Thanks for seeing me, professor. I knew I didn't study enough for the test, but an F? Now I'll never make the varsity team! Is there anything I can do to make it up? Anything ... at all?

Down, boy! Well, the poll results are in and they are decisive. Professors Adam Cannon and Tamsen Wolff, rising stars at Columbia and Princeton, are now officially the hottest academics in the League. To be honest, we're a little disappointed y'all picked the young thrushes over the silver foxes. (We admit the crop tool might have handicapped Wolff significantly). Hopefully by the time we hit 50, distinguished-hot will have made a comeback.

It was a tense race, with Columbia's Janaki Bakhle and Yale's Jean Jacques Poucel initially out in front. A shocking mid-game disqualification killed Robin Kelley's dreams of victory, while a late surge by Alyssa Apsel wasn't enough to close Wolff's then-insurmountable lead. (Final tallies are after the jump.)

Thanks to everyone who voted! If you take classes with either Adam or Tamsen, do us a favor and plant one on them for us. And tell them we'll be waiting to accept their gratitude.

Continue reading "Prof. Cannon, Prof. Wolff, Is There Anything We Can Do to Raise This Grade?" »

September 29, 2006 5:01 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: Columbia , Faculty Studs and Tenured Temptresses of the Ivy League , Princeton

Here's an amusing lede from Wednesday's Brown Daily Herald piece on roller derbies:

"It's a Friday night in Providence, and techno music plays in the background as scantily clad girls are getting smashed. Nearby ..."

Get it? Smashed? 'Cause it's a roller derby? Well, somewhere at the Herald is a way-too-literal copy editor who didn't get the joke.

"Due to an editing error, an article in yesterday's Herald ('Providence Roller Derby part of sport's national revival,' Sept. 27) incorrectly stated that a Herald reporter witnessed attendees at a recent Providence Roller Derby event 'consume copious amounts of alcohol.' The Herald reporter did not witness such activity."

Join us next time, when the copy desk informs us there were no actual bears on the football field this weekend.

September 29, 2006 2:57 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comment | Read more: Brown , Brown Daily Herald , Drinking

We've always filed Yale sex in the same folder as John Updike sex: Joyless, dutiful, performed only once you've finished your seminar reading. Or maybe it's best captured by Toni Morrison's "third beer ... the one you drink because it's there" theory. Yeah, yeah, they do the infamous Sex Week at Yale, plus that whole Porn 'n Chicken thing happened. We just have trouble imagining sex in New Haven as anything but purely functional.

Now a survey by Trojan Condoms tells us Yale has the most sexually healthy campus in the country -- and it's got nothing to do with how much sex they're having, safe or otherwise. Criteria include availability of condoms on campus ("Take what you need, not what you hope you need"), access to STI information and testing, and, oddly, whether they have a sex columnist.

Harvard, meanwhile, gets an F for condom scarcity and no sex column. The YDN quotes a Harvard peer counselor as saying, "The thing about Harvard students is that they are so difficult to cater to and difficult to please, and it's hard to get information to people who are brilliant." Hmm. Know what? If gonorrhea is the price of brilliance, we'll take our C-average, thank you very much.

Bonus: The Yale blog 06520-2848 (nice dig, guy) has a good analysis here.

UPDATE 11:48 a.m.: Penn buys 50,000 (and if you pronounce that "50 large," it gets funnier) condoms every year, the DP reports. Anybody got a figure for the other schools?

September 29, 2006 11:23 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comment | Read more: Harvard , Sex , Yale

This daily dailies roundup brought to you from a Shanghai prison ...

• Brown: Brown Can't Inflate Gay Point Average [Herald]
• Columbia: CU launches enormous capital campaign ... that will still leave it more than $20 billion short of Harvard. [Spec]
  
• Columbia: The hockey team screwed up, the athletics department screwed up more. [Spec]
• Cornell: "Ithaca is full of freaks." We ain't gonna fight ya on that one. [Sun]
  
• Dartmouth: Nothing gets a kegger going like strictly enforced university protocols! [The D]
  
• Penn: Chinese communists jail Wharton grad. [DP]
  
• Princeton: We put your interior decorator to shame. [Prince]
  

September 29, 2006 10:40 AM by RagTime | Link | Comment | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Cornell , Dartmouth , Penn , RagTime

Holy mother of John Harvard are we gorgeous.

