We’ve been fascinated lately by the idea of Facebook as art form. If Leonardo da Vinci were around now, he’d probably spend all day assembling elaborately captioned galleries of Facebook photos, too. Proust would spend all day in his dorm room bed, diddling on his MacBook, crafting reams of annoying Notes that his friends wouldn’t even read. Rembrandt would be the guy with a hundred Facebook groups about himself, of which he is the only member. And after seeing what Facebook members have done with the group we’re about to describe, we’re convinced students have found the greatest medium of self-expression since tempura tempera [Ed.: We regret the typo, although we are not ruling out the possibility the great masters painted with deep-fried seafood.]

It started back in February, when a student at The Brearley School in New Jersey New York City started a Facebook group called “8th Graders need to back off 9th grade guys especially other peoples BF'S.” The group’s mission statement couldn’t have been clearer:

For all of those 8th graders who think they are entitled to hang out flirt w/ 9th grade guys, and can wheedle themselves into HIGHSCHOOL parties, im sry u r in eighth grade..um soo stop. DONT think we hate you tho

OMG i h8 it when my 8th grade boi toi is mackin on 7th graderzzzz. That's totally how he got the clap.

Yo stop being skeets 8th graders

baby 8th graderz are lyke so0o0o0o0 much better than you NYU gurlz. that's why i've been hangin around @ PS 144 after micro orgo chem every T and H. so it izn't our fault and it sure as he** iz'nt theirz: itz urs.

who the fuck do the 8th graders think they are? god better back up for i break it off like rihanna.

4 realz dis one 8th grade bitch wuz all up on my man and i wuz like oh no u didnt bitch. shez a ho and my 9th grade boi dont want no 8th grade skank

Well, maybe if these 9th grade girls maintained that fine middle school figure, they wouldn't face so much competition. Really now, who should bear the blame here?

nimble skanky assed 8th grade hos be all up in my grill and im all $TEP OFF BETCH STOP PUTTIN UR CAREBEARS LUNCHBOX NEXT 2 MY JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE BACKPACK

Fo real, hoes jealous of my pokemon collection. If you're in junior high that shit just ain't balla to me.

I lost my fiance to an 8th grade girl. Bitch ruined my life.

I'm so glad someone finally created a facebook group for this problem. I thought I was the only one who cared.

Update 4:07 p.m.: Oh no! The group's creator has taken it down! What gives? Doesn't she know that's like spray painting over the Sistine Chapel? Luckily, we saved a copy of the group's front page here. Now that the group is dead, feel free to leave your own rantz in our comments section.

April 26, 2007 11:24 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (38) | Read more: Facebook , high school

Via Bwog, here's a video that we simply cannot delay in getting in front of your eyes: "Frontiers of Science," a fucking anthem for those liberal arts majors who are secretly juiced about having to take Columbia's lone science requirement. From a course in which applied physics professor Horst Stormer drills comparative lit majors on the nanoscale, creator Reni Laine '10 has wrought lyrics like these:

You think I'm just an English major
No math for me
But watch out sexy [School of Engineering and Applied Science] boy
I got skilzzzzzzz in reasoning

Laine's MySpace is worth checking out for both the not-bad album she has for sale and a trio of videos that appear to indicate she is some kind of Dutch pop star.

April 25, 2007 9:14 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Columbia , YouTube , science

Spring concerts might be the best investments colleges make. The year’s almost over, students are sick of school, and, in the heat of studying for exams, it’s easy to think the administration just doesn’t give a damn. But then they drop a thick wad on a sweet concert and, as you sway gently to Ben Folds’ lilting piano, you realize you had it all wrong—someone really does care.

Usually, that is. In some cases, however, the student selection committee botches it so bad that the concert can actually ruin an otherwise great spring.  

We did a quick survey to see which schools booked which bands to perform at their spring concerts. The results are, frankly, stunning:

Brown – The Flaming Lips, Soulive, The Roots, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Misson of Burma, Yo La Tengo
Cornell – T.I., TV on the Radio
Columbia – Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Blackalicious
Dartmouth – Third Eye Blind
Harvard – Third Eye Blind
Penn – Ben Folds, Third Eye Blind
Princeton – Third Eye Blind
Yale – T.I., Sister Hazel

Seriously?! How has Third Eye Blind suddenly become the hottest ticket on the Ivy circuit? Did Chumbawumba, the New Radicals, and Deep Blue Something all have bar mitzvahs booked up?

