston’s Brothel Law).

Flipside reporters have reached out to political figures like Rafalca Romney, prospective students, and even Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro in our undying efforts to keep Northwestern students informed on local and world news, and occasionally (hopefully), laugh a little.

Respectfully,

The Fundraising and Philanthropic Outreach Committee of The Northwestern Flipside

(Actually, we don’t even have enough money to fund a fundraising committee, so either you or David and Jo need to step in at some point)

Hey guys! Sorry, I’m little hungover from the two handles of beer I had last night. I mean, that doesn’t even compare to the time my mom bought me vodka. I had three shots! Shit got so crazy, I can’t even tell you. (Except I’m going to tell you.)

So me and my bros were just chilling when my ‘rents were out to dinner, and we were getting kind of bored so I was like, “Yo, bros, let’s get schwasty.” We went so HAM on my mom’s cooking brandy and the rum my Dad brought back from Grand Cayman! But then we left, like, a little bit left in each bottle so my parents totally wouldn’t find out. (Except somehow they did find out, and I got in so much trouble that my curfew got changed from 11 to 9.)

College is going to be awesome though! I’m definitely going to all of the frat parties. Like, I’ve already met bros from Circle-with-a-line-through-it Triangle and Backwards-three X, and I know they’ll invite me. I’m going to butt chug beer, which is when you put a beer in your back pocket for later and then you drink it. I’m also going to play tons of pong; I’m so good at pong that I always get the ball in the middle cup on the first turn. They call that the “bitch cup” because of all of the bitches you score for being so good at pong. Oh, and I’m definitely going to play slap cup; I’m the best at slapping cups out of people’s hands when they’re least expecting it. People laugh so hard when their clothes are soaked in cheap beer!

So guys, you should totally hit me up on campus in the fall. I’m definitely going to be the person they’ll let in at all the parties, especially because I’ll bring my huge group of guy friends with me. I even know where Garnett is (right next to Tech! It’s kind of weird they’d have parties in a church, but NU bros go hard everywhere, like me.)

Dedicated to the world’s proudest Dad

WOW. This is so cool. This is the coolest ever. My daughter is the best ever. I wonder if she’s having as much fun as I am? I wish I was standing up front with her so I could ask! (My wife made me stay in the back with her because during our tour of UCLA, I pushed three accepted engineering students out of the way so I could stand right behind the tour guide, and then asked more questions than all of the communications majors put together.) I’ll wave. I bet she’ll see me if I wave. RACHELLLLL, RACHELLLLL.

Drat. My wife made me stop waving. She keeps whispering that I’m being goofy. Oh well, I don’t think Rachel minded. She was only avoiding eye contact so she could look at all these cool chalkings! There are so many student groups here! I wonder if there’s an a cappella group. I was in an a cappella group. I should ask! My wife won’t let me raise my hand though.

It’s so warm, but that might just be because I’m wearing an article of clothing from every single institution Rachel was accepted to; that’s two t-shirts from UVa and NYU, a zip-up sweatshirt from WashU, socks from UMich, and this knitted hat fleece hat with earflaps from Cornell. I know it’s sixty degrees and sunny out, but I just wanted everyone to know that my daughter’s the best! I hope we go to the bookstore soon. Their website only had one “NU Dad” shirt, and if Rachel goes here, I’ll need at least five more. (Really though, where is it? Shouldn’t it be somewhere close to the middle of campus? They must have hidden it on purpose. They’re so clever!)

Whoa! A statue! Maybe I can get Rachel to stand over by it and take a picture with my cell phone! Oh, that’s just an Organic Chemistry student that froze trying to get in to Deering Library on Martin Luther King Day? They’ll thaw out soon enough. Maybe we should talk about UCLA again though.

Hey everyone. Is this tour a snooze fest or what? Who cares about the number of libraries, we’re all just here to party. Am I right guys? Who am I kidding? Of course I’m right! I even let my daughter have a party last weekend because she told me she hated me!

Hey Stace, how fugly is that girl’s handbag? (I call my daughter Stace because, let’s face it, you can’t call your bestie Stacey #ew.) Anyways, I heard there were some cute freshman boys chatting up my daughter and some other girls. We should totally go flirt with them, right Stace?

Say, do you think the tour guides would tell us where the party’s at tonight? I’d totally be down to supply if they’re cool with moms tagging along.

Gosh, I remember my days at college like they were yesterday. I mean they really weren’t that long ago when you think about it. You know what they say, “42 is the new 22 when you throw in a touch of hair dye, some Botox, and a glass of wine.”

God, you kids don’t know how lucky you are to be just starting college. I’m telling you, one moment you’re dancing on top of a table at a fraternity’s formal and then before you know it, it’s nothing but babies throwing up on you and a husband who is afraid to stand up to his own damn mother. Seriously, Stace, cherish it.

Ugh. I could totally get in here. This is dumb. I don’t even know why you would want to come to school here. Like Willie the Wildcat? Seriously? Dumb. This place is probably full of UChicago rejects. My (insert standardized state tests here) scores were in the 99^th percentile. I got a letter from the Governor, the actual Governor of (insert state with said standardized test here). Northwestern would be my super safety. I’m the smart one. Mom told me.

This tour guide just mispronounced the name of that building. Krez-gee? That should be Krez-guh. Duh. I mean, I would know. I took German after school for three months in third grade. The teacher said I was a natural. I bet I wouldn’t even need to take their language requirement here, which is dumb. An ugly building called “Tech?” Also dumb. There’s still snow on the ground? Super dumb.

Where even are we? A big pond? You probably can’t even swim in it because those freaky fish might eat you. What is the tour guide even saying? Something about a bunch of students dancing in a tent? Dumb. A million dollars isn’t even that much. I could probably raise that with, like, a bake sale. I bet they can’t even dance. I can though. I had the best score in the class on the flexibility test in gym.

This is the worst. Maybe if I roll my eyes one more time Mom will let me leave, except she keeps asking dumb questions. Of course they have vegan food. Of course the tour guide studied abroad in Spain. Of course the library has 352,294,637 books. This is literally the same exact tour as WashU. I mean I could probably give this tour and do a better job.

Ugh. I wish I was at home watching Pretty Little Liars right now. Jessica even said her mom would have dropped her off at my house.