Ivy Leaguers are known for their fine-ass brains, but damn if we don't have some spankin' hot crania (not to mention wicked bods) to encase them.

With your help, we searched to the ends of our small, Ivy-strewn universe to find the most exquisite professorial specimens in the Group of Eight. We then narrowed down the nominations to the truly stunning. These men and women, whose oratorical flourishes are matched only by their sex-me-now stares, are the hottest thing to happen to the League since co-ed dorms.

So peruse the menu below, choose the objects of your desire, and check back soon to see what real college rankings look like.

Who's the hottest? [SEE UPDATE BELOW]

You can tell we're sleep-deprived by reading today's dailies round-up:

• Brown: Could the chair of Brown's Undergraduate Finance Board have a better name than "Cash McCracken?" [Herald]
  
• Columbia: Hunter S. Thompson's widow: "Hunter did value a classic education. In his early years, he was cutting school to drink and smoke, but he was drinking and smoking while reading Plato and Hemingway." [Spec]
• Penn: Psycho killers and psych services budget hike. Coincidence? [DP]
  
• Yale: Judge gives Ed "Guy" Smiley three years, handy map of Cell Block D. [YDN]
• Harvard: "Fun Czar" leads depressing life. [Crimson]
  

September 28, 2006 2:59 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Harvard , Penn , RagTime , Yale

What To Expect If You Get Punched:

• Your life will be ruined. Temporarily. Your relationship will end, you will be blackballed, your friendships and blocking group will be torn apart, and your internal discussion list will be printed in the Crimson. But losing everything is how you show commitment.
• Your schedule will be packed. Clubs hold three to four rounds, each marked by a punch event. They kick off in October, and elections fall on the Sunday before the Harvard-Yale game. Often 100-plus kids are invited to the first round, whereas clubs eventually elect 25 or so members. Some events come straight out of a tweedier version of Animal House: passing bottles of Goldschlager around schoolbuses; doing keg stands on the lawns of countryside estates; receiving lap dances after the second round.
• You will feel incredibly conflicted. Ha! Right. Sad as it is, there isn’t much ambivalence. Guys really, really want to get in. (Actually, if you want to feel conflicted, get this: Not one of the eight male clubs has complied with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Did you shake your head at the injustice of a disabled classmate being stuck in the Quad? Well, guess what: He won't even get punched.)

What to expect if you are...

• Elected: Bliss. A job at the investment bank of your choice, a million dollars, a hot girlfriend, unlimited happiness, and endless social and professional success. Really, honest!
• Not elected: Your spirit will be crushed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that not getting into the Porcellian was the greatest disappointment of his life. And he had polio.

What's The Truth About Punch Season?

• Truth A: Getting elected is mostly a function of being fun and friendly. If the members enjoy spending time with you, they will want to keep spending time with you by electing you. Who believes this? The elected; the naive.
• Truth B: Getting elected is exclusively a function of being rich and beautiful. If you buy drinks for the members at Daedalus, they will fly you to Montreal, London or New York the weekend before final dinner. You can only be elected if you went to a handful of boarding schools or Manhattan day schools. Who believes this? The non-elected; the realists.
• Truth C: Getting elected means perpetuating an outdated, elitist, exclusive and sexist system. They promote inequality and are a stain on Harvard's otherwise enlightened campus. Who believes this? Progressives; WOOF.

Who Wins?

• About 15 percent of the male student body belongs to a final club...
• Thirty percent doesn't even know about them...
• And 30 percent doesn't really care.
• That leaves 25 percent feeling excluded, embittered, and thus compelled to buy into the tradition that they, like FDR, came so close to joining.

September 27, 2006 3:41 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Harvard , final clubs , punch

The eight male final clubs dominate Harvard's social scene, each with its own quirks, stereotypes and rumored rituals. A quick rundown:

