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“We’re all very happy you’re here. Because this is where the show is.” Columbia College junior Ben Weiner pauses, inviting the crowd gathered before him to chuckle. Though it’s 9 on a rainy Saturday night, the folding chairs that have been lined up in Lerner 555 are filled with people. They’ve come to see Weiner’s musical improv comedy troupe, Alfred, perform its first show of the semester.

Only three of Alfred’s eight members have been in the group for longer than a few months. Still, the improvisers seem comfortable with one another, easily picking up cues and establishing running jokes. Their audience laughs and applauds as Alfred spins a yarn about a mild-mannered man and Roberto, the pigeon he loves. When the show ends, most of the crowd mills around. As the performers reemerge, the audience members congratulate them on a job well done.

“Alfred’s Lerner Ball” is more than just a comedy show—it’s a coming-out party for the troupe, triumphant proof that it has navigated the sometimes choppy waters of Columbia’s comedy scene and lived to tell the tale. Alfred rose from the ashes of another improv group, Klaritin, which was founded in 2004, and, after abruptly changing its name to Sweeps, quietly disbanded in the spring of 2008. A few Klaritin refugees formed Alfred in September of that year.

Alfred’s mere existence is indicative of a minor renaissance in Columbia’s comedy community. Though the University’s undergraduate comedy culture has been growing steadily over the past 10 years, until recently, Morningside comedy was nothing special—particularly when compared to that other prominent university in New York.

New York University has always been a creative mecca. Its Tisch School of the Arts is one of the most distinguished performing arts schools in the country, and even those who attend NYU’s College of Arts and Science have a reputation for being artsy, among other things. Comedians like Billy Crystal, Adam Sandler, and Aziz Ansari all honed their craft while undergrads at NYU. The university is also the birthplace of The State, a comedy group that started as an extracurricular activity and rose to fame with an eponymous sketch show on MTV in 1993.

Selection bias could explain the discrepancy between NYU and Columbia—maybe NYU’s creative atmosphere not only creates comedians, but also drives wannabe comedians to attend the school in the first place. But even colleges that are academically and atmospherically similar to Columbia have more developed comedic communities than ours. Harvard is home to the Harvard Lampoon, the “world’s oldest continually published humor magazine,” according to its Web site—an establishment so, well, established, that its offices are housed in an honest-to-God castle. The National Lampoon, a once-mighty humor franchise responsible for an influential magazine and movies like “Animal House” and “Vacation,” was spun off from the Harvard Lampoon in 1971. More recently, the Lampoon has acted as a feeder for the writing staffs of TV shows like “The Simpsons” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Similarly, Yale has two humor publications and four improv comedy groups. The groups operate semi-professionally, earning money by touring around the country during winter and spring breaks. Yale’s improvisers have also performed at venues like The Second City in Chicago and Caroline’s in New York.

But at Columbia, comedy has never been taken very seriously. We have a humor magazine called The Jester that was officially founded in 1901, but it has a rocky publishing history that includes numerous, sometimes decade-long gaps between issues. Former Jester Editor-in-Chief Sam West, who graduated in 2008, revived the magazine most recently in 2004. None of the comedy performing groups currently on campus has been around for longer than six years. The Fed, Columbia’s humor newspaper, began in 1986 as a conservative alternative to Spectator and only evolved into a humor publication around 2003.

Even the Varsity Show, Columbia’s oldest performing institution and the University’s only real large-scale showcase for student-written comedy, has suffered periods of discontinuity. The Varsity Show proudly claims to have been an annual tradition since its inaugural performance in 1894. But as recent graduate Rob Trump, who wrote the show in 2007 and 2008, explains, saying that the Varsity Show has existed for 116 full years, “is sort of a lie. I’m going to get capped by the powers that be for saying that, but it didn’t exist for several stretches of time in there.”