Brown clearly takes the prize for best lineup. (It's hard to compete with an entire college of future East Village concert promoters.) Columbia, which has a history of booking outstanding rap artists (and Naughty By Nature), puts up a good showing, too. (Although Del, whose best song opens with the line "It's important to practice good hygiene," might have been a better fit for Brown.) We're also impressed Yale and Cornell both have T.I. lined up, even after The King walked off stage during a recent concert at Duke. Watch some dweebish Yalie try to correct his grammar: "Excuse me, Mr. I., it's who I am."

April 25, 2007 9:04 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (67) | Read more: Brown , Columbia , Cornell , Dartmouth , Harvard , Penn , Princeton , Yale , spring fling

While there are downsides to letting anyone upload anything to YouTube, the pure magic of videos like last week's Dartmouth Mating Ritual more than makes up for it. It combines the anthropology of Jane Goodall footage with the freeze-frame surgery of Blind Date, and it's all set to the music of the gods. You could write a thesis on the binge/hookup-culture moment that it captures. (The video was removed from YouTube, but we'll be re-hosting it here later.)

To this scholarly genre we now add Believe Me, It Gets Much Colder Than This, a video that's been bouncing around Columbia for the better part of three years. Like lucky footage of a sasquatch, there just happened to be a camera present to record for History the most awkward flirting of all time. It features the freshest of freshmen: a young woman of considerable beauty, and a young man of considerable obliviousness. We actually know the guy, who's really nice, just wincingly unaware of boundaries, and while we feel kinda bad about airing the clip, it's like Sauron's ring -- it just calls out to be found. My precious:

UPDATE 8:57 p.m.:A transcript:

Guy: ... check her mailbox for a birthday card, and we might like go and get some coffee or drinks or whatever.
Girl: Oh, cool. But, it's so cold, I cannot go outside.
Girl 2: You're not going to the meeting? Guy: [inaudible]?
Girl: Oh that's okay, I [inaudible]
Guy: I know, if you lived outside San Diego, believe me, it gets much colder than this. Not in October, but December and January--
Girl: No, I--
Guy: --it can be 20 degrees, it can be 10 degrees here.
Girl: [disbelief]

April 24, 2007 12:02 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (21) | Read more: Columbia , YouTube

Spanking the Daily Princetonian last Wednesday distracted us from the real news in that day's paper: STRANGER SNAPS PICS OF NUDE MALE ATHLETES. Some perv, apparently, was hiding in a bathroom stall in the Caldwell Fieldhouse, taking secret photos of naked dudes showering after track and lacrosse practice; the athletes gave low-speed chase (presumably in shower sandals, wielding back-scratchers) but he disappeared around a corner.

Two things. A) The suspect should totally email us, we're desperate for IvyGate Galleries submissions, and B) track star Ted Price '10, who witnessed the incident, described him as having a "well-done mullet" and "handlebar moustache." We really have nothing else to add.

April 23, 2007 6:29 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Princeton , Sports , gawker

As with any tragedy, organizations have responded to the Virginia Tech massacre with heightened sensitivity to violent images. NBC released only a few of the nearly two dozen videos Cho Seung-Hui recorded and sent to the network, while other networks refused to show any of them. SNL tastefully pulled its brilliant OC parody from YouTube, seeing as it ends with six bloodied bodies littering the floor. (Rather, the network tried to pull it. You can still find the video, the original OC clip, and various parodies of the parody.) Both of these moves seemed the smart, polite things to do.

And then there's Yale's response. In the wake of the VT shooting, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has banned the use of realistic stage weapons in Yale theater productions. The rule doesn't apply just to guns. Now, instead of using mean-looking swords, actors will have to fight with plastic or wooden swords. Presumably, the duel scene in Hamlet will be performed with two of those plastic fold-out light sabers that glow and make noise when they clash: "A touch [wuuoow], a touch, I do confess! [ksshhh!]"

Student director Sarah Holden, '08, gave a short speech before the Thursday night performance of her play, "Red Noses":

"Calling for an end to violence onstage does not solve the world's suffering: It merely sweeps it under the rug, turning theater -- in the words of this very play -- into 'creamy bon-bons' instead of 'solid fare' for a thinking, feeling audience," she said. "Here at Yale, sensitivity and political correctness have become censorship in this time of vital need for serious artistic expression."

