This is Sam Jackson and I just wanted to say it has been a real pleasure to work with Beth writing IvyGate these past two weeks. Readers: your kind and thoughtful comments inspired us to new creative heights as we brought you the quality IvyGate coverage you know and love.

Although we didn't meet the usual scandal quota (yet!) we cleared IvyGate's good name and reported on the illegal gun collections of Yalies, the roaming child gangs of Penn, the fact that Harry Potter is apparently popular, Columbia student groups and their threat to national security, and of course, sex and its associated expenses.

We also trashed on the Kennedys, explained away Princeton's fundraising bonanza, met the new kid on the blog block, learned not to look for jobs on Craigslist or friends in business, and explored the seedy underworlds of frat boys with guns and summer campers with wandering hands. Finally, we hated the possible next next next generation of IvyGate guest editors.

And this is Beth. What he said.

Enjoy your summers, and send in those tips!

XOXOXO,

Sam and Beth

Everyone agrees there is nothing more obnoxious than a baby in a "Future Harvard Grad" onesie. Whether the kid has alumni parents or came from the Ivy League sperm bank on the corner, she's not going to grow up normal.

Which is why this new trend of dragging siblings along to college orientations has us concerned. According to a recent Boston Globe article, at most schools the rugrats don't even have to sit through lectures on Pell grants, academic advising, and "the role of the university in today's world." Instead, it's all sorts of arts and crafts, science lab, birthday cake, moonbounce, pony ride fun.

That's healthy. Hey, Jane! Not only have we expected you to go to Harvard since before you were conceived and your sister got in, but you also have delightful childhood memories of it being the funnest place in the world.

Now go work on your admissions essay.

--BETH MILTON

Unlike Penn or Yale, Princeton Public Safety is having a monumentally slow summer crime-wise. That's really the only explanation for the ultimate read-between-the-lines security bulletin they issued yesterday:

    The Department of Public Safety is alerting community members of an incident that took place in the Blair Hall courtyard on Tuesday, July 24, 2007, at approximately 10:30 p.m.

    A group of male juveniles were talking to several female Princeton University summer camper [sic.] attendees in the Blair Hall courtyard. During the conversation one of the male juveniles grabbed a body part of one of the female campers.

    The male juvenile was described as a white male, approximately 16 years of age, 5' 5", medium build, with short, blonde spiked hair. The male juvenile told the female camper that his name was "Adam."

Sure, there's a chance that something really nasty went down. But more likely, the police are actually investigating that sacred camp tradition: after-hours groping.

Remember, Princeton residents, if you see any 16-year-old boys eyeing your chest... oh, nevermind.

--BETHANY MILTON

Oh, Yale. You think your assault rifle-toting frat boys make you so special. But don't you realize 5.2% of all Greeks carry guns? (The binge-drinking kind of Greeks, not the baklava-making kind.)

So reports Jennifer Epstein in an Inside Higher Ed article, which is chock-full of all sorts of troubling anecdotes. For instance, at Alpha Gamma Rho members at Oregon State University "told police they were frustrated that transients entered the house without permission and at least two told police they had shot at transients with BB guns." Maybe if they left less porn and pizza and booze lying around, the transients would be less likely to stop by?

The weirdest story, though, is from Dartmouth and dates all the way back to the pre-IvyGate Stone Age of 2005. Apparently a Michael Volodarsky, Class of '08, decided one Super Bowl Sunday to explore the roof of the Zeta Phi house on a "smoke break." Up there he found a loaded BB gun, and with nothing much better to do, decided to take a pot shot at an Epsilon Kappa Theta... er, at a garbage dumpster. The Kappa Theta sister just got in the way. Michael is still at Dartmouth--and a proud member of the Bones Gates Bones Gate, a.k.a. Delta Tau Delta.

IvyGate's advice: Stay away from Bone Gate parties--you never can know if cries of "Shotgun!" precede free-flowing beer or falling plaster.

--BETH MILTON

Class of 2011, look around you. In this room (ok, in this Facebook group), there are future friends, classmates, and colleagues. There are future boyfriends and girlfriends. And, Class of 2011, there just might be that special someone you end up suing in a Boston federal court for $1 billion.

That dream has come true for Harvard twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and friend Divya Narendra. This week in Boston they are taking former classmate Mark Zuckerberg to court in what will certainly go down as the trial of the century (only 93 more years to go): Facebook v. ConnectU.

What? Don't remember ConnectU? Exactly the point.

According to an article in the Guardian, the claim is that when the Winklevosses and Narenda asked Zuckerberg to help out in designing their innovative "social networking site," he

deliberately stalled its progress, stole the source code, design and business plan, then set up his own rival. Facebook sped away while their site, now called ConnectU, was still in the traps.

That's what you get for trusting a psych major.

The intial suit was filed in September 2004--the requisite counter-suit in November 2004--and while the basic facts of the case haven't changed, the stakes certainly have.