1. The Porcellian: Certainly the clubbiest and final-est of the final clubs, "the Porc" is also the oldest -- and more than a little upset that it's not 1850. A "Z-list" mecca, its dwindling membership is now limited to closeted rowers and purebred clotheshorses.
2. The Fly: One Park Avenue address in your family will suffice, but more Manhattan bona fides won't hurt. Flipped collar -- and no, it's not ironic -- preferable. Why are they so into I-banking when they have this much money already?
3. The AD: Lacrosse players abound, and freshman girls used to -- before the graduate board shut down their parties. It's a shame, because the house is just that beautiful. Punchees have to down a pitcher of beer at the first-round event.
4. The Delphic: Must be a member of soccer or baseball team, or have affinity for dirty, dark, crowded spaces. Otherwise, being heir to an I-banking powerhouse will do. Not a place to go if you are a girl who doesn't like getting touched by boys. Their tiny back-fence guest entrance does a fine job of keeping out unshapely guests.
5. The Owl: Rugby/football/hockey team membership and knowledge of 420 preferred. Ability to boot and rally a must. Like Uncle Lennie (wait, have we made this joke before?), kinda big and dumb, but harmless.
6. The Phoenix: Home of the large, the black, and the occasionally foreign, the PSK knows how to throw down. If their gratuitous shots make you throw up, they have a handful of empty bedrooms waiting just for you, baby, upstairs.
7. The Spee: Must have international passport and other Eurotrash documentation in order, plus access to nearby drug dealers. The most open of the clubs to guests. Jack and Bobby Kennedy belonged here, but alumni relations are so shoddy the Spee may not actually know they're dead yet.
8. The Fox: Mild obsession with interior decorating (their building is in a constant state of remodeling). Membership in at least one a cappella group helps.

Then there are two female final clubs:

1. The Bee: Wealthy, sporty and put together -- and now they have their own house! We think. They're renting from one of the male clubs, the concept of which is about as cool as leprosy at Harvard.
2. The Isis: The Bee's B-list. Still recovering from 2005 "Isis crisis," when the club's catty "punch book" was made public.
   

The supporting cast:

• The Hasty Pudding: Not to be confused with the pun-happy theatrical group. The Pudding is a special case: it's co-ed and punches members from every class. Most male members of the Pudding also belong to a final club, and the males elected as freshmen are leading contenders in the sophomore punch. (They'll likely be punched by five to eight clubs, whereas the average sophomore male might be punched by between one and three.)
• Other groups include the Seneca (similar to a female final club, only it doesn’t punch), Sabliere, Pleiades, the Signet, and the frats and sororities.

Part I: Warning: The Following is Rated H For Harvard
Part III: Why You'll Hate Yourself in the Morning

September 27, 2006 3:30 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comment | Read more: Harvard , final clubs , punch

You'd think that at a progressive-minded institution like Harvard, the symbols of pre-WWII masculist inheritocracy would be long abolished, or at least neatly swept under the rug.

Nope. Harvard's social Rosh Hashana arrives in October with "punch season," a frenzy of schmoozing, flattery and backstabbing that, for a lucky few, results in election to one of Harvard's selective "final clubs."

Quick translation for non-Harvard kids: Final clubs aren't quite like Princeton's eating clubs, though members may eat there. They’re not quite like Yale's secret societies, though they are secretive. They’re not quite like Dartmouth's frats, though they're essential to the party scene. Their privately owned clubhouses range from sweet to jaw-dropping. Thirty years after Harvard went co-ed, they remain single-sex. And most importantly, while you can "comp," or pledge, publications like the Lampoon or the Advocate, final clubs come to you.

Why do we care about punch? Think of it this way: the entire process, from the scandal to the secrecy to the backlash, encapsulates everything we love and hate about the Ivies. We plan to follow the process closely this year, starting with this here textbook-length primer: the IvyGate Guide to Punch Season.

Click below for more (links go live in 30 minutes). Alternatively, tell yourself you're above this sort of elitist crap, and then click.

September 27, 2006 2:37 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Harvard , final clubs , punch

Plenty of abuse (workers, girlfriends, the English language) in today's dailies round-up:

• Penn: And by 'first,' we mean first in the short span of our institutional memory. [DP]
• Harvard: And why is the New York borough he's from relevant? [Crimson]
• Columbia: But who will sneer when I ask for a copy of The Da Vinci Code? [Spec]
• Yale: If it bleeds, it's buried way down at the bottom of the homepage. [YDN]

September 27, 2006 8:42 AM by Rachael King | Link | Comment | Read more: Columbia , Harvard , Penn , RagTime , Yale

They say that Harvard is all about exclusivity. Guess no one told that to the people behind last night's 02138 magazine launch party -- 'cause anybody who's anybody was there!!!