Between 1956 and 1958, 1968 and 1977, and during a few other years, there was no Varsity Show. Trump explains that the show as we know it today is a fairly recent invention: “I think most recently it was revived in the ’80s, and only in the past 10 or 15 years did it turn into a really big production, the way it is now.”

Columbia’s oldest and most prestigious comedic institution, then, is relatively young. But the stop-and-start nature that characterizes The Jester and the Varsity Show isn’t unique. Many of the University’s oldest organizations have followed the same pattern of early establishment, years of dormancy, and recent resurgence. The Blue and White was founded in 1890, disbanded in 1893, and not revived again until 1998. Similarly, the Philolexian Society was founded in 1802, dissolved in the 1950s, and revived in 1985.

Several factors could explain the initial deterioration of each of these groups, including Columbia’s notoriously nonexistent school spirit and the radical politics that dominated campus in the middle of the century. Either way, apathy seems to have a long and illustrious history at Columbia. Upholding long-standing traditions has never been much of a priority for our administration.

It is, then, no surprise that Columbia’s comedy community is so young and relatively small. What is surprising is the way that Columbia’s comedy scene has grown rapidly since the beginning of the decade. In 2004, the same year that The Jester was revived, sketch comedy troupe Chowdah was formed. Improv group Fruit Paunch emerged in 2003. The Fed completed its transition from conservative rag to satirical newspaper around the same time. (Full disclosure: I’ve lived with members of Chowdah and Klaritin, as well as an editor of The Fed.)

It’s unclear why the comedy renaissance began when it did—Trump facetiously proposes that the “post-9/11” atmosphere might be to blame—but the fact remains that the Columbia comedy scene has been reborn in the new millennium.

Groups once needed to consolidate in order to survive. Fruit Paunch, for example, was the result of a merger between two now-defunct troupes called Six Milks and Two Left Feet. Columbia’s troupes have also had a tendency to disappear once their founders have graduated: Two musical improv groups, Tea Party and Prangstgrüp, perished when their creators walked out of the 116th Street gates for the last time. Alfred’s survival, though, is an indication that comedy groups on campus are now making a greater effort to ensure longevity.

Even so, the community still has plenty of hurdles to overcome before it can truly solidify. New York City is full of opportunities to see comedy—and when given the choice between seeing campus comedy or taking in professional shows at venues like the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, students might be more likely to choose the latter. Aspiring comedians at Columbia also have the option of performing at open mic nights around the city or in professional improv classes rather than participating in on-campus comedy groups. “I think a lot of the comedy scene here bleeds into the comedy scene of the city,” says Nina Pedrad, a Columbia College junior and a member of Fruit Paunch. “We don’t need 50 groups, because we have New York.”

Columbia’s labyrinthine bureaucracy is also an impediment to the comedy scene. Students report that governing boards can make forming a new organization difficult. “You have to get approval, and funding, and a faculty advisor, and I think that the people that go in to try out [for comedy groups] don’t necessarily know how to go about making their own group” if they don’t get into the ones that exist already, says current Fed Editor-in-Chief Rachel Katz, a GS/JTS senior. If a junior decides to form a new group, “it takes a year to make—you have a club, and then you graduate,” says Chowdah president and Columbia College senior Matt Shields.

CC senior and Fruit Paunch veteran Michael Molina offers another reason for why those who are rejected from already extant groups don’t start their own. “I don’t know what it’s like to start up, and to emerge into this environment where Fruit Paunch has been around for so long,” he says. “Maybe Sweeps and Klaritin only went on for so long because they didn’t have the tradition. Maybe. I don’t know.” The 6-year-old Paunch may not be as august as the Harvard Lampoon, but at least it’s an established entity.

