Our friend, the lovely Ms. IvyGate, files this wholesome report on a recent seminar at Brown:

There are certain things Ivy ladies can do just as well as Ivy gentlemen. Not math, of course. Turns out, despite what you've nearly convinced your girlfriend, we women can orgasm.

We know there's no evolutionarily significant reason for this, but there you have it. And now there are some 30 boys at Brown who wield this dangerous knowledge. They've observed -- and may have fondled -- a vagina-puppet. And they took notes.

It's all part of a radical feminist agenda that brought Planned Parenthood counselor Megan Andelloux -- you may remember her from such educational workshops as "Back Door Lovin'" -- to Brown this month to give a seminar on this mysterious and elusive female orgasm. She knew her audience, too; or rather, her audience knew her, since she's also a gyno model (her words) at both Yale and Brown, allowing Ivy pre-meds to "use her body to practice their first, or 20th pelvic, anal, breast and vaginal ultrasound exams."

In this case, Veronica the vagina-puppet did most of the work, and early reports suggest that squirming was minimal (until the video screening of elderly women massaging themselves). One obviously very secure male participant insisted to a Brown Daily Herald reporter that "it takes a real man to come out and say, 'No, I don't know everything about this.'" We have to agree, buddy. Man up and go down -- especially now that your name, and those of the nine other guys quoted in the piece, is now Google-able with the phrase "Ben Wa balls."

The Herald's account of the meeting gives tantalizing hints of myths dispelled and oral sex faux pas corrected, but alas, in the end it's just a 'tease. As a public service, we offer Ms. Andelloux's workshop handout. And they say Columbia is the Ivy Gone Wild.

"How DO You Know If She Likes It?" [PDF]

November 30, 2006 6:31 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Brown , Sex

Despite having pointed out that Dartmouth is the worst team in college basketball, we noted with disapproval the suckers-only 35.5 point line assigned to a recent game at No. 5 Kansas. C'mon, Las Vegas -- that's just mean. That's a punchline, not a point spread. Shame on you.

Um. The Big Green managed to outdo itself, losing by 51. As the AP lede notes,

Teams have been coming into Allen Fieldhouse to play Kansas for more than half a century. Every one of them managed to score more points than helplessly outmanned Dartmouth Tuesday night.

At least no Native Americans were offended, though. That should definitely remain the Dartmouth Athletic Department's No. 1 priority.

Also in embarrassing Ivy sports news: Power-mad Harvard football coach Tim Murphy was re-signed through the 2011 season on Monday -- except he wasn't. According to Harvard Athletic Communications, Murphy was -- anyone else's acid reflux acting up? -- "reappointed." Only in the Ivy League.

We don't know what's worse, the fact that Harvard is trying to use a word that equates Murphy's job (for which he gets paid more than $100,000 a year to coach 10 meaningless games) with that of a dean or department chair, or the fact that the Crimson and Associated Press both took the bait. If he's King Murphy, does that make you his serfs?

November 30, 2006 4:03 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Dartmouth , Harvard , Sports , basketball , football

A Brown correspondent writes in with news from the spaciest Ivy:

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; give a stoner a "sticktastic," Hobbit-like, organically ambient tree sculpture and he trips out for weeks. Following the completion of artist Patrick Dougherty's sapling sculpture on Brown University's Front Campus, people young and old have stopped to take in the impressive creation that seems to grow out of the ground itself. For some subclasses of the Brown cultural lexicon, this pull is particularly enveloping.

"They're like bubbles of wood ... It is a special place. It seems to have its own gravity and logic. Smoking there is like communing with plants in nature's womb," said a Brown first-year who wished to be known as "Scuba Steve." His friend quickly added, "It's a portal to an alien world."

Not to misrepresent the Brown community or its fragrant denizens. This was hardly a "sculpture goes up, stoners move in" sort of situation. Most, if not a high majority of the people enjoying the sculpture, are not doing it under the influence of marijuana, opium, or any of the other assorted psychedelics that even seeing this artwork subconsciously demands.