Actually, that's not even remotely true. Our list of instantly recognizable celebs glimpsed while crashing the soiree reads, in full:

1. Bill O'Reilly

And he was there for maybe 15 minutes. Look, don't get us wrong -- we're sure the place was lousy with VIPs. We just have no idea who any of them were. The pomegranate martinis were flowing, the ricotta puffs were delish, and that sweetest of Harvard pheromones was in the air: networking. So many egos, one tiny place -- it was like the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, but with business cards. How could we focus on names, or the specific talk show we saw that guy from that thing on? Did we mention there were pomegranate martinis?

Our favorite minutes of the evening came early: 02138 publisher Meredith Kopit hushed the crowd with a toast ... for about 30 seconds. Oh, you poor, deluded UVA soul. These people went to school "outside Boston" -- you think they want to hear you talk? The roar of the chatter almost drowned out her calling launch sponsor Glenmorangie "the Harvard of single malt scotches," apparently unaware that page 24 of her own magazine notes the school spends up to $1 million annually fighting exactly that kind of use of the Harvard name.

As plasma screens flashed faces from the magazine's top 100 alumni list (No. 5, John Roberts; No. 79, Natalie Portman), we made the rounds from media types to jewelers to 02138 staffers (all of whom seemed fun and funny, damn them) in the close quarters of the Core Club, on East 55th Street in Manhattan. Quickly enough, the scene turned into just another media cocktail party, the Harv-audacity seemed to wane, and we gradually lost the urge to hurl ourselves through the tasteful glass bookshelves/walls of the fourth floor onto the street below.

The most telling sign the event was pure Harvard? When we had our picture taken by a pro, and told him our name was "Blake Goodie," the photographer didn't bat an eye.

SHOCKING SHYAMALAN-LIKE TWIST ENDING: On the subway home, drunk and tired, we finally pulled a folded copy of 02138 from our back pocket and began to read. Page after page, story after item after charticle, we realized, to our horror ...

The magazine itself?

It's really good.

We're no longer 0213haters.

TO BE CONTINUED!

September 27, 2006 6:15 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: 02138 , Harvard

The endowment data for FY'05-'06 are in, and you know what that means -- a Harvard-Yale pissing match! Only this time, it's the derivative of that arc of piss! Inside Higher Ed reports:

Yale University may be #2 in endowment size, but it topped #1 Harvard in rate of growth, according to data released Monday. Yale reported a 22.9 percent return on its endowment in the fiscal year that ended June 30, bringing the endowment to $18 billion. Harvard last week reported a 16.7 percent return, allowing its endowment to exceed $29 billion.

Only 16.7 percent? Incompetence! Who's in charge of the Harvard endowment these days, Tara Reid?

September 26, 2006 3:42 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Harvard , Yale , endowments

Holy crap -- no sooner did we post the below item than we heard the news: Columbia has suspended its club hockey team for the entire fall semester, effective immediately. Its crime: posting a recruiting flyer with the slogan "Stop being a pussy."

"We recognize that free expression is a vital component of University life," said athletics director Dianne Murphy in a statement. "This disciplinary action is not related to free speech, but rather the abdication of leadership responsibilities by senior members of the Club, and not working within established Club Sports policies and procedures."

This strikes us as a pretty epic overreaction; a Spectator sports columnist even found, as we noted below, a university-approved t-shirt with the word used less than two years ago. We should probably disclose here a rather large conflict of interest: half of us used to play on the team, so we know its history. Players were caught drinking on game buses two years ago, and, before that, kind of crashed one of the athletic department vans ... into a second athletic department van. But club sports are necessarily rowdy, and if Flyergate is supposed to be the straw that broke the camel's back -- well, then Dianne Murphy has a terrible back.

The full press release is after the jump.

UPDATE 1:28 a.m.: A new group has been created to petition the despotic overlords of the Columbia Athletics Department. The power of Facebook compels you!

Continue reading "Breaking: Columbia Hockey Season Cancelled for "Stop Being a Pussy" Flyer (UPDATE)" »

September 26, 2006 1:56 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (13) | Read more:

It's a scandal-off! Columbia is abuzz -- or trying to be -- over two controversies right now. One involves right-wing allegations of a slush fund subsidizing elite Manhattanites' abortions. The other is about ... a club sports flyer. The contest is closer than you might think. Observe:

Junior Chris Kulawik, the school's resident conservative, penned a column last week pointing out that if Columbia will privately cover abortion costs up to $500, and students pay only $350 in Health Services fees, the remaining $150 must be coming from "somewhere else." Ominous! Just the kind of abortion hors d'oeuvres the New York Sun would love to sink its teeth into. But Kulawik is up against ...