Molina’s comments also bring up another issue plaguing the comedy community: the perceived hierarchy that exists among groups. When asked how she would characterize comedy at Columbia, Reni Callister, a Barnard junior and a member of Chowdah, immediately suggests the word “segregated.” Former members of Chowdah, like Olivia Whelan and Liz Varner, who graduated Barnard in 2008, and Shira Danan, who graduated CC in 2007, also say that they felt that a clear separation existed between members of their group and members of other groups. “The community is definitely internally divided,” Varner says. “Fruit Paunch got a lot of money,” Danan adds, implying that Chowdah didn’t when she was a part of it. She feels that the scene is stratified, mostly because she perceived Fruit Paunch to be exclusive and cliquey when she was a student.

Comments from current Paunch members confirm that it is a selective and tightly knit group. Molina estimates that 50 people auditioned for the troupe this year, but only two were chosen to join it. “Smaller numbers are better for improv,” says Rachel Leopold, a former Varsity Show writer, a member of Paunch, and a Columbia College senior. “The fact that we’re very, very tight, like as friends—we can be on the same wavelength as each other in a scene, and I think that helps us comedically,” explains Paunch member Toby Mitnick, also a senior in CC.

“We have lunch every day together. Not, like, selectively, but…” starts Molina. Leopold completes his thought: “…It’s sort of a standing invitation that anyone can do who wants to.” They explain that Paunch also goes on an annual retreat every fall, usually to a member’s country home. “We basically hang out and have a good time,” Molina says. “It was very heartwarming afterwards when Bob [Vulfov, a new member and the only first-year in Fruit Paunch] was just like, ‘I feel really close to you guys now.’” Members of Chowdah, by contrast, say that they don’t see their sketch group as a huge commitment. They also don’t spend much time with each other outside of rehearsals. “We’ve been talking about hanging out more,” says Chowdah actor Rami Levi, a Columbia College sophomore. “It’s not like we have lunch together every single day,” adds Callister.

Even newcomers can see that members of the comedy community feel divided from one another. “Oh, there’s definitely a rivalry. I’m not saying it’s a bad rivalry—it’s friendly. But it’s still a rivalry,” says Alfred’s Will Cybriwsky, a SEAS sophomore.

The Fed and The Jester have a similarly charged relationship: “We usually don’t get as many new people as The Fed,” says Adam Nover, a Columbia College senior and editor in chief of The Jester. “But most of the time, it does seem like we get the funnier people.”

Katz playfully fires back by noting that at activities fairs, “People will go to their [The Jester’s] table and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, we publish twice yearly,’ or quarterly, or however often they publish. And they’ll be like, ‘How often do you guys publish?’ And we’ll say ‘Once a month.’ And they’ll be like, ‘Oh—thanks!’ Then they’ll come over to us.”

But despite the competition, comedy veterans agree that collaboration across the community has become more and more common. Nover cites the sketch comedy shows that Jester has put on in the past, in which Chowdah, Fruit Paunch, Klaritin, and even Alfred have all participated. “Everyone has been talking about collaboration this year, which is cool,” says Weiner. As the comedy scene becomes more established, its growth should be aided by the atmosphere of creative cooperation.

A gradual movement away from scatological humor and vulgarity should also assist that growth. Fart jokes and punch lines involving penises are the easiest forms of humor, as well as the first type of jokes to which new comedians tend to turn. According to Katz, new writers for The Fed “come in from very conservative backgrounds, like, ‘Oh, I worked for my school newspaper.’ And they come here, and they’re like, ‘Oh, fuck yeah! Woo! I can say any bad word I want!’ And the first submissions they get in are horrible.”

Katz says that The Fed is now making a conscious effort to “be more tasteful.” Whether this shift has actually occurred, though, is debatable—when she is trying to describe “the kind of stuff that we like,” Katz enthusiastically recalls an article written last year by Adam Weiler, GS, that was “a monologue from a frat boy whose cock was St. Augustine.”

Shields echoes Katz, saying that Chowdah is also making a conscious effort to write with more nuance: “Before, there would be a lot of sketches where we’d be like, ‘Oh, where do we go now? Uh—blow job!’” Over time, he says, Chowdah’s sketches have become more than collections of bad words and sexual puns.

