Why GQ Is Always Right, OR America’s Douche League Officially Proclaimed
Brown is the douchiest school in the country, according to GQ. Princeton is number three. Harvard is number four. Does this seem wrong? Keep reading, Deep Springs grads. It gets worse.
Just before the station wagon left the IvyGate garage, GQ published a "heavily researched, possibly stereotyped, but still accurate guide" to the nation's 25 Douchiest Colleges. In their own words, the GQ editors observe the inherent paradox of the douche:
The question isn't whether you're a douche bag when you go to college. We were all kind of douche bags when we went to college, if we're going to be honest about it. No, the question for America's youth is: What kind of douche bag do you aspire to be?
Gottseidank Yalies, Dartmutts, and Columbians, you're off the hook. Harvardians, Princetonians, and Brunonians are not so lucky. Cornell, Penn: honorable mentions don't always need mentioning.
After the jump, what's wrong with the list, and what you can do about it.
Quick answer: you can't do a damn thing about it. Face it, "douche" is synonymous with "[name your Ivy] alum" to most of the nation's population. And whether or not you know it, you've been called a douchebag a million times just because you did well on the SAT, made it through the gates, and now only send emails from your @brown.edu address so PETA organizers thing you're more legit. Or whatever.
Just to be clear on GQ backstory, editor-in-chief Jim Nelson went to Notre Dame. (Props to the college intern who edited the list for dropping the Fighting Irish in that list at number 15.) His deputy editor Michael Hainey went to Northwestern. (Not on the list, but Zack Braff also went there so it must've been in the running.) GQ is also not a real news source unless you think tie-bars and George Clooney interviews count as news.
But why the just load the top 25 douchiest schools with only three Ivies Rapidly-Losing-Money-Mens-Magazine?
One reason why there aren't more Ivies in the mix: way too easy. Seriously this blog exists to chart the progression of Ivy students and alums leagues deep in the Sea of Douche. The process is pretty basic, honestly. I mean, half of our editors are from the South. It's that easy.
Another idea is that some schools don't need gurus to call them douchey. They do it on their own accord! An endless line of tipsters wrote in complaining that Yale wasn't on the list. This is not a joke---Yale was mentioned in almost every email received about the GQ story. If you read any of our coverage on Aliza Shvarts and her period blood art, this trend makes sense. (Schvarts, by the way is doing graduate school at NYU, number 11 on the list.)
The real explanation involves the fact that all of you Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn students hate to hear. Nobody really cares about the lesser Ivies. They don't have the golddigger sex appeal of the richest Ivy, the hippie sex appeal of the most liberal Ivy, or the masturbation appeal of Princeton.
If you want to fight it out and make somebody call your school names, just send an email to: tips@ivygateblog.com. We'd be happy to trash you.
In case you missed GQ's original list, here's what counts:
5. Deep Springs
Home of: The "I Went to a School So Exclusive, Only Six People Know About It and Half of Them Are So Smart They're Clinically Insane" Douche
Affectations: Castrating horses; translating Latin; vows of silence.
A peek inside: The campus is a ranch and alfalfa farm near Death Valley, each class has no more than fifteen men, and students spend their time reading Infinite Jest, Remembrance of Things Past, and a little volume by the college's founder (called The Gray Book) that's all about hearing the "Voice of the Desert."
Douchey founder: Lucien Lucius Nunn, who moved the college to the middle of nowhere in California in 1917.
Problem with douchey founder: Some people thought he was a little too interested in the young students.
4. Harvard
Home of: The Harvard Douche
In ten years, will be: A Harvard douche.
Douches emeriti: Benazir Bhutto, Lou Dobbs, John Quincy Adams, Mira Sorvino.
3. Princeton
Home of: The Eating-Club Douche
Affectations: They invented affectations!
A peek inside: Most Ivy Leaguers try (unconvincingly) not to mention which college they went to. Not at Princeton.
In ten years, will be: Our boss.
Favorite pickup lines: "Hey, didn't I see you at the Cap & Gown Club?" "Hi. My father invaded Cuba."