"Stop being a pussy." That's the line on an orientation week flyer that landed the club hockey team in surprisingly hot water, with all four student council presidents co-signing an outraged letter to university administrators. That's two more presidents than signed a letter protesting the scheduled lecture from Holocaust-denying, Israel-off-map-wiping Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one student noted. (He also found the university-approved 2004 t-shirt at right. (Disclosure: We know the guy.))

Which wannabe furor will prevail? We'll bring the nachos, you bring the Columbia student's uniquely insatiable appetite for protests.

September 26, 2006 1:24 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Columbia , controversies

Graduation can be jarring. One minute you're a senior -- respected, feared, laid. Then: poof, you're getting chewed out by a boss who doesn't give a rat's ass how many debate teams you captained or kegstand records you hold. Leaving college means you have to give it all up.

Unless, that is, you're Burt Helm, Yale '04.

We poured one out when Helm graduated, thinking we'd seen the last of his spectacular YDN column "Effin Sweet," which was mostly about him failing to impress girls. Fast forward to now, when we saw his byline in a recent issue of BusinessWeek. The guy hasn't changed one bit! We've jumbled up some passages and headlines from "Effin Sweet" and BusinessWeek (print edition and web). See if you can tell which is which:

1. When I'm in the soap aisle, like a lot of other guys, I'm running an equation in my head: Which brand will do the best job cleaning me, while not sounding completely girly? Soaps with names like Aveeno Positively Radiant, St. Ives Oatmeal & Shea Butter, or Pure Cashmere are unquestionably out of the running.

2. "One More Reason to Hate Preppy White Rappers -- and Smirnoff"

3. The people at KFC get pretty confused and unfriendly when you bring up the idea that you want to "exchange" 20 pieces of chicken. I actually had to negotiate a deal with them where they would make 16 pieces of extra crispy, but keep 4 of the regular.

4. "Enjoy a Corona With That Bloody Gore"

5.  "I am gay! Look at my jeans! Would a straight guy ever wear these jeans? They're ridiculous!" There is a point a guy reaches when the prospect of hooking-up seems so close, so tangible, he will do anything. 

(Answers: 1. BW; 2. BW; 3. YDN; 4. BW; 5. YDN.)

Cheers, Burt. May the wind always be at your back.

September 26, 2006 11:22 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Drinking , Yale

Nothing says lovin' like amped-up campus security and STI vaccines. Straight from the oven comes today's dailies round-up:

• Brown: State-of-the-art security system wasted on bagel theft. [Herald]
• Columbia: A nice article about a kind old man who slips notes under the doors of young coeds. [Spec]
• Princeton: Campus code prohibits you from hating our terrible performance. [Prince]
• Princeton: We have a vaccine! Screw away! [Prince]
• Yale: Students are on top. Yes, in that way. [YDN]

September 26, 2006 10:01 AM by RagTime | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: RagTime

With the clock winding down on the nomination period for our professor superhotties contest, we turn to you, the teeming masses, with a desperate plea: Help us find a photo of Prof. Paize Keulemans! We received this sensational nomination last week, but Google Image Search has been as barren as the Hanover social scene:

"I nominate Paize Keulemans, who taught a class in EALAC [East Asian Languages and Cultures] at Columbia last semester and is currently an associate professor at Yale. This Dutchman's chiseled features and stimulating range of vocabulary motivated me to go to class. Basically, every girl in the class wanted to jump his bones. I also have a story about a friend who tried to seduce him in an elevator ...

"Girl A and B (who are friends) leave his class and get into an elevator. girl A lets B take an elevator by herself and upon getting into another one with Prof. Keulemans, he asks her something like 'what's wrong with your friend that she has to take the elevator by herself?' Girl A then tells him that she would like to sleep with him and he chuckles, says nothing. Then he replies, 'You know, I'm married [to another prof at Columbia]' to which Girl A responds, 'I'm in a serious relationship. I don't care.' Awkward silence ensues, he reaches his predestined floor and exits."

