From a mystery source within the Obama campaign come some updates/accusations targeted at proactive Obama-lovers in the ivy league.  According to the political blog Open Left, Obama’s campaign has “had it up to their ears” with ivy interns getting in the way of business, even adding fuel to the Republican’s fire.  Contributer “KosherDutchAfro” writes:

My source within the Obama campaign in Chicago has told me campaign employees have had it up to their ears with overly ambitious Ivy League volunteers who have been causing problems for the campaign by putting their individual ambitions over the larger goals of the campaign as a movement. This employee and fellow South Side native has shared with me that the campaign is getting a sense that the attitudes of dedicated Ivy League volunteers had, over the course of the primary, given Republicans enough stories to run with the ‘elitist’ trope in the general election.”

What are these kids doing: arguing over who gets to plug those numbers into an excel sheet?  Or… maybe it would be more relevant to ask: who is this KosherDutchAfro, and why all the crazy haterade for us innocent ivy leaguers with big political dreams?  Because later on in the post he writes about how Obama’s loss to Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary can be blamed on “pushy” Penn students:

In Pennsylvania, where the campaign lost big time to Hillary due to pushy Penn students stoking conflict with long-time city activists, the Obama campaign has instituted a training that teaches volunteers how to be senstive to existing communities.”

OK.  Fine.  We know that this sort of insensitivity can be a problem not only amongst ivy league students, but also within the ivy league administration.  So maybe this kind of training isn’t such a bad idea after all.  But isn’t blaming Obama’s loss on a few Penn students taking it a bit far?  And wait…didn’t Obama attend ivy league universities himself?  According to the mystery source, “Senator Obama himself feels Ivy League graduates have held sway over Washington too long and even though he attended Harvard and Columbia, if elected, he intends to do very little hiring from the Ivies.”

Now this is truly scary.  Because if this is potentially true, it’s grim news for us rising seniors.  Hell, if nepotism is going out of fashion in politics, I’m never getting a job next year.

Once again it’s time for another installment of everyone’s favorite chick lit romp through the mystery-filled tomb of Skull & Bones–er, Rose & Grave. Yale Grad (’01) Diana Peterfreund delivers schadenfreude, secret society pranks and sex (okay, foreplay) on the beach in Rites of Spring (Break), the latest book in her “Ivy League Novel “ quartet, out from Delta Fiction earlier this month.

“Eli” (read: Yale) University senior Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel is panicked about graduation. But when she and her fellow Rose & Grave knights pull a prank on rival society Dragon’s Head, Amy winds up with a lot more to worry about than her lack of job offers. Dragon’s Head wants revenge, and they’ve chosen Amy as their target. After months of dye in her shampoo, crickets in her dorm suite, and soda dumped on her textbooks, Amy is more than ready to party it up during Spring Break. Rather than Cancun, our plucky heroine heads for Cavador Key, her secret society’s private island. But Cavador Key isn’t exactly drama free, either. Someone has infiltrated the island, and Amy must dodge death threats, bad seafood, and the prying eyes of her society members as she starts hooking up with Jamie, a society patriarch who avid fans will remember as the villain from past books in the series.

Along with the gang from previous books (including a governor’s playboy son, a former teen actress, a lesbian activist, a straight-edge genius computer programmer and a Manhattan socialite), Peterfreund adds another gem to the cast of society types we love to hate: Darren, the high school-aged son of society patriarch and disgraced senator, who proclaims of Aristotle, “I find his tone to be remarkably jejune.”

Rites of Spring (Break) is the perfect beach read for Ivy Leaguers who want a break from academia, but not from campus drama. Peterfreund has created a sympathetic and spirited heroine who, despite her annoying penchant for confessions and lists, you kind of wish you became friends with back in lit hum. In spite of the peppy cover, poppy narrative and preppy undertones, Peterfreund definitely knows how to create suspense. And her—I mean, Amy’s–thoughts on the impending doom of graduation are uncomfortably on the mark:

The biggest problem with being a relatively small fish in the best pond ever is that you start to lower your own expectations. Maybe if I’d gone to a smaller school, or a less prestigious school, I’d have convinced myself that I was still the hotshot I was as a high school valedictorian headed to an Ivy League college. Instead, I’d spent three years recalibrating my dreams to fit into the caste that the resident geniuses at Eli had shown me to be a part of. Above average, to be sure, but not summa.”

There were a few too many loose ends for my taste (but then again, my taste isn’t exactly romance novels, so maybe I’m off course), and a couple of lines that made me snort (and not in an ‘oh, that’s funny’ way), but overall, if you’re looking for a book to toss in your tote on the way to Cape Cod, or just want to convince yourself that being a Philo pwns the shit out of being in a real secret society, this is a pretty good pick.

Natalie Portman, Harvard ‘03, stars as a princess in her hairy boyfriend Devendra Banhart’s new Bollywood-inspired music video, “Carmensita.”

