• Columbia: Columnist defends your right to piracy [Spec]
• Cornell: Triumph of the nerds! [Sun]
• Harvard: Bill Clinton will address students at Class Day, but even his spokesman won’t talk to the Crimson [Crimson]
• Penn: Neighborhood “overwhelmingly in favor” of proposed liquor store. Except for the mosque across the street [DP]
• Yale: Applicants now have .7% greater chance of eternal bliss [YDN]

The thing about student council elections is– Wait! Don’t stop reading!

Sorry, we should never start an item with “student council elections.” It’s one of those phrases that, like “tax reform” and “In 1647…”, induces instant brain shutdown. Which is why Michael Morgenstern’s 50-minute documentary on Brown’s 2006 student council race is nothing short of a miracle.

To answer your first question: Yes, we watched the whole thing. To answer your second: Yes, you should, too.

The movie follows the three candidates for UCS president. Along the way, you see all the hallmarks of back-stabby political drama: students talking shit about other students …  Well, that’s actually it, but it’s pretty fun to watch. Perhaps it could have used a major campaign sabotage, or a sex scandal, or an assassination. But given the subject matter, the movie does an incredible job of making you care about a race that most Brown kids were probably too busy watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force to even follow.

The characters make it work. There’s “dumb” “jock” John (scare quotes because you have to keep in mind, it’s Brown), the lacrosse-playing superhottie who means well, but looks about as adept on the debate floor as Stephen Hawking on a basketball court. Then there’s Zac, the silver-tongued Karl Rove lookalike who, in his first interview, remarks ever so subtly that he got into Harvard. Zac knows everyone and everyone knows him — as an asshole. (He freely admits this in the film.) Lastly, there’s Arthur: idealistic, outgoing, doomed. The filmmaker, himself a Brown junior, manages to weave a cohesive narrative around these three players, tracking them to meetings, interviewing them behind the scenes, and milking other students for quotes so gem-like they sparkle.

It’s not like this film is going to solve the problem of student apathy — which, come to think of it, never seems like much of a problem when the issues at hand are greater than swipe access and dining hall hours. But it definitely helps de-douchify the sort of people who four years of college teaches you to despise. We don’t find ourselves saying this much, but big ups to everyone involved in this project. (For a more cinematic experience, you can see the hi-res version here.)

P.S. — What’s with that unicorn dance? Probably just what happens when you let students design their own curriculum.

• Brown: Citing “rowdyism,” temperance zealots strike again [Herald]
• Columbia: Sports columnist bizarrely furious at own paper’s sports story [Spec]
• Columbia: Minuteman stage-rushers censured; bitchslap from Jon Stewart still hurts more [Spec]
• Cornell: Better than Vicodin? Pshaw [Sun]
• Dartmouth: One fish, two fish, red fish, cramming Adderall up your nose in the library bathroom fish [The D]
• Harvard: Law school gets shitload of New York Magazine subscriptions [Crimson]
• Princeton: RIAA hatin’ ‘gin [Prince]

How do you know when a viral video is done, done done? When a Yale student group spoofs it. First their Senior Class Gift fund brought us “Senior Gift in a Box.” Now their women’s crew team has applied the winning formula to comedian Liam Sullivan’s ubiquitous “Shoes” video.

The original “Shoes” (2006) tells the story of Kelly, a blonde ingenue who, stifled by the tedium of family life, sets out to “get what I want.” Namely, shoes. She embarks on a journey that takes her from store to store, where she offers pointed, often devastating, critiques of various types of shoes. It eventually devolves into a decadent Boschian fantasy with flaming hula hoops and big stuffed purple dragons. If you haven’t seen it, you’re either dead or you’re J.D. Salinger. (Don’t play, Jerry, you know you read us.) In either case, watch it here.

The YWC’s homage borrows the original’s structure and spirit, but adds a thematic twist. Rather than combing the town for shoes, the crew team roams Yale’s campus in search of food. The result, while unappealing in most every way, is impressive as a shot-for-shot remake a la Gus Van Sant. We’ll leave the criticism at that, seeing as any one of those mustachioed women could absolutely manhandle us. If you find yourself getting the point, fast forward to the end: you’ll see one girl bench-pressing another.

From: Yale College Council
Date: March 27, 2007 12:33:36 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Your Spring Fling 2007 Performers: Coming Tuesday, May 1st!

Two hours and 11 minutes, actually.