Awesome emphasis ours. Help us find this irresistible man! And if you haven't already, get nominatin'. Deadline noon tomorrow.

September 25, 2006 3:54 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Faculty Studs and Tenured Temptresses of the Ivy League

"Sunny Hwang reports a Zach [sic] Frank sighting on television: "While watching The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency on the illustrious Oh! network, Zach was on TV with a special friend. The male models of Janice's agency were doing a 2(x)ist underwear event, and Zach was loving it. The show repeatedly cut back to him to show his looks of awe and wonderment. They even showed him and his special friend touching one of the models and asking about the 'material.' Go, Lions!"

(For the record, a good-natured Zac says, the "special friend" was his boyfriend, Dan Billings '06.)

September 25, 2006 1:58 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Read more: Columbia , nudity

Exploring the IvyGate inbox is always an adventure -- some days more than others. Here's a specimen from our most recent foray. When the news hit that Toad's, Yale's guilty-pleasure dive bar, was opening up new branches in Richmond and Trenton, one student reacted the only way she knew how: in verse.

Two Toad's emerged in two college 'hoods.
We're sorry: we can't get crunk in both.
Faux-townie teetotalers, once straight-A good
We signed affidavits as best we could
'Neath New Haven po-po and elm undergrowth.

New Toad's Richmond, not half as fair,
Is hardly less cliched and lame
Because it has less wear and tear.
Though as for passing Saturdays there,
Could whoring sans Yorkside taint us the same?

For both will have vodka breath post-lay,
Tube tops tight as snatch pre-Q-Pac ...
Oh, we saved that story for our best Yale gay!
Yet knowing Toad's is better on Wednesday,
Trenton's weekends won't bring sexy (house remix) back.

We shall one day tell this with a sigh
Somewhere at federal elections hence:
Two Toad's diverged twain Mason and Dixon... Aye,
We claim the one first shitfaced by,
And that has made all the difference.

September 25, 2006 12:48 PM by | Link | Comment | Read more: Drinking , Yale , poetry

Harvard's punch season -- that painful, joyous, farcical orgy of social climbing -- is upon us. In the coming weeks, dozens of male sophomores will receive invitations to attend the "punch" rituals of the university's storied final clubs. (If you don't know or care about punch season at Harvard, don't fret: A handy guide is in the works. Caring is up to you.)

Thanks to the merry pranksters at the Lampoon, this year's season is already a joke. In an opening salvo, the Lampoon delivered fake punch invitations from the Porcellian (PC to you, chap) to various sophomore guys just as the PC released its real invitations. Confusion turned to glee and back to confusion as kids who neither went to Exeter nor gestated in a Rockefeller womb thought they had been invited to schmooze with the gentlemen (no girls allowed) of Harvard's most exclusive final club, only to discover they'd been had. Take that, commonfolk!

Expect cryptic envelopes from the other seven clubs to start sliding under select doors within a week or so.

Bonus: We hear Sarah Silverman is coming to play softball with the Lampoon. We'll enjoy watching the players run the bases while trying to hide their boners.

UPDATE 2:45 p.m.: We're hearing some amazing rumors that the Lampoon wasn't behind the fake punching -- the more likely culprit is an independent troublemaker trying to cover his tracks. A prank prank! God, you people take this stuff seriously. The Lampoon apparently pulled a similar joke a few years ago, sending counterfeit Hasty Pudding invitations to the homeliest members of the freshman class (the Pudding is known for having the most attractive members); does the Lampoon ever repeat its pranks? Well, count us among the snowed. Mazel tov, whoever you are!

UPDATE No. 2, 5:01 p.m.: The Lampoon writes: "Yeah, we had nothing to do with the PC prank. This year we decided to send fake invites for the Fly club, not the PC, so basically what I'm saying is I'm very sorry to all the sophomores who've been punched by the Fly, but your invites are fake." Hold on. Something's off. We're pretty sure the Lampoon is pranking us by claiming they pranked the Fly, to further confuse everyone about the rogue prankster's prank prank and gaaaaaaaaahhh!! We're not cut out for this shit!

September 25, 2006 10:51 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comment | Read more: Harvard , final clubs , harvard lampoon , pranks

It's all one big misunderstanding in our daily dailies roundup...

