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]

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?

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.

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.

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 … 

At Toad’s Toad’s? Which generously sponsors DKE’s annual Bacchalian underage outdoor Sunday morning drinking competition, the Tang Cup?

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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!

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).