Yale Daily News Only Paper in Country With Balls
Yale Daily News reporter Tom Kaplan is our new hero. Only a freshman, he’s penned a piece about Aleksey Vayner with actual (gasp) reporting! Unlike the toothless Times, credulous MSNBC, or effortlessly spun New York Post, Kaplan’s piece moves the ball, noting that the president of Charity Navigator has asked New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to investigate Vayner’s fake charity.
Also — and this is pure sugarcane — it’s apparently Academic Integrity Awareness Week at Yale now, but deans are stonewalling on whether they’re looking into Vayner’s several plagiarisms.
Kaplan’s piece is a serious take, but the last two sentences are the funniest thing we’ve read all week:
Vayner’s attempt to stand out in his application appears to have backfired, although advertising executive Donny Deutsch said on MSNBC he would hire Vayner immediately for his creative genius. Director of Undergraduate Career Services Philip Jones declined to comment on whether Vayner’s strategy is a sound one.
But with Halloween less than a week away, some Yalies in need of an outfit may have found inspiration of their own in the Vayner scandal: some students said that “Aleksey Vayner” will likely be a popular costume on campus this year.
One Metro North ticket to New Haven for Oct. 31, please! If we come out there, will someone throw a party?
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October 25th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Unfortunately it looks like Aleksey will not be getting investigated. Yale is a joke after all!
I am so relieved that I did not accept their admission offer when I applied there, and chose to attend an actual academic institution instead.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I thought ivygate was done touching this thing?
October 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Yale isn’y going to investigate this? Are you kidding me???? Ugh, Yale, you have seriously fallen from the ranks of greatness.
October 25th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
MetroNorth ticket? Iyvgate = Columbia?
October 25th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
The moral of this story: Lie, cheat, plagiarize, do whatever you must to get into Harvard or Yale – as Kaavya and Aleksey proved, they won’t kick you out, no matter how great a scandal you cause or how much you humiliate your institution. Nope, only lower colleges worry about such trivial matters as ethics and reputation.
Being an average Nate from a poor redneck family who never lied about his achievements and is honestly earning his masters degree at a state school while holding down a full-time job, I think my resentment for the upper academic class is understandable. But I still like this blog. It has the upstart authentically snarky wit Gawker and Wonkette lost long ago.
October 25th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Of course it’s out of Columbia. That was obvious the first week of this blog.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
“I am so relieved that I did not accept their admission offer when I applied there, and chose to attend an actual academic institution instead.”
So by posting this sentence you are letting us all know that you were indeed “smart enough” to get into Yale but you had higher academic standards. That’s really slick, all hail your superior intellect and excellent taste.
I don’t think anyone should defend Aleksey’s plaigarism and lying. But I’m surprised that people are so ready to lump every single Yale graduate and current student under a single umbrella. Contrary to what you may believe, Yale admits a pretty diverse range of people, and some people who’ve done a lot more damage. Just as Ted Bundy is not a typical University of Washington alum, Aleksey is not a typical Yalie.
Also, from what I’ve understood about the school after four years, Yale tries to keep things behind closed doors. It’s not far-fetched to think they may quietly ask him to leave.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Remainders: Hos Before Coach
Hottest costume in New Haven this Halloween? Aleksey, of course. [Ivygate] More Prius-driving celebs who won’t switch to hybrid private…
October 25th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
i thought u already promised to not do another Vayner post? LIARS!
October 25th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Christ. Leave the kid alone. Does it really matter so much? So he f’d up, lied about it, fine. Does it affect your life? Will you “BOYCOTT YALE!! OMG LOLZ”? OK. Good. We didn’t want you here anyways. One student does not represent every student at the university. His punishment is not our business, nor will lack of punishment make Yale a worse institution. And really, do we have to do anything? I think he’s already screwed himself pretty damn good.
Oh, and for anyone who wants to rip this argument to shreds with their clever internet humor, please feel free. Your wit will live on in messageboard fame.
October 25th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Jesus, every knows this guy has Yale written all over him. They’re probably erecting a friggin statue to him right now. As for Yale standards, this is a place that graduated GW Bush.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:04 am
Uh yeah. If someone is a plagiarist, con man, defrauds money from charity-givers, and there’s actually people on television licking his ass, saying how smart it was of him to use new technology like youtube to “promote” himself, something is wrong with this world. Sounds to me like the Yale deans are practically begging for a professor to yell “plagiarism” about Vayner cause those are the only people they pay attention to. And it’s very sad that Phil Jones didn’t condemn it and take action, given that Vayner likely went through UCS to get to UBS and they say that if they find you lied through something as slight as rounding your GPA up instead of down, you could get kicked out. Sounds like someone’s not man enough to stand up to the great Uzbeki with the deadly hands…
October 26th, 2006 at 2:49 am
People should not lump all Yale students together and say they’re all bad. But people should be pissed Yale isn’t taking dramatic action in response to this problem. These are very serious issues at hand and definitely merits expulsion. If he gets a Yale degree, I will lose respect for the school, because they knowingly graduated a fraud.