The above image (click to embiggen) landed in every Yale undergrad’s inbox shortly after midnight, announcing this year’s Spring Fling performers as Smashmouth and Ricky Martin. Last year’s headliners were Ludacris and Ben Folds, so that would have been quite a letdown. As college pranks go, this was somewhere way below Drinkin’ Time and way above the reinstatement of Larry Summers. But, all things considered, we give the parties responsible — we’re told it’s three gents folks by the name of Amun Storres Arun Storrs, Zijun Chen and Jayson Tischler* — a B for finely calibrated plausibility and Photoshop skillz.

Alas! New Haven yawned, not a soul convinced, more concerned with reacclimating after spring break and furiously de-tagging incriminating photos on Facebook. And at 2:47 a.m., the not-fazed-whatsoever Yale College Council responded in kind. If video killed the radio star, Internet killed the campus prankstar.

From: “Yale College Council” <ycc@yalestation.org>
Date: March 27, 2007 2:47:55 AM EDT
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Your Spring Fling 2007 Performers: Coming Tuesday, May 1st!

(No, it’s not Smashmouth and Ricky Martin either.

Find out through the YDN in a couple of weeks.)

*UPDATE March 28: Given that we a) misspelled the first person’s name, b) had the wrong gender on the second, and c) are now told by the third (”Error!!!”) that he had nothing to do with the original email, we think it’s pretty fair to say our tipster was misinformed about who was involved. Disregard!

Beware MBAs bearing gifts.

Nate Pierce, a JD/MBA student at NYU, contacted a few top schools back in January to tell them about his cool new idea: a service that would compile the resumes of other JD/MBAs and put them in touch with each other and potential employers. Apparently many schools don’t keep up-to-date lists of JD/MBAs — the god-kings of grad school society — and therefore there’s no central database of these uber-qualified job candidates. It’s simple, really: You give him your resume, he makes sure an employer sees it. For free.

At this point, anyone with even the slightest shade of street wisdom would be wondering, what’s in it for him? Nate’s waaay ahead of ya. He reassured students in his initial pitch:

“Please note that I am not doing this for my own agenda — I have already secured employment following graduation.  I am doing this project because I think it will benefit many JD/MBAs, and because I myself would like to be a part of a national network of JD/MBAs.”

Shame on you for thinking he would try and make money off his fellow students!

Here’s the problem: he sorta is. Just last week, a dean at NYU’s career services office sent out a mass e-mail to administrators at Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, and other places where Pierce had been hawking his wares:

From: Irene Dorzback
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:05 PM
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Re: TIME SENSITIVE JD/MBA Resume Book

Colleagues:

I just learned from a law firm that our student, Nate Pierce, has sent a promotional letter to the law firms offering the “top schools” JD/MBA resume book to them for a $500 fee. There are 52 resumes in the book (which I have not seen). No where in his communication to you did he indicate that he would be charging a fee and I don’t believe your students believed he would be profitting “off their backs.”

[snip]

Best,

Irene

We hear some of the students who signed up for the database were none too pleased. (Although Pierce told us that no one has opted out so far.) So Pierce sent out a notice to students explaining why he was now collecting from employers: 

I have incurred significant costs, in both time and out-of-pocket expenses, putting everything together (approximately $9,000 in time and effort and $3,000 in actual expenses for jointdegree.com, jdmba.com, and a software tool to enable employers to search the resume book based on key criteria).

He adds that he was planning to offer a complimentary copy to businesses that don’t want to pay.

We got in touch with Pierce to hear his side. Somewhere in his 1,816-word reply, he acknowledges his mistake in not disclosing the fee and explains what he meant to say in his original e-mail:

I was trying to assure JD/MBAs, administrators, and employers that I was not piloting the project for my own exposure, which is entirely true.  I have already accepted an offer upon graduation, and my resume is not included in the employer edition. So no exposure for me (until now).

Machiavellian manipulation or honest mistake? The call is yours: we’ve included all the e-mails after the jump (minus the seven-screen monstrosity he sent us). Either way, he’s now bound to get more exposure than if he’d done it right. So it goes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since Gutenberg brought the pain to monks, scribes, and the dudes who pimped out their drop caps, the written word has been the way society operates. And certain things follow from that: we know how to spell, we know letters usually need salutations, we know about semicolons and chapters and the inverted pyramid and whether it’s possible to read 200 pages in an afternoon. We are, in other words, literate.

Now, we’re not nearly saying that viral video is on par with the printing press. But being able to create a short movie is inarguably becoming a crucial skill, in a time when one dude can create this — 2.7 million views and counting.