Clearly, institutions need to respond appropriately to tragedy. Insulting the intelligence of Yale theatergoers doesn't quite count. Until the ban's reversed, Yale productions will probably look something like this.

Trachtenberg did not respond to an e-mail sent late Sunday. This isn't the first time she's pulled amateur hour on the Yale performing arts, as the Suite 13 guys know -- so if anyone has Betty T stories, we're collecting.

April 23, 2007 2:18 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Yale , gawker

It's funny -- there are three newspapers generally considered to be the tops in the Ivy League: the Harvard Crimson, the Yale Daily News, and the Daily Pennsylvanian (not in that order). And with the 2006-'07 school year coming to a close, the three papers tarred by plagiarism flaps so far are the Crimson, the YDN, and now, the DP.

The DP fired columnist Jamie France '10 this weekend after her column on caffeine Friday bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March. The former ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter; the latter ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter. Five health benefits are duplicated, too. And all those things are given in the exact same order, the odds of which occurring naturally are one in (math nerds, speak up) 6,227,020,800.

We asked the DP about this on Saturday morning, and as of 5:30 p.m. the paper had France's back. "I see that there are similarities," her editor, Zoe Tillman, wrote, "but I stand by Jamie's work. ... I know that she would never intentionally plagiarize anything." EIC Shawn Safvi said: "I recognize the similarities and I know that Jamie did use that website as one of the main resources for writing her column. However, after speaking with Jamie I know that she did not intentionally plagiarize anything on that website." (Note the similar phrasing in their emails. Oh, the irony.)

But less than 24 hours later, France was canned. "While we still believe that she did complete other research to get her information, the similarities in writing style and structure are too noticeable to ignore," Tillman emailed us. "The DP does not tolerate plagiarism in any form, and we're currently discussing implementing more in-depth workshops on these issues for staff in the future."

Everything about this makes us sad. First, the DP is a great paper, and if plagiarism happens there, it must happen everywhere. Second, this is extremely unusual, but France may actually be a one-time offender; we'll be counting on you to find other examples, but in the meantime, this could just be a kid who screwed up at finals time. (France hasn't responded to an email.) Finally, and most disturbing of all, is the idea that a reader busted France by being familiar with a month-old charticle on Diet Coke on Yahoo! Food.

April 23, 2007 10:19 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (25) | Read more: Penn , daily pennsylvanian , gawker , plagiarism

• Dartmouth: Treasury Secretary chosen as commencement speaker, because who stays awake for the whole thing anyway? [The D]
• Harvard: Is the Crimson the only Ivy paper with a 4/20 pseudo-academic pot tribute? For shame, Leaguers, for shame! [Crimson]
• Princeton: Man with "well-done mullet" takes pictures of track and lacrosse players' naughty bits [Prince]
• Princeton: Zimbabwean ambassador to Princeton: 1700% inflation neither especially good nor in any way related to government policies, all of which work just fine, thank you. [Prince]
• Yale: YDN so far outpaces IvyGate in number of Pulitzer-winning alumni [YDN]

April 20, 2007 5:55 PM by RagTime | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Dartmouth , Harvard , Princeton , RagTime , Yale

Hey, remember when we wrote the other week about Harvard's unconscionable number of black coaches -- y'know, zero -- out of 41 head coaching positions? All better!!! The Crimson last week hired Tommy Amaker, who is black, to lead its men's basketball program. Given that the last African-American to hold the title left 16 years ago, we can look forward to equitable representation in December 2071. (We think that math is right.)

Actually, the real news is that Amaker comes to Cambridge from freaking Michigan, which must make it feel like the rims are set at an elementary-school eight feet. How ever did Harvard land him? Amaker's shit performance in Ann Arbor (no tourney berths in six years) certainly has something to do with it, but the truth is much simpler: a fat paycheck. A very reliable source tells us Amaker will make $225,000 a year; at Harvard, that works out to about $20,000 per win.