Nevertheless, the sculpture has been a popular destination for students. The very look and feel of the sculpture fits the eco-friendly aesthetic of any college's pot-smoking population. Thousands of locally harvested saplings (i.e "sticks") beget a roughly textured woodland creation. Its not that everyone's on drugs -- its just better when you're high. Wait ... did I say that? Or only think it?

UPDATE 2:51 p.m.: Cornell stoners nod knowingly.

November 30, 2006 12:39 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (9) | Read more: Brown , drugs

Pop quiz: You run a conservative campus publication. Tensions over Native American marginalization have been brewing for some time. Do you a) ignore the issue, b) address it as delicately as possible, or c) publish a 3,500-word philippic accusing the offended group of hypersensitivity and self-victimization inside an edition the cover of which depicts an Indian holding aloft a scalp?

If you picked (c), congratulations. We hope you enjoy your time on the Dartmouth Review editorial board.

Slow clap, fellas. Way to alienate everyone who might maybe have agreed with some of your points. Any reasonable points you may have made have been vaporized.

Members of Native Americans of Dartmouth (a student group with an unfortunate acronym) protested outside the Review offices at Dartmouth Hall yesterday. The AP quotes President James Wright telling the crowd:

"Like an open wound Dartmouth is hurting -- we have all been insulted. ... My Dartmouth, our shared Dartmouth, is one that condemns the deliberate mean-spiritedness that was demonstrated in the publication that was released yesterday."

What did Daniel Linsalata, the piece's author, have to say about the complaints by American Indian students, after such vivid condemnation across the board for his insensitivity? "They're out for blood, so to speak." Zing! Take that, Geronimo! Now go weave Dan some rugs.

November 30, 2006 12:05 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (42) | Read more: Dartmouth , protests

From the Crap, Totally Forgot to Cover This Last Week, Thanksgiving and All, You Understand Dept.:

During our several visits to Toad's, the unavoidable New Haven nightspot, something about the place struck us as, well, trashy. So we were more than a little shocked by a piece in the Times last week that portrayed the place as some kind of legendary, classy bar, as opposed to the wretched, rail-soaked Rohynpnol assembly line we grudgingly like. Cognitive dissonance like this, we've never known (excerpts alternate with lines written by Yale readers):

[Toad's] was already nationally known, thanks to the Rolling Stones, who opened their Steel Wheels tour with a surprise show there in 1989 ...

Wait, Toad's? Where owners are paying a $90,000 fine for serving minors?

A year later, Bob Dylan played his longest show (four hours) there, on the same stage where Billy Joel recorded ''Los Angelenos'' for his record, ''Songs in the Attic,'' in 1980 ...

Wait, Toad's? Where "Wednesday Penny Night" leads to Thursday Morning Yale-New Haven [Hospital] on a near-weekly basis?

Even the hallway to the basement bathrooms reads like a rock 'n' roll encyclopedia -- Blondie, R.E.M., Marilyn Manson, 311, Public Enemy and Bonnie Raitt are just a few of the names mounted behind plexiglass ...

No seriously, Toad's? Where the Q-Pac Fuck Truck drops off bare-assed girls shivering for rum and the men's ice hockey team?

... past appearances there by Johnny Cash and U2 had impressed him ... 

Trust us, we could go on. (See full story after the jump.)

Continue reading "Toad's? Toad's Toad's? The One in New Haven?" »

November 29, 2006 3:27 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Drinking , Yale

For reasons deeply unclear to us, foreign countries look up to the Ivy League. Across the globe, aspiring universities are emulating Western-style curricula, credit systems, methods of instruction, -- and, um, our web sites. Here's princeton.edu:

And here's the philosophy school at China's Renmin U:

[Kudos to the Daily Princetonian's Jonathan Zebrowski for the find, plus Inside Higher Ed.]

UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: Bizarre: A Penn reader alerts us to this Daily Pennsylvanian story in March 2005, noting that Romania's Universitatea "Lucian Blaga" din Sibiu (our reach school, weirdly enough) can't get enough of UPenn.edu's bedroom blues.

November 29, 2006 12:47 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (20) | Read more: Princeton , china

November 29, 2006 12:30 PM by RagTime | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Brown , Harvard , Penn , RagTime , Yale

The Chronicle of Higher Education's annual report on executive compensation is in, and there you have it, in primary colors: former Cornell president Jeff Lehman can buy and sell your president before lunch, with enough left over for 375 PlayStation 3's.

Lehman banked $1,004,034 in Ithaca dollars, mind you, further raising the cost-of-living premium over suckers like Larry Summers (sniff) and Lee Bollinger. James Wright of Dartmouth was the big loser, unable to crack the half-mil barrier; in the co-ed, towel-snapping locker room of Ivy presidents past and present, he's the one changing beneath a towel.

Cue ominous music: But what price victory, Jeff? The Sun reported last month that a chunk of Lehman's payout was hush money, to keep him from blabbing about the controversy surrounding his departure.

Moving on, there's more fun to be had with the Chronicle's data, especially in the expense account category. We don't know why Wright and Ruth Simmons are listed as having $0 at their disposal; we do know that it's kinda funny Bollinger gets to blow a full fifth of Wright's entire salary on hookers and goofballs. And poor Dick Levin! Twelve thousand dollars a year? Someone get this man a financial aid package!

November 28, 2006 3:43 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (14) | Read more: presidents

November 28, 2006 12:12 PM by RagTime | Link | Read more: Columbia , Cornell , Harvard , Penn , Princeton , RagTime

Imagine you're a member of a female a cappella group from Yale. (Bear with us.) You're on tour in L.A. You show up for a gig organized by HBO sex host and Yale alumna Susan M. Block, where you sign mysterious, Borat-like release forms. After the concert, your hostess serves drinks and asks you to dress up in weirdly revealing period costumes and pose for a camera. At this point, our sketch-dar would have been overheating. Unfortunately for Yale's Whim 'n Rhythm, all this didn't quite register -- or if it did, they didn't want to insult their hostess.

And now there's a DVD.

It's pitched on Block's website as a sort of caught-on-camera "Yalies Gone Wild" that's somehow also "hilarious and heart-warming." We hear the video may or may not contain full frontal nudity involving a Whiffenpoof. (If you don't know, don't ask.)

Needless to say, the Whim'n are miffed. And rightly so: Block was clearly dishonest (although, to be fair, it was a sex palace). She's even been peddling the DVD on the Yale Alumni Magazine's website. So far the group has been unable to get their names removed from Block's site. (We're trying to keep everyone un-Googleable, but just know it features the stunning Ickieray Udeautray, aughterday of Arrygay). But before you feel too bad for the ladies, consider that they don't see a problem with pocketing 30 percent of the DVD's revenues. Whether that's hush money or not depends on your definition of the term; either way, expect some spicy confirmation hearings 40 years from now.

Anyway, we don't expect much repentance from the woman who brought us the seminal film "Dr. Susan Block's Squirt Salon." If it makes the Whim'n feel any better, they're astonishingly good. Here's hard video proof (beware sudden cutaways to Block's face):

UPDATE 10:48 p.m.: Just when we were looking forward to never wasting bandwidth on Susan Block again, a reader informs us that, as usual, Yale's Rumpus did it first and did it better. In 2005, Jon Carlo Bruttomesso penned an account of his traumatic interview/photoshoot with Dr. Block and her merry band. The original version of the piece supposedly contained passage too scarring even for Rumpus's jaded readership, so they toned it down to merely horrific. Read it at your own discretion (PDF).