“”Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said the Dean’s Office only investigates students when it receives a formal complaint, such as a police report or professor’s complaint, and the charge involves a violation of Undergraduate Regulations.”" This is garbage.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:45 am
This IS garbage.
How about this: can we put together a campaign and email every single professor at Yale, giving them the facts on Aleksey, and then suggesting that if they did have him as a student, to go back to his written work, and check for plagiarism…?
Any volunteers??
October 26th, 2006 at 9:22 am
I’ve made fun of Aleksey, though I understand why he did it. He obviously has major issues, perhaps stemming from his socioeconomic status (poor immigrant kid from NYC). Despite the veneer of being an unsophisticated braggart, deep down he realizes he is lacking. So he continues to invent lies in an effort to raise his self-esteem. Perhaps the ego invents the story, and he starts to believe it as a means of survival. At a place like Yale, you’re surrounded by (for the most part) intelligent kids from upper-middle class (or rich) homes. I know something about disenfranchisement. As someone who lived in North Long Beach near Compton, I didn’t find much ghetto within the classrooms of Yale.
In other words, you’re an outsider. Either you learn to deal with the world on its terms, or your own terms. While neither is necessarily the correct path (hey, I don’t have the answers), Vayner chose the latter path. Unfortunately, his path is cloaked in lies and self-deception.
Will he learn from this experience? I don’t know Aleksey, but I’ve known others somewhat like him. In all likelihood he’ll adjust superficially, and become a more credible liar. He’ll measure his audience more carefully perhaps, or at least tone down the utter bullshit.
Does he deserve expulsion? Not from what I’ve read thus far. Did he take money that was designated for charity? Probably not, it was just a ruse to get noticed by prospective employers. Did he plagiarize any term papers or homework? Probably, though I’m sure that body of work is probably in a landfill by now. Did he plagiarize papers outside of his assigned work at Yale? Yes, but that’s not relevant here. I think a line from Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta sums this up nicely: “Thou hast committed fornication. But that was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead.”
He’ll be remembered and ridiculed for the rest of his life. This will all but ruin his employment prospects. Thus the punishment will fit the crime.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:54 am
>>If we come out there, will someone throw a party?
But are you 21? My bad, forgot that Alexey’s got you covered….
October 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Geez, you’d think that with higher education academia among the midst, Yale would step up to the plate and actually do something to punish him for plagerism. But alas, this has given Yale some free publicity, so why bother?
Look at Bill Clinton – off topic a bit, I know! He committed purgery on the stand, and yet … Nothing happened? If our federal courts aren’t going to do something to punisha person of purgery, are we truly expecting a “well-respect” university to punish this guy of plagerism? Probably not.
And I say “well-respect” because despite Yale getting bad publicity from it all, there are still good hard working students who go there who are being lumped into this jackass’ actions and that isn’t fair to them, and yet I don’t really repect an institution who won’t follow policy and procedures that they stricken upon the student body at the beginning of each semester.
And some may ask, “What is your educational level among all this?” – I go to state college in Nevada. Not the highest ranking institution within our fair country, but good enough for me to break my back working at it to get the degree I specifically wan.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Donny Deutsch…ha! Now there’s a guy we can all admire and respect…no wonder he admires Vayner…
October 26th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Hey, hawaiianbrat – how’s the neocon agenda working for you? Pretty well, figuring how you’ve singled out Clinton while there’s an AWOL-going cokehead sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sending your classmates who can’t afford school off to be killed or maimed in Iraq.
People like you make me sick – but not quite so sick as Aleskey Vayner.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
yeah, send more dumb poor kids to die. yeah yeah yeah
October 26th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
it’s PERJURY not purgery. although I agree Yale should check to make sure none of his term papers were plagiarized, nothing else he did is really under their purview unless he says the Yale Press published his ripped-off Holocaust book. (i don’t think he did, right?) he will never ever get to be an i-banker & everyone will laugh forever. i think that might actually be enough punishment for him. i agree with pup – you can see he was just trying so hard to fit in with the WASP elite up there & lost track of reality while doing so.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
“he was just trying so hard to fit in with the WASP elite up there”
Sorry, not an excuse. There are plenty of “Old Yale” kids at Yale but there are probably more that are not, and most people manage to get by with only mildly sociopathic behavior.