Do not watch if:

1. you are offended by pubic hair

2. you are offended by cultural inaccuracy

3. you don’t like it when Natalie Portman does that whole i’m so cute and endearing i smile a lot and i’m perfect thing

4. you like Natalie Portman so much that you don’t want to see her turn into an octopus

Seriously, Harvard? Seriously? You have this guy as a professor for six years and not one of you has anything to say about it on ratemyprofessors.com? My disappointment is only rivaled by Associate Professor Summers’ disappointment in the “post-pubescent children of notables” (i.e. bitterness toward his self-chosen path of academic poverty—the non-tenure track).

In a ridiculously self-masturbatory opinion piece for the Times Higher Education, John H. Summers, Harvard history professor, whines about how his wealthy students “worked exceptionally long hours, [and] were aggressive in exercising their talents.” Wait, there’s more! Summers moans, “I had to grade the students, and I had to grade them well. Everyone expected a recommendation letter.”

Wow, really? Hardworking and talented Harvard students expect good grades and recommendation letters? Madness, I tell you. Don’t do it, Professor Summers! Don’t give in to the temptation.

Well, he didn’t. Summers goes on to criticize Harvard’s grade inflation as taking away the “one instrument of power [he] wielded,” calling the “tacit” expectation that students earn no lower than a B “a sign of corruption” that “abridges the academic freedom of the teacher.” Read the rest of this entry »

Oh how easily we do forget.

When Brown freshman and native Canadian Harrison Zolnierczyk was charged earlier this year on accounts of “child pornography,” the commentators on Ivy Gate went wild.  There were cries for justice, for retribution, for glimpses of the footage he put on photobucket of his girlfriend getting down and dirty on his friend/hockey teammate Bradley Harding.

You ivy league plebs demanded that the law (albeit Canadian) be put into effect, saying that he deserved to go to jail for secretly directing underage porn without his girlfriend’s consent, and that he deservedly would never get this off of his record.  In particular, one commentator who goes by the name Irony wrote, “What a foolish mistake he made and now that will cost him for the rest of his life.”

Well, ironically, as the Brown Daily Herald recently reported, Zolnierczyk’s record will be as clean as a whistle by the time he graduates.  In April, Harry pleaded guilty to “two counts of electronic voyeurism,” and in June was sentenced to three years’ probation with conditional discharge.

This means that if he can keep his hands on his hockey stick and off of his video camera for the next few years, there will be no legal record of this crime.  All he needs to do is change his name (let’s be honest, there are too many consonants in that thing anyway) and no one will ever know.  Zolnierczyk will be back in school this coming fall, and he may even be playing hockey.  Better yet, Brown’s Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Michael Chapman made this statement to The Herald:

“The conditional discharge means the court found no charges to pursue. We expect him to return this fall, and his conduct at Brown has raised no concerns.”

Gotta love Brown: you can pass/fail all your classes, read whatever the hell you want, and maybe even create an academic major in something like “electronic voyeurism.”  Hey, it’s no concern!

–JULI MIN

I was blissfully zoned out in front of the TV last summer when an ad came on for reruns of a popular show. “If you haven’t seen them,” the ad smugly pointed out, “then they’re new to you.”

Following this thought, I humbly present these “new to you” short videos from this summer’s Rooftop Comedy National College Comedy Competition (where students tried to not suck at stand up, and the ones who were actually funny advanced to regional finals, and then nationals). Representin’ on the Ivy front we have Harvard, Brown and Columbia. Get ready, some truly epic entertainment awaits:

Harrison Greenbaum, Harvard ’08 (regional semi-finalist) is freakin’ hilarious. For real, someone buy this kid a beer–in the middle of his stand up comedy routine, he busts out a magic trick.

Tom Flaherty, Brown ’08 (regional runner up), will either crack you up, or hypnotize you with his English accent and willingness to let the handicapped crap in his dorm room.

Alex Katz, Columbia ’11 (pwned by NYU, but still awesome), is pretty damn funny. And mesmerizingly tall. But mostly funny.

You can find other comedy videos here, at the main page for the stand up competition.

Also…about those tips. I’m starting to think they’re a bit like Barnard’s mythical connection to the Ivy League–rumored but nonexistent. Prove me wrong by flooding our inbox: tips@ivygateblog.com

–ROBYN SCHNEIDER

I woke up the morning after IvyGate’s big bar bash relieved that I was in my own bed and apparently still wearing my underroos. So far so good, I rationalized, and that was when I heard the shower turn on.

Despite the early morning haze of one too many gin and tonics, everything came back to me. I hadn’t gone home from that party alone. I had gone home with my new co-editor.

**

I don’t usually take showers in unfamiliar apartments the morning after. Hell, I usually just grab my pants and run. But this time was different. It was uncanny how much we complemented each other. Robyn was from Irvine, California, a student at Barnard, and headed to med school in the next few years.  Basically, she could do a Korean accent better than I could; she was the daughter my mother was meant to have. I was raised in New Jersey, a former prep schooler and a student of literature at Harvard.  I should have been bat-mitzvahed years ago.

When we met, we finished each others sentences. We ordered the same drinks, a few too many.  Sometimes you know right away that it’s not going to work out.  But sometimes you know that it will.  And so I stayed for my shower.  We were going to be the best of friends.