November 28, 2006 9:39 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (29) | Read more: Yale , YouTube , a capella , porn

•  Brown: Duct-taping cats together leads to ethnic cleansing. So don't do it. [Herald]
• Columbia: Tenured professorships in science: where the men are men, and the women are too. [Spec]
• Dartmouth: Why shouldn't the meter feed you for once? [The D]
• Yale: Harvard-Yale tailgate sees drop in alcohol-related hospitalizations, is totally weak. [YDN]
• Yale: President Richard Levin 8.9% hotter than in 2004. [YDN]

November 27, 2006 5:53 PM by RagTime | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Dartmouth , RagTime , Yale

It's the first installment of ivyTunes, our new music column. Our critic has the mic:

There's nothing I like more than spending a sunny, unseasonably warm weekend in front of my laptop, headphones on, listening to MP3 after MP3 of incompetent rock, rap and [shudder] folk -- especially when those MP3s were created by coddled, over-credentialed Ivy Leaguers like myself. Except, perhaps, ripping off my arm and clubbing myself to death with it.

So a big shout-out to all the acts that participated in our first ivyTunes cattle call. The only thing worse than being Nickelback is paying $40,000 a year to pretend to be Nickelback -- and we here at IvyGate think that such a monumental achievement deserves a little recognition. Thankfully, you generous souls have provided me with enough material -- white rappers, a cappella side projects, cellos -- to last for weeks to come. I eagerly await the opportunity to crush your dreams.

But first, an admission: not all of you are completely untalented. A few of the MP3s I received were "not horrible." A few were "listenable." And one or two were actually "good." The best of the bunch: Filligar, (pronounced "fill-uh-gurr"), a Chicago-based quartet featuring brothers Pete, Teddy, and Johnny Mathias, and fourth-wheel Casey Gibson. Pete and Teddy go to Dartmouth. They're 19. Johnny, the singer, is only 17. Teenagers or not, Filligar is remarkably mature -- they've got that crucial blend of pop precision and effortless weirdness down pat. The new CD is called "Succession, I Guess." It's hardly dangerous stuff -- fellow yupsters (and Chicagoans) Wilco would be proud. But it's not like Ivy Leaguers are particularly strong in the sex and drugs departments anyway. One out of three ain't bad.

Two choice cuts:

RIGHT-CLICK TO DOWNLOAD -- HELP US CONSERVE BANDWIDTH: 

Filligar - Apricot Jam [MP3]
Filligar - Venice World's Fair (c. 2138 AD) [MP3]
More: Official site | iTunes

Want your band to be considered for ivyTunes? Email tracks to ivygate@gmail.com.

November 27, 2006 5:05 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Dartmouth , ivyTunes

It's about time we sat down and had a talk. About commenting.

We want to hear from you. That's why we have a comments section. Call us dreamers, but at launch we pictured it as a place for Ivy smartasses to shine. But lately ... well, maybe it's best to point to this recent Churchillian battle of wits, from an item about a rap song:

Brown kid says:
Cornell sucks, I say we purge them from the ivy league

Harvard2007 says:
Yale sucks, Whatev...

Bravo, really. Do you guys intern at Aaron Sorkin's dialogue shop?

Yeah, okay, this is the Internet, and that's par for the anonymous course. And yeah, we ain't writing Shakespeare ourselves, neither. (Please never visit our ghastly July archives.) But it kills us that a lot of people are posting awesome comments, and getting lost in a sea of "ahahha says: Cornell is the worst ivy hahaha, better than brown and dartmouth, hahahahahhaha."

So: By all means, be tasteless, be destructive, be vitriolic. Tear our ill-argued screeds to shreds. Just don't be Fred.

For the record, we reserve the right to remove any comment that's derogatory or patently offensive. (If you're that uninspired, go here.) And we're gonna try to comment more frequently ourselves, so it's not just one-way yelling.