Columbia College first-year and new Chowdah member Annie Birinyi admits, however, that there is still plenty of vulgarity in her group’s sketches. “I remember that for one sketch, one of my notes was the word ‘BALLS,’ all in caps and circled,” she says. Chowdah’s most recent show also included a piece titled “On the Origin of Feces.”

Even at The Jester, a magazine with a sense of humor that Nover calls “esoteric,” purposefully offensive jokes pop up frequently: Last year, “I think a girl wrote a piece that was like, ‘Grand Theft Auto’ in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ or something,” he remembers. “And it was all dick jokes. And I did not see that coming. They were all dick jokes.” He pauses. “Yeah, they were all dick jokes.”

Maybe Columbia comedians are still fixated on adolescent humor because the scene itself is still in its adolescence. As the community matures, though, the jokes being told should diversify as well.

A new initiative spearheaded by Alfred, which it’s calling Alfred’s Ruckus, should help to combat many of the problems that threaten the comedy scene. Cybriwsky explains that Alfred’s Ruckus is to be a sister group to Alfred, one that will stage spontaneous musicals around campus much like Prangstgrüp did earlier in the aughts. Ruckus has the potential to get Columbia students interested in campus comedy by creating attention-grabbing scenes in Morningside Heights, and it could give different groups an opportunity to collaborate on big publicity stunts, overcoming their differences in the process. Creating musicals to be presented in public will also force Columbia comedians to look beyond scatology for their punch lines.

Getting Ruckus off the ground won’t be easy, though. As Weiner explains, the troupe already attempted to put on their first spontaneous show a few weeks ago. They performed a “Swine Flusical” in Lerner for people standing in line to get their flu shots. “Someone was filming, and there lies the problem,” he says. “It violated patient-doctor confidentiality laws. But they were very friendly. We got an e-mail saying, ‘Hey, we loved your musical.’ And then the second e-mail was like, ‘Uh-oh.’”

Even so, the stunt has led to bigger and better things for Alfred: Though he can’t reveal many details, “later, we will probably be collaborating with Health Services,” Weiner says. The troupe immediately had to take the video of the “Swine Flusical” off YouTube, but Alfred’s members remain hopeful about Ruckus’s future.

Their optimism is mirrored by the enthusiasm for comedy that Columbia’s nascent scene has already begun to inspire in its participants. Writing and performing jokes at Columbia has convinced several graduates to try their luck at doing comedy professionally. Though Varner’s involvement with Chowdah was initially “a complete accident,” she’s now writing a comedy blog and improvising with other Columbia alumni at clubs around the city.

Similarly, Trump came to Columbia thinking he “was going to go to medical school, probably.” He’s now living in Los Angeles and “looking to land somewhere in the world of comedy and entertainment.”

Members of comedy groups are also finding it easier to get involved with professional comedy institutions. Michael Grinspan, who graduated CC in 2009, notes that several members of Chowdah—himself included—have snagged internships with “The Colbert Report.” Nover also says that the past two editors in chief of The Jester have gone on to work at The Onion. Though going to school in New York means that Columbia students have always been able to intern at comedy institutions, the relationships that certain groups are forming with organizations like “Colbert” and The Onion are further proof that Columbia’s comedy community is becoming increasingly well-established.

After 10 more years, who knows—there may be dozens of Columbia alumni following career paths similar to that of 2004 Columbia College graduate Jenny Slate. Slate helped to form Fruit Paunch while a student at Columbia and entered New York’s comedy scene after she graduated, performing and writing with fellow Class of 2004 alum Gabe Liedman. She got her big break this past September when she joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live.” Slate may not be as famous as NYU grad Adam Sandler—she’s best known currently for accidentally dropping an f-bomb on air during her very first episode of “SNL”—but she nevertheless serves as the poster child for Columbia’s comedy renaissance. The efforts of alumni like Slate have laid the foundation for an established comedy scene at Columbia. And we fuckin’ love her for that.