• Yale: Uhhh, we're not racist, we're funny!  Trust us.  Really. [YDN]
• Cornell: This one's for the ladies. [Sun]
• Harvard: Whaddayamean, scooped by the Globe? We e-mailed a guy! [Crimson]
• Columbia: Thanks, but how many of us are from families whose annual income is below $50,000? I mean, come on.  [Spec]
• Brown Penn: Redruuum! Redruuum! [Herald DP]

September 25, 2006 8:10 AM by RagTime | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Cornell , Harvard , RagTime , Yale

The Harvard football team must be really good -- because beating reigning Ivy champ Brown on Saturday 38-21 with this bullshit in the locker room is truly a feat.

We just got off the phone with Keegan Toci's dad, and the guy is pissed. With good reason. Toci, you'll recall, is the senior wide receiver that head coach Tim Murphy fired earlier this month after the team's annual Skit Night. The sketches at these things can get pretty raunchy -- was Toci behind the one that implied a player had given Murphy a blowjob? No, that was running back Clifton Dawson, who's still on the team. KeeTo's big crime? Um ... listing 20 reasons the team would never move up to Division I-A. God, Keeg, what were you thinking?

Coach Murphy's reaction was swift and insane. In a special meeting in front of the entire team, he canned Toci for his "mean-spirited attack." That's when things totally turned into that locker room scene at the end of Varsity Blues, the Boston Globe reports:

"After Murphy announced Toci's dismissal, he asked the 110-member team whether it supported his position. An uneasy silence ensued, then one player after another rose from his seat until about 20 stood in protest, with others apparently poised to follow, before Murphy abruptly ended the meeting and left the room, according to one witness."

Coach Murphy may well be out of control. Remember that he also benched Liam O'Hagan, the starting quarterback, for half the season and has never told anyone why.

Now Toci is appealing to the university for reinstatement. He didn't answer our calls, but his dad did: "'Unacceptably malicious?' This is coming from a man who called a team meeting and called my son out and humiliated him in front of 104 peers -- said he was 'a cancer to the team' and said he 'needed to be removed' -- this man is saying that what my son did was unacceptably malicious?

"Harvard's 'Academic and Community Standards' says that the central value at the university is the protection of free speech and inquiry. Apparently Murphy hasn't read that. ... We're not going to let this go until Keegan's name is cleared."

(Murphy and athletics director Bob Scalise didn't return calls we made late Sunday to their offices. They've never gotten back to David Toci, either.)

September 24, 2006 10:20 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Harvard , football

Another hottie endorsement, this time from the sexual profligacy capital of the Ivies, Yale University:

"Ruth Bernard Yeazell, the diminutive former chair of the English department. There was nary a day she was not wearing a leather skirt and knee high boots to our Victorian Novel class. It was so appropriate--all that Foucauldian delight in the repressed, her long silk sleeves buttoned at the cuff, her tight little black sweater vest, and then that leather skirt, those high, enclosing leather boots, her raspy voice. Plus all that Victorian slant-talk about sex, Hardy's Tess accepting the ripe strawberry into her virgin mouth, then getting drugged and deflowered in the gloomy wood. Steamy."

Think your prof can beat that? Send nominations to ivygate@gmail.com.

September 23, 2006 11:20 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Faculty Studs and Tenured Temptresses of the Ivy League , Yale

Wow. We believed all those groups that claimed "Facebook Is Watching You," but this is just ... wow.

Two weeks ago, we started a Facebook profile for IvyGate. Sure, we tiptoed around some of the FB bylaws (our last name isn't actually "Blog"; we're not the spitting image of Kaavya Viswanathan),  but for the most part, we were legit. We quietly amassed a pile of friends, we started a group; it was a good life. Then we tried to log on, and found this:

We've tasted the bitter fruit of rejection before. But from you? Is this really the time to be driving people away from Facebook?

See, the problem, Mark, is that you know the power of exclusivity. It's what made you. Without Harvard, you'd be Friendster. But you played it right. You slowly eased the reins, letting in first the other Ivies, then the New England colleges, then the rest, until every student in America recognized your eerie, silkscreened mug peering out from atop their browsers. Now that you've invited everyone into the hot tub, forgive us for saying your inclusivity feels a little ... calculated.

So no, we're not breaking up. We won't let you. We'll be back. And by God, you're the first person we're friending.