In conclusion, we're not angry. Just disappointed. We're die-hard behaviorists around here; we believe in positive reinforcement. That's why we want to start giving brilliance its due with a new comments round-up at the end of every week. So go -- sharpen your skewers, and prove those acceptance letters were deserved.

November 27, 2006 2:56 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: IvyGate , posts guaranteed to backfire , this is why people hate the ivy league

Oh, Josie Harper. Your days as Dartmouth's athletic director are normally filled with firing football coaches, forcing basketball coaches to resign, and dealing with the occasional renegade refrigerated mascot. But now you have a bigger problem to deal with -- Indians!

The North Dakota men's hockey team comes to campus in late December for a tournament. What's the problem? UND's mascot is the Fighing Sioux, a name that the NCAA and some Native American groups protest. Last week, Harper published this letter to the editor in The Dartmouth, apologizing for inviting North Dakota. (Funny, and we thought this was going to be the biggest Native American sensitivity controversy in Tuesday's paper.) She says her staff has already met with the Native American Council and that she will soon be divulging a master plan on how her department can better respect Native Americans -- which may include a policy against playing the 14 schools that still use "Indian" names or logos.

Does this mean Dartmouth won't be playing the Cornell Big Red anymore?

November 27, 2006 12:02 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (16) | Read more: Dartmouth , Sports

To hear the New York Daily News tell it, Columbia students barely have time to go to lecture, what with all the naked parties, library sex, and classroom demonstrations of cat-o'-nine-tails sadomasochism going down at every turn. A breathless and alternately outraged/pervy Douglas Feiden tells every sordid detail of the "X-rated" "playpen for sexual hijinks" that is "Columbia Gone Wild" -- the anal sex broadcast on campus TV, the workshop for "kicking and trampling" sex ... it's Sodom and Gomorrah U!

It's in the Daily News, so it's gotta be true. But just to make sure, we polled some friends in Morningside: How often do Columbia kids get laid?

• "once every six months. columbia is a rough world for single people."
• "the average in the engineering school is probably like once a semester"
• "i would say within the first week of a new class, then consistently for 3 weeks, then it would get ugly"
• "either I missed out or everyone else in college isn't having sex at all."
• "i can't make a funny comment about it at the moment...i'm too tired. watching 5 episodes of veronica mars in a row has exhausted me"
• "I've kind of got a girl right now, but we're both too busy to actually have sex. I think a lot of people are in my boat, and they deal with it by commoditizing and scheduling time for sexual pleasure as they would a meeting with their adviser"
• "Random hook-ups do happen, but it is probably rare for most students. At night people just go back to their rooms and finish their homework or maybe heat up a hot pocket" 

Oh. Well then. As for the truthiness of the rest of Feiden's story, maybe one of our ex-girlfriends put it best. "i can honestly say that neither me nor anyone i know has ever participated in S and M at this school," she IMed. "unless you count having sex in a twin XL bed as pain."

November 27, 2006 5:27 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Columbia , Sex

And with that, we're off for the holiday. May all your dinner table comings-out be met with love and support; may your egos survive the dissonance of talking to that cousin in the military; may your parents or other tuitioneers be asleep by tryptophan when the subject of what, exactly, $160,000 buys inevitably comes up.

Hang in there, Ivy Leaguers. You'll be back in the bubble by Monday, and so will we.

November 22, 2006 6:06 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comment | Read more: IvyGate

Remember that time you got all riled up over a story in the Times and spent hours perfecting a letter to the editor, and then omigod omigod they published it? Highlight of your year.

Brown professor of philosophy Felicia Nimue Ackerman is not impressed.

For academics, the pressure to publish is relentless -- but this is ridiculous. Ackerman has landed 23, count 'em, twenty-three letters to the editor in the New York Times since January 2005. The woman is unstoppable. She's tagged the Arts and Leisure, Book Review, Editorial, Escapes, Financial, Science, Style and SundayBusiness desks, on topics from euthanasia to yurts. Two were published on the same day. (Complete anthology of Ackerman's letters after the jump.) How does she have any time left to publish, say, "'Always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor': Women and the Chivalric Code in Malory's Morte Darthur" in Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. 26?*

While we'd like to label Ackerman crazy, or at least underemployed, the thing is ... she's kinda good at this.

