Yale’s “Rumpus,” an old IvyGate favorite, posted a new issue online recently. While the articles are excellent, the true treat is the pages and pages of the membership of Yale’s “exclusive” secret societies. Besides the big three — Skull and Bones, Wolf’s Head, Scroll and Key — which we’re going to continue to assume are the epitome of selectivity and pretentiousness, there seems to be a society for everyone! Yay!

According to a nice long-read from the Yale Herald, society numbers have been booming in the past few years. What was once for the elite of the elite is now home to more than 50% of seniors, who have been refounding societies, like Mace and Chain, or starting their own from scratch, like the still young Double Cuffs.

This can only be seen as a great equalizer across Yale’s campus. Now, even members of the secret society Spaghetti and Meatballs, or as Rumpus puts it, S&M, can say they were part of a system that housed the Bushes.

As IvyGate reported last week when this letter was but a mere blip on Dartblog’s webpage, a group claiming to be comprised of Dartmouth faculty members filed a complaint detailing the Dartmouth Board of Trustees’ mishandling of the College’s $3.4 billion endowment. Just as a reminder, the letter, which can be found in full here, features several instances of Dartmouth Board members receiving millions of dollars in fees for their companies, which include Morgan Stanley, Apollo Management, and Goldman Sachs.

Now it appears that someone is listening. The New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced Tuesday that it was reviewing allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest at Dartmouth, according to Reuters. While a Dartmouth spokesman categorically denied the accusations, the College could be found to be in conflict with their not-for-profit status should the accusations turn out to be fruitful. We’ll keep you updated as more comes out on this.

Thanks to a piece posted today by the good people at The Dartmouth, IvyGate’s attention was brought to a recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics, a group tracking campaign finance data. Apparently, the Center saw fit to track how the Ivy League would influence the 2012 presidential election, compiling data on how professors at the eight schools donated to the Obama and Romney campaigns. Luckily, Bloomberg Businessweek went through and organized the numbers, so we didn’t have to.

What did they find? Basically, what everyone should have expected: Ivy League professors love Obama, and are indoctrinating their students to do the same. Well, at least the first part. But gosh, do these ivory tower elites love their Obama. According to Bloomberg, “Professors, administrators and others employed at the eight universities of the Ivy League have given $375,932 to Obama and $60,465 to Romney.” Read on to find out the juicy specifics: Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Fussell, the historian and Penn professor, died yesterday. His most visible work concerned World War I and II*, but in 1983 he gave us Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, which we mention here for Fussell’s rift on the middle-class appeal of the Ivy League:

Archaic and good colleges like Princeton and Yale are used for status definition and support by exemplary Americans like F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara. Although neither managed to graduate from the top-class college of his choice, and although O’Hara never even got to attend his, pursuing for life the fantasy that he might have gone to Yale and leafing through the yearbook for 1924, which would have been his class, both promoted their colleges to the status of holy places, sacred sodalities to which they could redeem themselves by belonging. Each would have affixed his rear-window sticker with utmost reverence. They were team players both, like so many members of the middle class, and could hardly imagine their identity unless attached to an institution.

In early May, a conservative blogger placed a $10,000 bounty on copies of Obama’s college transcripts from his years at Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law School. Ten thousand dollars! On Monday, the reward grew to $20,000:

We therefore offer in reward $10,000 $20,000 to anyone who provides the college transcripts of President Barack Obama. Occidental, Harvard, Columbia…any would represent more intellectual curiosity about the leader of the free world than the media has demonstrated since Obama won the Democrat primary.

This just a new form of birtherism, right? Actually, no. Not entirely. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Harvard’s graduation! To honor Harvard’s mission to serve humanity, here is a compilation of some recent student accomplishments:

Drunkenly stealing, driving, and crashing an ambulance:

“While awaiting medical evaluation, the patient fled the emergency room and drove off in an ambulance,” a spokesman for the hospital said in a statement.

Attempting to sneak marijuana into Bermuda, being foiled by an underwear-sniffing canine:

Harvard is being tight-lipped after one of its instructors was busted with pot in her underwear after landing in Bermuda for a weekend getaway with her husband.

Bragging about eight consecutive life sentences (also, being the Unabomber):

The listing says his occupation is “prisoner,” and his home address is “No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary — Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.”