How to get in: "There is no formula for what makes the best Princeton student. In one year, we may be looking for that talented oboist* to fill out the woodwind section of the orchestra, while another year we may be focused on finding a well-rounded field-hockey player."—CASS CLIATT, DIRECTOR OF MEDIA RELATIONS
*Seriously, what is it about elite universities and the oboe?Honorable-mention eating-club institutions: A basketball school in Durham, a university in New Haven, a college in Cambridge.
2. Duke
Home of: The O.D. (Original Douche)
Affectations: Pressed oxford; Goldman Sachs summer-internship tote; always ending the party by taking your shirt off and wrestling a guy named Schmitty.
A peek inside: They're probably number one. But we'd rather not rank Duke number one at anything.
In ten years, will be: Still trying to re-create the golden age of banking while wearing driving mocs and no socks.
1. Brown
Home of: The "Peace Sign on My Mom's 7 Series" Douche
Affectations: A belief that grades, majors, and course requirements are just another form of cultural hegemony; using the word hegemony.
In ten years, will be: Living with your family in an old house that you quit your job to refurbish yourself (by overseeing a contractor) with painstaking historical accuracy in a formerly decaying section of the city that's recently been reclaimed by a small population of white guys in hand-painted T-shirts who are helping you put together a health care fund-raiser for MoveOn.org.Douchiest course offering: English 200: On Vampires and Violent Vixens: Making the Monster Through Discourses of Gender and Sexuality.
Honorable-mention limousine-liberal institutions: Duke, Reed, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Bard, RISD.
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September 1st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Hey douche bag, you spelled ‘richest’ wrong.
“The real explanation involves the fact that all of you Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn students hate to hear. They don’t have the golddigger sex appeal of the riches Ivy, the hippie sex appeal of the most liberal Ivy, or the masturbation appeal of Princeton.”
September 1st, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Number 14. Arizona State
“Honorable-mention “show us your tits!” institutions: Duke, any state school in Florida or Arizona, U. of Delaware, Dartmouth.”
September 1st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Show us your tits.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
you’re asking for shit putting Columbia on the “lesser Ivy” list. But I think if this list proves anything the designation should no longer be “real Ivies” and “lesser Ivies,” but rather Douche Ivies and legit Ivies — i.e. the schools where people are too busy getting a good education to be stereotyped (or writing into you whining that Yale was snubbed) by GQ.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 am
Okay Dude, IvyGate what’s the distinction? Got a list for us?
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 am
Haha, article well done.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Wow, it’s so hard to differentiate among the Ivies along this particular dimension because so many candidates truly excel. This is a competition in which it’s a shame that any team has to lose because all the combatants have “left it all on the field.” But a winner must be anointed so here we go.
8. Cornell: Kept humble by modest US News ranking, huge student body and expansive semi-rural campus, which gives it the feel of a state land grant university. Oh, which it is. Least insufferable Ivy. Indeed, like Andy Bernard, kind of lovable.
7. Dartmouth: Drunken frat boys do not aspire to be seen by the world at large as exclusive elitists. Prefer to be seen as drunken frat boys. Don’t really ever get off the beer-soaked couch to run in the prestige race.
6. Penn: At number six in the rankings, this is where the doucheness begins in earnest. Penn is the most pre-professional Ivy by far but thinks of itself and wants to be seen as a bastion of liberal arts like its seven brethren. This is the foundation of Penn’s trade school pretension, along with its perennial inflated US News ranking. Unlike other Ivies whose alumni are douche bags as individuals, any school that makes up its founding date is institutionally a douche bag.
5. Yale: Not sure how GQ missed this one. The endless striving to be seen in the same circles as Princeton and especially Harvard, the stifling so-proud-to-be-liberal campus culture. Guys, everybody’s liberal at age 19. You don’t score any points for that.
4. Harvard: Number one and they know it. That’s okay but the problem arises because they want you to know it, too. Repeatedly, until you admit it out loud.
3. Princeton: Take the academic superiority complex of Harvard and Yale, add the carefully manicured gothic campus and the social exclusivity of eating clubs. Voila, Princeton.