To the Editor:

It's nice that Ben Stein has so many blessings to count ("First, Tame That Envy. Then Give Thanks," Everybody's Business, April 9). But I doubt that the one-size-fits-all advice, "Instead of thinking about what you don't have, think about what you have," would have the intended effect on someone who does have cancer and doesn't have health insurance.

Editorial page snap! For the Times, we can imagine that FMA would be hard to resist, with that catnip "The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University" tag and a middle name straight out of "Whale Rider." Or maybe Ackerman's secret is that she just doesn't care -- this prof's been published in better places. Like Playgirl.

*[Note: This is the first academic paper half of us has ever seen. Do they all begin with limericks about how Sir Lancelot "couldn't keep it in his pantsalot"?]

UPDATE Nov. 27: We search Nexis like Kuala Lumpur populates its slums: poorly. Thanks, commenters -- we looked up different variations of Ackerman's name and found some 130 letters dating to 1987. Let's go ahead and dial back that restraint on using the word "crazy," above.

Continue reading "New N.Y. Times Policy Requires All Letters to Be From Single Brown Professor (UPDATE)" »

November 22, 2006 2:34 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Brown , new york times

First we brought you uncomfortably high-resolution images of the two MIT guys who streaked the Yale-Harvard game last weekend. Now, via Deadspin, here's the video. Don't say we never did anything for you.

November 22, 2006 12:19 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Harvard , Yale , mit , nudity , the game

Kudos to '79 Princeton grad William C. Powers, now a portfolio manager, who this week donated a whopping $10 million to those kids who are truly in need: Princeton football players.

Now, you can argue that the Tigers don't need the money. They are Ivy League co-champs, and they do play in a beautiful new stadium (to be renamed "Powers Field," naturally). But this team has had just four winning seasons in the last decade. That's almost as bad as the crisis in Darfur.

But before all you readers in the Holy See rush off to start the canonization papers, there's something you should know about Powers. He ... didn't give all he could. No, the bastard held out on us, alloting another $500,000 for the school's financial aid effort.

Son of a bitch. Doesn't he know a half mil could have re-sodded an entire practice field?

November 22, 2006 9:49 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Princeton , Sports , alumni , football

• Brown: Administration wages left-wing jihad on campus Christians [Herald]
• Dartmouth: This is like Hanover's version of the bank heist scene in "Heat" [The D]
  
• Harvard: Researchers: Sex better than coke; what about sex while on coke? [Crimson]
  
• Penn: Ladies, beware of short man who wishes to rob you at screwdriverpoint [DP]

November 22, 2006 9:48 AM by RagTime | Link | Comment | Read more: Brown , Dartmouth , Harvard , Penn , RagTime

College students can expect to get e-mails from university administrators -- that's why God invented the Gmail "report spam" button. But what administration spams students at another school? Brown's, apparently.

Wesleyan students have reportedly been inundated with e-mails from Brown asking them to fill out surveys on academic advising. (It's pasted after the jump.) "Not altogether bad, sort of interesting, in any case they mean well," one Wesleyan student told us. "But anyways, the problem is that they don't...stop...e-mailing you, even if you ask to be taken off their mailing list, no matter if you contact the person at brown or the wes[leyan] originator."

Why and how Brown officials got access to Wesleyan listservs, we have no idea. But some students are fighting back. Fun group blog Wesleying posted one student's blueprint for rebellion:

I already asked to be taken off the list politely, but today I just got a second email. So I have sent their point of contact, a class dean who's email address is robert_shaw@brown.edu a 4MB image of the ct bylaws guiding unsolicited email (along with the link). I encourage all of you to do the same (or send other large attachments to him, like setup files, long poetry, your thesis).