Philip de Vellis, the “Vote Different” guy, is clearly the new kind of literate. And at Harvard, the people who make “Love|Hate” just as clearly are not. In January we wrote about their execrable pilot; only one commenter made it past the 2:34 mark. Here’s their second effort, and while it’s better — on account of being 12 minutes shorter — it still just fundamentally makes our life hurt, to borrow a commenter’s phrase. We’re not even talking about production values necessarily, although the echoes do bring to mind the San Fernando Valley’s finest. It’s that “Love|Hate” is not compelling, original or necessary in any way, and we say that as people who would absolutely buy Ball In A Cup if that commercial ever actually aired.

Must suck to live in a soap opera. Every episode it’s a new ordeal: Your old boyfriend dies of AIDS, your new boyfriend is in with the mob, your father fakes his death and vanishes for 15 years, your mother miscarries after an elevator crash, and to top it off you get taken hostage and shot in the stomach. But none of these tragedies come close to the horror of … gosh, it’s hard to even say it … the unparallelled heartbreak of getting into Yale.

We stumbled across this 1995 clip from General Hospital, in which Robin Scorpio — who later loses her virginity, tests positive for HIV, and experiences all the terrible things listed above — gets a “big fat envelope from Yale.” Her reaction: utter dismay. See, she doesn’t want to be far from her boyfriend, Stone, not for all the Whiffenpoofs in the world. Most girls with similar situations in the real world deal with this by trying to keep up a long-distance thing (racking up $140 Cingular bills and listening to a lot of Lifehouse, before the inevitable “love you too much to do this” breakup and ensuing hookup spree). The GH screenwriters solve the dilemma just by, uh, killing him off.

• Brown: Massive trade deficits [Herald]
  
• Columbia: The RIAA [Spec]
• Cornell: March Madness [Sun]
• Harvard: Terrorists, rules [Crimson]
• Penn: Racists with handcuffs [DP]

You may have noticed that our recent pictorial on the lives of the saints (standard fare really — St. Valentine in sunglasses, St. Brandon in a wheat field, St. Francis with anal rosary beads) — drew some outside attention. One Catholic who was offended conveniently makes his cyberdwelling at ivycatholic.blogspot.com. And, God love him, his blog — For God, For Country and For Yale — like St. Sebastian, will be punctured by the arrows of our BMOC critic’s scrutiny. Or something. (That critic, btw, is Kathy Gilsinan.)

NonCatholics, I think, will find this blog just as offensive as Catholics find the photography. More offensive still, I think, because personally hurt will be liberal Catholics like myself. I fall into the school of so-called “cafeteria Catholics”; I admit that I choose what I like about the religion — teachings that I don’t find offensive or outdated or in place solely to perpetuate a benighted patriarchy — then I pray the rosary and basically feel good about myself. And my relationship with conservative Catholics such as this blogger runs thus: I find it offensive to exclude gays from the community of believers, he finds it offensive to make saint-porn. Tomato, tomahto.

I’m not saying our altar boy should apologize for his beliefs. Perhaps, having had the misfortune to read IvyGate, he feels persecuted for the sake of righteousness. As a defensive end on the football team, he is certainly persecuted for the sake of Yale. (But check out his championship ring!!) And he is wounded, he reflects, by the “disasters modern society has wrought.” What might these be? AIDS, modern warfare, rapacious capitalism? Not so much. He’s more concerned with the evils of contraception and absolute gender equality. (Though the extent to which the latter has actually been “wrought” is debatable, anyone who feels particularly oppressed by progress in this direction can take refuge at the local parish.)

Another big deal, apparently, is naked artwork. He gets huffy in his posts on the “Theology of the Body”, wherein he lauds chastity and contemplates the lies of feminism.

My problem with this blog is similar to my problem with much of the catechism: It asserts what’s right, sometimes counterintuitively, and leaves off the work of persuasion. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t find him persuasive. Maybe it should be enough for me that he quotes Aquinas as saying that the reason women shouldn’t be priests is because they are “in a state of subjection.” Maybe I should nod submissively when he tells me that God asks “we do not do anything to artificially hinder or block … sexual activity from reaching its natural end (no contraception).” Stephen confidently asserts that, well, “Jesus is the Truth,” and I guess that’s fine. But what does that even mean? And does some football player at Yale think he can tell me on blogspot?

There’s no winning or even having an argument with faith like this. What kind of scholar refuses to ask why?

But then again, what kind of Catholic insists on it?