NEW HAVEN — In a unanimous decision by the Yale Corporation, Provost Peter Salovey has been selected as the next President of Yale University.

The announcement came in a rather secretive, almost-closed-to-everyone-but-the-YDN press conference (reporters from lesser publications could be seen loitering outside the McDougal Center of the Hall of Graduate Arts and Sciences, where the event was held). Salovey, who is known for his (no longer) mustache first and professional accomplishments second, will assume the post beginning June 30th.

According to the most carelessly done Google search in history, Salovey has previously served as Dean of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, owns a Havanese dog, and is married to Marta Moret, president of Urban Policy Strategies, LLC and ’84 Graduate of the School of Public Health.

In his acceptance speech, Salovey posed the question “What kind of Yale do you imagine?” which really encapsulated his vision for “a more unified Yale, a more innovative Yale, a more accessible Yale, and a more excellent Yale.” After the announcement, what we assumed to be various Corporation fellows and Yale society luminaries (including Yale’s Favorite Son, Brandon Levin) lined up to shake Salovey’s hand and congratulate him. The general feeling from the crowd was one of excitement, relief, and speculation as to whether or not the mustache would make a comeback.

God bless Cosmo and their Bachelor of the Year Contest. Each bachelor featured has an email address and Twitter handle attached, which is super convenient and not at all creepy. Of particular note are the selections for Delaware and Connecticut: Jonathan Champagne, Cornell junior, and Christian Kim, a Yale School of Music student.

Kim (pictured right) is a professional violinist: there’s a joke there about G strings that we’re just too lazy to make right now, sorry. “They’re really very sensitive,” he remarks about his palms, for some reason.

Our favorite part of Mr. Kim’s profile is what his friend had to say about him: “Christian is definitely the hottest guy at Yale.”

Champagne (pictured here) apparently has really sensitive biceps (favorite foreplay move: “having her stroke the inside of my biceps”), but we can’t figure out whether that actually turns him on or whether he just requires constant admiration of his swimmer muscles.

And while we’re glad to know that if IvyGate were ever to bump into Mr. Champagne we should be wearing lingerie that “shows off [our] personality,” we’re disappointed that Cosmo failed to mention that Champagne is “a master masseuse” and a “musical genius”. Read the rest of this entry »

This is so much cooler than College Week on Jeopardy!: Yale junior Joey Yagoda will make his television debut on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire this coming Monday, October 1, and Tuesday, October 2. (A.K.A. tonight and tomorrow).

Yagoda is currently the treasurer for the Yale College Council and an Ethics, Politics, and Economics major, so this kid really likes money (we hope that he’s in a room somewhere rolling around naked in all the piles of cash he’s handling). The viewing party for this should be killer and I really hope the douchebag who blurts out the answer to Yagoda’s last question is promptly beaten with a stack of benjamins. Coincidentally, Monday is also Yagoda’s birthday so we sincerely hope that the party includes some variation of this game. (Replace Regis with Meredith).

Yagoda told us he taped the show in the midst of shopping period, resulting in possibly the best excuse ever for missed classes.

“I didn’t have much time to train because I had to shop classes. Since I only found out the day before classes started that I had to shoot it that week, I basically had the most insane shopping period ever, sending e-mails to professors asking about the application process to get into their seminars and also mentioning that I wouldn’t be able to attend seminar the next week because I had to be on Millionaire.” Read the rest of this entry »

Playboy Magazine, the foremost authority on sex, has named Yale University as one of the colleges with the “Best Sex Life”. We assume they’re referring to your regular ol’ mom-and-pop sex; no word yet on what the gays are up to (yet!). But if we’re to believe the old “1 in 4″ adage, they’re doing pretty well for themselves. [Ed: It was 1 in 3 the last time we checked heard.]

But what does this mean? Playboy doesn’t really explain the methodology behind their “Best Sex Life” rankings, so we can only guess at how they arrived at such groundbreaking analysis. Are they referring to frequency of sexual encounters? Quality of coitus? Riveting and engaging pillow-talk? Have Yale students finally learned their lesson from Maria Yagoda?