A Wesleyan dean has apparently called the student, asking him to stop exhorting other students to spam Brown. On the off chance that he has stopped, we'll gladly take up the cause. Brown's IT guys can pretty easily block that four-megabyte attachment, so let's kill Mr. Shaw's inbox with a thousand cuts, shall we? Treat him to your more elaborate theses, complex Excel models, high-res art portfolios, etc., at robert_shaw@brown.edu. Help end mass administrative e-mails for all time.

Continue reading "Wesleyan Fights Spam With Spam! (Ivy Peg Below, Promise)" »

November 21, 2006 6:15 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: Brown

Hey everyone! Something unexpected is happening in the Cornell library! Let's tune in! (Skip the first 0:30):

Flash mobs made a splash in New York City what, three years ago? Four? Looks like the ripples are finally fanning northward. But more importantly, what are these pranksters so angry about? Probably that they didn't think of this first:

Look out for the Cornell Library Musical, Fall 2009!

November 21, 2006 4:09 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Columbia , Cornell , YouTube

The following episode of the IvyGate Index® has been rated WTF for strong language and a graphic depiction of a complete lack of Ivy dominance.

Welcome to the third (and probably final) installment of the IvyGate Index®, our hyperscientific gauge of Ivy influence in arbitrarily chosen fields. This time: Hollywood! Are you ready for your close-up?

To measure Ivy dominance of the film industry, we sicced our in-house team of Nobel number crunchers on the 78th Annual Academy Awards. We knew it was a gamble: Hollywood is not the Ivy slumber party that, for example, the media and the executive branch are. But how bad could it be? Movies are important ... and nothing's more important than the Ivies ... so we should totally own these jokers, right?

Not so much. For the top 12 Oscar categories, a grand total of one (1) bona fide Ivy League diploma walked trophy-ward across the Kodak Theatre stage.

Verdict: What have you won for us lately, Natalie Portman?

Soldier on past the jump, if you're able, for notes on methodology; disinfect all surfaces after handling raw data.

Continue reading "The IvyGate Index: Hollywood" »

November 21, 2006 1:29 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: IvyGate Index , hollywood , movies

• Brown: Student activities office demands proper paperwork and complete transparency from God Almighty.[Herald]
• Columbia: Science and religion make squeak loud enough to topple a soufflet, but not the walls of Jericho. [Herald]
• Cornell: Prosecution realizes witnesses have left campus, Collegetown Creeper graciously offers to help procure some. [Sun]
• Harvard: North Korean offensive thwarted... for now.
• Princeton: Teams adopt new recruiting tactic: the slave trade.

November 21, 2006 12:03 PM by RagTime | Link | Comment | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Cornell , Princeton , RagTime , harvar

The Quaker faithful who showed up in full force for Penn basketball's home opener on Saturday didn't just come for the game. They came for the cheesesteaks.

A fan-favorite promotion holds that everyone in attendance gets free cheesesteaks from local joint Abner's whenever Penn scores 100 points at home -- and when you're playing woeful Division II opponent Florida Gulf Coast, that's a distinct possibility.

Granted, these are the worst cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, but they're free nonetheless. Unfortunately, Florida Gulf Coast's coach, Dave Balza, has also heard about this little promotion -- so with his team down by 23 points late in the game, he decided to run down the clock and prevent Penn from reaching the century mark. Penn's coach, Glen Miller, responded by sending his starters back in to run up the score, but in the end, Penn recorded a measly 97 (a 23-point victory), prompting boos and hisses from the stands.

Also noteworthy from the Red and Blue Crew cheering section: a banner that read "Thank you for making us Penn's 2nd worst opponent -- Dartmouth." Mean! Meaner: it's not true; Dartmouth is actually worse than Florida Gulf Coast. The Big Green are statistically the worst team in college basketball so far this year, losing all three of their games by an average of more than 31 points.