**

Our beautiful-yet-awkward relationship started out where most healthy, substantive relationships begin: through Facebook. After stalking the shit out of each other once we were assigned as co-editors, we decided to meet for drinks.

We were both in New York for the summer, interning in publishing (Juli), and taking summer physics classes whilst editing Columbia’s bioethics journal (Robyn). Well, drinks turned into a baking fiasco, then a round of embarrassing sex story trade offs, a trip to Nick and Chris’s aforementioned IvyGate party, and finally a drunken subway ride uptown, which culminated in what can only be referred to as a slumber party.

Yes, really. A slumber party. With pajamas and giggling and cookies and all that girly shit. And now we’re, like, totally BFFs. Over the past few weeks we’ve gone to the theater, the park, a nice Italian restaurant.

So thanks, Ivy Gate, for the first completely not awkward morning after we’ve ever experienced (i.e. In the words of Douglas Adams, ‘So long, and thanks for all the fish’).  And, as an act of gratitude, the plan is basically to turn this blog into the next Sex and the Ivy.  It’s a hard job. But someone’s got to do it.

Send us tips, recipes, personals, or embarrassing sex stories at tips@ivygateblog.com

—
Juli Min, Harvard ‘09, is the singer in a funk band and also an acoustic indie duo that performs in and around New York.

Robyn Schneider, Barnard ‘08.5, is the author of several forgettable books for teenagers.  She hopes to attend medical school and bedazzle the shit out of her scrubs.

–ROBYN SCHNEIDER AND JULI MIN

This is the end, my only friends, the end. After two amazing weeks of laughs, tears, and yes, a few other bodily fluids, my time at IvyGate is finished. I’m glad we had this time together. Thanks to all my friends for leaving nice comments, and everyone else for displaying the intellectual rigor and insight that I’ve come to expect from Ivy League students who didn’t go to Columbia.

If you can’t imagine life without my blogging, I suggest you start visiting The Pacific East. It’s me and some other jerk raging about politics and shit. Go to it now and read an awesome post on Mongolia by my co-blogger that I wanted to excerpt on IvyGate but never managed to condense properly.

Mike Bechek’ll probably have a sign-off for ya too, but I’m out. Robyn Schneider and Juli Min are up next, and I can say with certainty that they will both do a better job than me.

– ANDREW MARTIN

UPDATE: I’ll just add yet another exhortation to send the next guest editors tips. Coming up with stories over the summer is a tough business, as Andrew and I have demonstrated all too well. On the bright side, the plague of guest editors is almost over, so keep your heads up. It’s been real.

– MIKE BECHEK

This morning, at 12:01, The Dark Knight, which is a movie about the detective Batman, came out in theaters. I waited in line starting at 9 o’clock to watch it with lots of people who were way weirder than me. Some of them had painted their faces to look like clowns, and they were talking very loudly. The movie was playing on like thirty screens at Lincoln Center in New York, and you got to go inside based on what theater you were assigned to. One of my friends is an idiot and bought a ticket to a different theater than us, so I had to wait outside while she gave someone a blowjob to trade tickets so we could all sit together.

At the theater, all these kids from Columbia University high school summer camp or something ran into the auditorium and their counselors yelled about the greatness of Columbia summer camp. I think the campers don’t understand how stupid it is to do the high school Columbia summer camp. The NYU summer campers are much better dressed and, hey, maybe you could even get into NYU.

When we were all sitting in our seats, the person in the seat in front of me was watching “Batman 1″ on DVD and it was so funny to be watching a DVD on a computer in a movie theater. I thought he was wearing a Dartmouth hat, so I yelled, “Hey, did you go to Dartmouth?” and I think I’ve never felt like a bigger douchebag, ever, especially when he said, “Naw, dog, it’s a Dallas Cowboys hat.” I really love the Cowboys, so we could have been friends, but no, he thinks I went to Dartmouth.

The seriously good part of the night was when I watched Batman the real movie and I was crying blood because it was so crazy and awesome. There’s this part where the Joker kills this guy, Hong Kong style, so hard. Then, Batman makes his truck flip over when he’s riding his motorcycle. Then, he’s got to save Gotham before it’s too late, but everyone is corrupt and evil is the way of the world, so will he stop the Joker in time? There’s no love only fear and anger so the movie is never boring. You might have a headache when it is over because you have to be upset for a whole movie but the point of art is to make you very upset. I think Heath Ledger should have won an Oscar for this movie, so he wouldn’t have to kill himself.

Batman 2 is better than the ride Batman and Robin at Six Flags because the lines are the same length, but the movie is a lot longer than the ride and a lot more people die.

• Columbia: “‘Rooster’s breakfast’ is Slovenian slang for ‘early morning sex.’”
• Columbia: Madonna Constantine demonstrates inability to cut losses.
• Harvard: Oh Harvard kids, so goddamn worldly.
• Yale: Would you believe these kids and their hats?
• Princeton: Construction workers go overboard trying to take Princeton’s gobs of money.
• Dartmouth: “An officer assigned to detail a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority event at Everything But Anchovies arrested an underage male who brought liquor in a cup to the event.” Gin and anchovies — busted.
• Penn: Hillary Clinton owes everyone money.