Te amo,

IvyGate

P.S. The Wall Street Journal stippleportraitist thinks you're getting fat.

September 22, 2006 1:17 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Facebook , IvyGate , Mark Zuckerberg

Thank God it's our daily dailies roundup ...

• Brown: There's controversy, and then there's controversy. [Herald]
• Dartmouth: The Dart officially editorializes on issue we hear is important, care nothing about. [Dart]
• Harvard: Mitt Romney, why you gotta hate? [Crimson]
  
• Penn: Kiddie porn, murder trials, and now a bomb scare -- Philadelphia is so lovely this time of year! [DP]
• Yale: No joke here about this solid piece on gays and frats. [YDN]
  
• Bonus: Nice lead, jerkface. [Sun] (Cough)
  

September 22, 2006 11:47 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Brown , Cornell , Dartmouth , Harvard , Penn , RagTime , Yale

The hottie nominations have been rolling in, and we're so thrilled with the responses that we couldn't resist sharing. This love letter comes from Brown alum and blogger Jaime, '04:

"Somewhere between hot-hot and distinguished-hot is British-hot, and at the top of that list is Brown University's William A. Dyer, Jr. Assistant Professor of the Humanities and Assistant Professor of English, Director of Undergraduate Studies Timothy Bewes.  I took the first class he ever taught there ("What Was Postmodern Literature" - does the pretension have you hot already?), when he was still a visiting lecturer.  Soon after he was asked to stay on, because too many students were too damn in love with his seductive British stammer.  (He's also a freaking amazing teacher, but whatever.)

"He's tall and thin, and at first you think he's a stammering tweedy Brit, all erms and ahs, and it's really cute and great to listen to when he's lecturing.  But then he starts to relax, and his lectures get more passionate.  But still with the Brit stammer, of course, because it's still so goddamn sexy.  And as winter approaches, he trades his brown sportscoats for this surprisingly badass leather bomber jacket.  And as you spend the afternoons gazing at him, you notice - he's got an ear pierced.  And is that a small scar from a former nose ring??  Add to all this that he's a freaking Marxist, and he's an Ivy League wet dream.  I don't think there was a single person in my class (originally planned for about 12 students, but ended up around 50 because everyone who went the first day fell in love, and Brown loves pomo) who didn't go to office hours with the secret (or not-so-secret) hope of sweeping all the papers off his desk and... well, you know.

"It's been more than three years since the class, and I'm still totally in love with him.  If I had taken his class a little earlier (I was a junior) I'd have been an English major just so he could be my advisor.  I think I really mean that, too."

Keep them coming! Direct all love to ivygate@gmail.com. If your pitch is as convincing as this one, we'll unleash it upon the world.

September 21, 2006 4:56 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comment | Read more: Brown , Faculty Studs and Tenured Temptresses of the Ivy League , professors

Last week, we brought you Penn readers' "truly terrible," "horrific," "godawful" reviews of dailypennsylvanian.com's redesign. Some of you have been asking: How did the DP, a reliably damn good paper, screw up so bad?

By signing up with College Publisher, a near monopolist in the field of putting college newspapers online. The Crimson, YDN, Dart, Prince and Sun all have indie sites. And while their looks don’t always go over so well themselves, everything College Publisher touches turns to blocky, ad-infested dreck.

Penn's daily isn't the only student paper to get hit by the ugly truck. Thanks to College Publisher, it's a pile-up. The Columbia Spectator signed on this summer, and -- oh crap, here we go again. Some sample comments at the Spec-sniping Bwog:

• "horrible"
• "go[d]forsaken shit"
• "an embarrassment...it's not like you have to design a whole new one, just use the old templates. anything that was up before was far, far better. or will your new masters at collegepublisher not let you?"
• "cheesy, childish 'collegepublisher' ticker up top"
• "college publisher is what every school uses and frankly it sucks. not to mention the new site has like a billion adds. it looks like a yahoo homepage circa 1998"
• "dumb dumb dumb"
• "get rid of it and college publisher NOW while it's summer and no one notices"
• "awful. ... Just stop this little project now before you get in over your little heads"
• "At least the old look had some class"

Ouch! We know IvyGate isn't the belle of the ball, but can't they these guys take a cue from their hot cousins to the west? Them Stanford kids code some fine-ass HTML.

September 21, 2006 1:42 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Columbia ,