November 21, 2006 9:51 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Dartmouth , Penn , Sports , basketball

When Harvard's Pforzheimer House announced it was throwing an official Aleksey Vayner-themed party last week, we assumed it would be a 495-lb. blast. People could come in karate robes, or Under Armour and dance pants; gently serve tennis balls at 140 miles an hour; there could even be a little table in the back for plagiarizing books about the Holocaust. Picture it: 2 a.m., hundreds of "Impossible is Nothing" acolytes swilling Aleksey Ale and Vayner Vodka Tonics, ballroom dancing to the beat of "Solamente Tu Amor" and "The Way of the Sword" -- what could go wrong?

Alas, as the above photo shows, the event was rather under-attended. In fairness, it was up against Winthrop House's "Country Clubbin': A Harvard-Yale 'Tea Partay'." More depressing pics after the jump; either this means Alekseygate has officially gotten old (should we cancel our Christmas benefit gala for Youth Empowerment Strategies?), or it's just the usual case of Harvard kids unable to have fun when it's handed to them on a platter.

Continue reading "Creepy Orwellian Trance of Aleksey Vayner Fails to Generate Fun" »

November 20, 2006 6:08 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (14) | Read more: George Orwell , Harvard , aleksey vayner , parties

The editorial board has proven to be an excluding, cliqued organization that stands commensurate with as final clubs, all while criticizing those same clubs with a hypocrisy that would startle Mark Foley.

So a Harvard sophomore wasn't elected to serve another year on the editorial board of the Crimson, and he is just a touch unhappy about it. In a 1,183-word letter of resignation emailed to Crim president Will Marra and the entire board, this kid unloads on pretty much everyone, from the mortals who dared edit his pristine copy to the editors who made the "baffling" decision not to keep him aboard.

On a more personal note, I ask these same incompetent or undedicated peers, who would be editing and evaluating my signed pieces and my layout work next semester if I do not resign: Who are you to judge the quality of my work, when I was the one often cleaning up after your sloppy content and making so many solid contributions to the board this semester?

Yes, I have "weaknesses." I can imagine being criticized during deliberations for not always being the most fluid elocutionist and for not being able to "think on my feet." No, especially not after running on my feet, dressed up, to the board-wide shoot interview from Cabot to Dunster for 30 minutes in the pouring rain. Or going to a schmooze after getting zero sleep the previous night because I was working in The Crimson (how ironic) and had two midterms that week.

The entire rant-tastic missive is after the jump. Baby, this is Harvard! You expected to be judged on your merits?

UPDATE: After some published soul-searching, we've redacted this kid's name.

Continue reading "Unpromoted Crimson Editor Burns Bridges, Collects Ashes, Re-Burns Them; Then Packs Ash Ashes Into Payload of Nuclear Warhead and Hurls Into Sun" »

November 20, 2006 3:47 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: Harvard , Harvard Crimson , this is why people hate the ivy league

• Brown: Administrators begging for a smitin' [Herald]
• Cornell: Superman's mom dumps on Ithaca, says son was big tooth-proud baby [Sun]
• Harvard: Rhodes Shutout Atrocity of 2005 overcompensated for [Crimson]
• Harvard: Deans say "terrific" Game tailgate went "magnificently"; 70 percent reduction in incidents of medical treatment for drinking says otherwise [Crimson]
• Princeton: Story about Princeton winning this year's Ivy football championship neglects to mention other team that won this year's Ivy football championship [Prince]
  

November 20, 2006 12:59 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Brown , Cornell , Harvard , Princeton , RagTime

More pics from this weekend: Apparently the rumors were true -- when Princeton beats Harvard and Yale in football, they build a humongous bonfire. Even speeches and a marching band, as one grad student tipster complained about, can't make this uncool. More aflamery after the jump.

Continue reading "Lighting Stuff on Fire: Always Cool" »

November 20, 2006 12:14 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Princeton ,