So, what's stolen source code worth these days? Enough to ask the judge to "shut down Facebook and transfer all its assets to [you], plus damages." Mmm. Damages. From a site with an estimated worth of at least $1bn (estimates run as high as $2bn).

IvyGate will keep you updated as the case progresses, but we'd love to hear from anyone who knew Cameron, Tyler, Divya, or Mark back in the day. Anonymity oh-so guaranteed.

P.S. ConnectU is still alive and kicking. Barely.

--BETHANY MILTON

Thank you, tipsters, for pointing out that Penn's crime wave of oddity continues.

In police custody is Eber Devine, a 38-year-old man accused of using Craiglist to set up a bogus interview with a job applicant: the kind of interview where you get told to

stand up. Go walk around the room. Go stand in the corner. I want to look at your ass.

And where did the shoulder-touching and heavy breathing take place? None other than Penn's own Van Pelt library, since Devine's hugely successful mega-company is in between offices right now, ya know.

While it's hard to know how may other Penn sex stories start with

"He met me outside. We went upstairs to where there's, like, conference rooms,"

lets hope most end with happy students, not creeped out librarians and arrest warrants.

--BETH MILTON

Best part of guest editing this blog? Discovering that there is a bizarro world of people who spend significant chunks of their day reading college blogs, writing college blogs, and starting new college blogs. And all this time I had been visiting with friends, reading books, cooking dinners, and enjoying sunsets!

Well, while I was off enjoying cold Carlsbergs, someone was hard at work. And as if IvyGate needed the competition, there's a new blog on the Ivy League -- or at least college -- beat: theU.com's own O.T.R., omg.

Doug Imbruce (Columbia '05) started the parent site, theU.com, whose current purpose seems to be a giving away scholarship money based on a hot-or-not scale. The same Doug who famously accepted defeat as Freshman Class President by declaiming, "'Don't come crying to me when they run this school into the shitter.'" Doug, however, has moved on -- not just from his defeat, but also from using WB stars to host online college tours.

Rumor had it Doug had something up his sleeves, but it was Penn's "sex blogger" Jessica Gold Haralson that was first to break the silence, forfeiting her anonymity and announcing on Monday that she was Penn: Off the Record's inaugural editor. Jessica, though, is just the start of it: theU is backing a whole series of O.T.R. blogs. According to Managing Editor Lena "I lowered my mouth over his cock and slid my lips over his shaft easily" Chen,* they have already recruited "75 writers at 40 campuses." OK, a list of active sites shows 21 schools, but at least the Ivies are represented. Well, except Brown, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Dartmouth.

What can we expect from O.T.R.?

"UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA O.T.R." is like a student newspaper written by ALL UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA students - in real time, online... anonymously. Any student can post, and the blog is edited by a few Juniors/Seniors (who basically filter out stuff that sucks).

So, chaos. Potentially interesting, potentially offensive, and potentially dumb Junior/Senior-filtered chaos.

Right now the main O.T.R. page, compiling posts from every school, boasts a little bit of everything: YouTube, photoshop, celebrities, Lolcatz,  alumni news, course listings, and a surprisingly harsh attack on Penn boys. It's not entirely professional, but it's definitely got potential.

O.T.R., welcome to the blogging block.

--BETH MILTON

*[Ed.: Taken out 'cause it was mean; put back 'cause Nick made me] 

It's summertime, the grades are in, and the students are all gone--what's a provost to do but count up the change in the piggy bank? Princeton has been doing just that, and reports that this year they've received a staggering record of $49.04 million in alumni donations, a 21% spike from last year.

 
Reasons? "'Frederick G. Strobel '74, the volunteer leader for Princeton's annual giving campaign for the past three years, said alumni donate to Princeton so readily in large part because of the university's "commitment to excellence.'"

And I got an *awesome* Livestrong bracelet because I actually care about Lance Armstrong's testicles.

A better explanation can be found in a research document on Princeton's own web server: Altruism and the Child-Cycle of Alumni Donation (pdf). Using data from an "anonymous selective research university," Stanford's Jonathan Meer and Princeton's Harvey S. Rosen toss about logarithms, Greek letters, and Tobit estimators to conclude that "about 52 percent of giving by parents whose children apply to Anon U is due to altruism and the remaining 48 percent is due to self-interest."

Maybe the best explanation for increased Princeton giving is the increased numbers of pimply teenagers applying, which in turn is probably due to increased unprotected Princeton alumni sex back in 1988-1990. Don't believe us? Princeton giving broken down by class year. Graduate in '82, kids by age 30, progeny aiming for class of 2012 equals $8 million, or a sick average of $10,267 per alum... probably taped to the back of Jr.'s application. And they said dropping Early Decision would hurt the bottom line!

--BETH MILTON

If you own a Porsche and went to Harvard, shouldn't have enough connections to convince the DMV to squeeze an extra "A" in there? Aren't you a Kennedy or something? LME.

--BETH MILTON