Under the awards section, the listing says, “Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday morning, Columbia President Lee Bollinger received a copy of a strangely-formatted letter in which Randy S. Raghavendra, a former employee who filed a suit against several Columbia employees in 2003 over alleged employment malpractice, accuses the university’s 19th President of “the total destruction of [Raghavendra’s] livelihood [and] professional career”; “the continuing irreparable harm and unbelievable pain and suffering being caused to him and his family during the past NINE years”; and “reckless disregard for the law.”

The letter was delivered to Manhattan’s U.S. District Court, where a judge will determine if Raghavendra’s request for motion will enter the court’s docket. According to Raghavendra, Bollinger and/or Columbia has delayed payment on a settlement the opposing parties reached in 2009, since which Raghavendra has accrued over $100,000 in credit card debt. Raghavendra also alleges that Bollinger continues to “illegally discriminate and retaliate against the [Raghavendra] by not hiring him to any of the over 100 positions he had applied for and continues to apply for since July 2009.” Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago we discovered footage of Fareed Zakaria 1) name-dropping IvyGate 2) during a speech at Johns Hopkins University 3) for their 2011 Commencement 4) by quoting a comment 5) on a post entitled “Columbia In Open Revolt As Dr. Jack Shepherd Chosen As Class Day Speaker” 6) from five years ago. In 2007.

Zakaria is “the most influential foreign-policy adviser of his generation,” according to Esquire.

For the record, here is the comment Zakaria quoted from, in full:

Having a Yale Corp member just smacks of talking about your backpack on Show and Tell day because you forgot to bring in something interesting.

“Uh…it has a zipper…and…a bunch of pockets in the front…”

Just smacks! It was a more innocent, and articulate, time.

We soon obtained Mr. Zakaria’s super-secret, totally-not-public personal email address (thanks, Nick), to which we sent a fairly desperate request for comment, asking Zakaria if he had anything else to add, and, PS, if he still reads IvyGate. He emailed us an hour ago!

From: “Zakaria, Fareed (CNN)”
Date: 23 May 2012 20:51:54

Nothing more to add. I have to confess, I haven’t looked at it lately but it was a lively site the last time I saw it.

“Lively.” “I haven’t looked at it lately.” We appreciate the candor, Fareed. (You were AMAZING in Game Change, by the way.)

Before you ask, yes, we emailed him back, to ask whether “lately” meant 2007 or, like, 2011. And yes, we are that desperate for approval. (If 2011, though: whoever’s near Peter Finocchiaro should give him a pat on the back. And then Peter should give his co-editors a pat on the back, too, if he’s near them.)

Click thru for the the video: Read the rest of this entry »

Some excerpts from The Dartmouth’s superb report on the 17 arrests over Hanover’s Green Key Weekend:

Safety and Security received its first call at 8:35 a.m. on Friday morning about a male student naked from the waist down walking on Webster Avenue and trying to get inside a vehicle outside of Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity, Kinne said.

At 6:37 p.m. on Friday, Safety and Security responded to a vandalism incident when a male student jumped onto the hood of a car driving down Webster Avenue during Phi Delta Alpha fraternity’s Block Party and dented its hood.

“One of our officers saw a male student with his hands around another male’s throat and officers at the scene were able to separate the two students and take them outside the house,” Kinne said. “The individual responsible for the choking was very intoxicated and struggled with the officer, pulling him into the bushes.”

[A male visitor] became increasingly belligerent and tried to punch one of the brothers at the door, at which point the brothers escorted the non-student off the fraternity’s steps, Sherril said. The young man continued trying to contact his friends, but he fell and appeared to injure his head while walking around outside the fraternity.

Three weeks ago, we suggested that Occupy Princeton should drop out of Princeton. Because it’s a little silly to protest Wall Street—or the present economic order, or income inequality, and so on—if you attend a school which both perpetuates all of those things and benefits from them. A school which, arguably, is less a university than a finishing school for bankers. (And which employs Jeffrey Eugenides and Joyce Carol Oates for the same reason Goldman Sachs installed a Franz Ackerman mural in the lobby of its New York headquarters.)

Here’s how one commenter answered:

No. That would be dumb. That’s like saying “If you don’t want Romney for president you should totally just leave the country if he’s elected.”

It’s like retreating. Giving up! White-flagging! Total pussy move.

It’s totally OK for people to criticize something they’re part of if they’re asking it to change for the better and they themselves are working to be better.   Read the rest of this entry »