That noise you hear is the collective wail of virgins crying in the library.

In addition to the final list (published at the end of this post) of faculty, administrators and CEOs, the Yale Corporation has assigned four Counselors (student, faculty, staff, and alumni) to, well, counsel, the Committee in its search for the next Yale University overlord supreme leader tzar president. Of particular interest is the decision to, for the first time ever, officially include a student in the decision-making process.

They clearly went for looks instead of brains (jokes! JOKES) in choosing Student Counselor Brandon Levin ’13.

Former Yale College Council President, current Whiffenpoof, and one of Yale’s “50 Most Beautiful People”, Levin is a good representative of your typical Yale student: too overachieving for his own good.

In an email interview, Levin expressed his views on his new role as Student Counselor.

My role is, first and foremost, to act as a conduit for the views of students in providing counsel to the Yale Corporation. So, I don’t see myself as conveying my own views to the Corporation; rather, it’s far more important that I solicit the views of students about the direction the University should pursue in the coming years, the attributes ideally found in a new president, and any recommendations they may have for particular candidates. In this sense, I aim to be a facilitator and ‘funnel,’ liaising between all Yale students — undergrads, grad students, and professional school students alike — and the Search Committee and Yale Corporation.

The Corporation has, of course, already faced criticism for its choices to the Search Committee and that criticism has faced criticism too. And while this initial grumbling is to be expected, we wonder whether students will maintain an interest in choosing Yale’s most powerful figure. Does your typical Yalie really consider the influence of the President on a daily basis? Levin the Younger is keepin’ that dream alive: Read the rest of this entry »

In a very, very early (9 AM) email sent out to students yesterday morning, President Richard C. Levin announced his resignation as President of the University, effective at the end of the current academic year.

“It is a source of great satisfaction to leave Yale in much stronger condition – academically, physically, and financially – than it was when I began in 1993. Our faculty is stronger than ever, and our deans and directors all have clear and ambitious agendas that will keep the University moving forward.”

This year will mark Levin’s 20^th as head of the university and the end of a tenure characterized by many changes within the university. Amongst other achievements, Levin oversaw the renovation of the twelve residential colleges, growth of Yale’s endowment despite financial crisis, and the creation of Yale-NUS College (controversial, but we’ll get to that later.)

But lest we get too complimentary here at IvyGate, we probably should not forget the less exemplary aspects of Levin’s presidency.

Levin’s response to the Title XI complaint filed in 2011 (and the ensuing and ongoing debacle) has been heavily criticized. Though the problems with Yale’s sexual culture can’t be fixed by policy changes alone, some students feel that the changes instituted by Levin were really geared more to improving Yale’s image rather than addressing the concerns of students. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago the previously-beloved Yale College Dean Mary Miller gave returning Yalies a lovely welcome-back present. In an email sent out to the student body on August 10th, Dean Miller outlined a few new student activities regulations for the upcoming year. Off-campus parties, freshman rush, and tailgating are all now subject to Dean Miller’s party-pooping ways:

• Any off-campus party hosting more than 50 people must be registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office
• Freshman must wait until spring semester to rush a fraternity or sorority
• Kegs and U-Hauls will now be banned in the so-called “student tailgate village” and tailgate festivities must end at kickoff.

Most of this is not entirely unexpected. Postponement of freshman rush was announced back in March, and, after last year’s tragic accident which resulted in the death of one woman and left two others injured, tailgating rules were bound to change. Yale’s new tailgating policies are no stricter than those of its fellow Ivy League schools; most (Harvard included) have already banned kegs and U-Hauls. (It’ll be interesting to see if these new regulations hold up, or if they’ll go down the path of last year’s “wristband policy”, whose effectiveness during last year’s game was about as successful as the Yale football team.)

As for ending tailgate at kickoff? Sounds like a lame attempt to boost student attendance for the actual games. Here’s hoping the Yale football team brings the same fire and determination to this year’s season as it does to fighting at Toad’s.

The creation of the “student tailgate village,” however, is a bit laughable: Read the rest of this entry »