2. Columbia: Mistakes the desire of so many 17-year-old kids to play grown-up in Manhattan and the resulting low admit rate as academic exclusivity and attendant prestige. Hey, people, all those applicants want to go to school in New York and you just happen to be there. A special niche category of doucheness, so understandable how GQ might have missed the subtlety.
1. Brown: Start with the oppressive political correctness of Yale and Columbia, amp it up another order of magnitude, add a scattering of Euro-rich rejects from other Ivies who got into Brown as “development admits,” and then subtract any academic rigor. The greatest difference in the Ivies between actual achievement and inflated sense of politically aware self-importance. Gotta give GQ credit for correctly identifying the one non-HYP to actually outdo those three stalwarts in doucheness.
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Not sure where you’re getting the “oppressive political correctness” from Yale- it’s no more so than the rest of the Ivies. And regarding Princeton, eating clubs are far more inclusive than Secret Societies and Finals Clubs. They might act pretentious, but when the majority of campus is involved… not so much. Give Nassau douchepoints for acting as such, but don’t make the mistake of dubiously glorifying them as legitimately exclusive.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
@@Complete,
I’m not saying that Yale is more oppressively politically correct than the rest of the Ivies. I’m saying that Yale is more oppressively politically correct than (in descending order) Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Penn, Princeton and Dartmouth. You can’t honestly tell me that you think the eight Ivy campuses all have the same degree of knee-jerk liberal culture and intellectual bias. Visit your friends at the other schools. If you don’t have any friends, spend a few hours reading the school newspapers online. The differences are palpable and significant. One could easily and very legitimately reshuffle the positions among Cornell/Penn/Princeton but the big gap is between Brown/Yale/Columbia and the other quintet.
As far as Princeton’s eating clubs are concerned, based upon your earlier comment, I’m going to work from the assumption that you are a Yalie. Forgive me if I’m wrong but it sounds as though you are saying, “Hey, don’t give Princeton an unwarranted high ranking when Yale and Harvard social organizations are actually more exclusive.” First of all, I happen to agree with you about the relative degrees of exclusivity, but I’m more struck by the impression that you want Yale to be seen as MORE socially exclusive, that is, more of a douche bag haven than I’m giving you credit for. Did I get that right? If so, then I can’t speak for all 5,247 Yalies on campus but YOU are definitely a douche bag. If that was indeed your message, congratulations.
Actually, if “the endless line of tipsters” which wrote to IvyGate about the glaring omission of Yale from GO’s ranking consisted primarily or exclusively of Yalies themselves, then I stand corrected. You guys really are douche bags of the first degree.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Astute. Here’s the thing, though. “Knee-jerk liberal culture” and douchebag exclusivity are antithetical, at least in the way it normally manifests itself in the Ivy League (obviously parlor liberals can be exclusionary douchebags, but they’re not the kind we’re talking about here). In other words, you can’t group Yale with the likes of Brown and Columbia in terms of apologist, liberal asshattery, then acknowledge that it outranks Princeton in the opposite regard… and if you’re making me choose between the two as the stereotype you’re handing those 5,247 people, then you’re absolutely right: I’d choose the latter, any day, any time.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
This subconversation between Complete Rankings and his nemesis is loaded with self-aware meta-douche. Both of you suck. Do us a favor and quit trying to outdo one another with snarky predictions and deft prose. It’s taking Ivy Asshattery to new heights.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Wow, you all fall for “Divide and Conquer” so quickly… when you should be counter-attacking. And you call yourself Ivy Leaguers!
The idea of a fashion magazine, which is about the stupidest creation in publishing, OR in business, criticizing top universities for the ill-defined concept of douchism, is much more a reflection of a has-been magazine’s has-beenism and jealousy, than of a proud 300 year tradition of educational excellence (plus a little snobbery).
The only thing sillier? That crazy man who puts out a “Worst Dressed List” every year. A cry for attention if there ever was one.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Aren’t “snarky predictions and deft prose” what IvyGate is all about?