April 20, 2007 5:13 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Harvard , Sports , basketball

As if Brown student elections weren't absurd enough already, the Brown Daily Herald gifted us yesterday with this delightful lede:

Eric Mukherjee '09, the candidate for president of the Undergraduate Council of Students who was disqualified early Tuesday morning by UCS elections board, was drafted into the race by his friends and was initially unaware that he was running, the one-time candidate told The Herald.

Yup. He didn't even know he was in the race.

Ben Struhl '09, who said he was responsible for much of Mukherjee's campaign - and who represented Mukherjee in Friday's candidates debate at the Sharpe Refectory - said a "Draft Mukherjee" campaign began as something of a joke and involved about 30 of Mukherjee's friends.

"Everyone except me," Mukherjee said.

It's a shame this guy didn't stay in the race. We would have endorsed him in a second.

April 20, 2007 2:19 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Brown , student government

Watching someone get rejected is like watching a car crash. You know you shouldn't stare, but you're helpless to look away. After all, romantic rejection is nature at its cruelest: not only will your beloved not hook up with you, he/she will resist every primordial instinct in his/her body in order to not hook up with you. Everyone knows that look -- the one that says, I will let the human race die off before I get next to you.

So you see why, for us, discovering this video was like brushing away the last layer of sediment covering a fossil of massive scientific import. It provides documentary evidence of two Dartmouth traditions we've heard of but never seen with our own eyes: 1) pong, the game played with a paddle and Byzantine rule system, and 2) the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mating techniques that result from said game.

Seriously, this is an artifact worthy of of the Met. We'd tell you what to look out for, but the cinematographer does an expert job of directing the viewer's eye. We're clearly in the hands of a master.

April 20, 2007 8:20 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: Dartmouth , YouTube

Objection...

If there were ever a blog begging to be created, it's lamedickinaboxparodies.blogspot.com. In fact, after running  "Dick in a Box" spin-offs from Penn (which, to be fair, became a bona fide hit), Yale, and even Facebook, we starting to think about changing the theme of this here blog to meet demand.

Now in saunters Columbia, late to the party as usual, although this time it's not fashionable whatsoever. Or funny. The video was created as part of the Law Revue, an annual show produced and performed by law students -- but apparently the "in a box" phenomenon rose, peaked, and declined while they had their noses buried in torts. Two months ago we could hardly believe Yale kids were still trying to get in on the joke. Also, it's a good thing these people are in law school, because the war crime-like MIDI orchestration just made us gash out our eardrums with the thin end of a gavel, and we're suing for redress. Maybe we'll throw in a count of false advertising, too. A parody about Hasids and bagels at Columbia? We think the term is documentary.

April 19, 2007 11:21 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Columbia , YouTube

Feeling excluded from Monday's tragedy in Blacksburg, Ivy kids? Lost, adrift, don't know what to think, how to feel ... because this story doesn't somehow involve you? Well, you can breathe a big entitled sigh of relief, because the Daily Princetonian is here to tell you that Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui's sister has a connection to the school.

Well, sort of. The woman was a member of the class of '04. Somehow that makes for lead-story news at the Prince, which believes that readers need to know that "Cho wrote her senior thesis on 'ethnic enclave[s] and wage earning' among Korean immigrants in California." Tragically, the article notes, the killer's sister's former thesis advisor could not be reached for comment; what a blow to students searching for meaning. Reporter Michael Juel-Larsen did reach Cho herself on her cell phone (an earlier version of the story described her as "palpably upset"; that's some phone), but alas she declined comment. History shall never know what window her time on Prospect Street might have provided into a massacre.

Prince EIC Kavita Saini '08 emails: "The shooting at Virginia Tech was the worst in U.S. history and everyone's trying to understand as much about the gunman and his background as possible. The fact that his sister went to Princeton was one aspect of our coverage of the shooting, and considering the amount of national interest in his family, we felt that it was the role of the school's student newspaper to report what we knew about her."

Hmm ... quasi-reasonable. Maybe we're being too harsh. What's a lowly student paper to do, anyway? Send a team of reporters to Blacksburg, Va., to do real reporting?

April 18, 2007 8:55 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (27) | Read more: Penn , Princeton , crime , daily pennsylvanian , daily princetonian , gawker

You would have thought that last semester's flare-up over the depiction of Native Americans at Dartmouth had died. (Lost? Read the saga here, here, here, and here.) But apparently they laid it to rest in the Indian burial ground from Pet Sematery [Ed.: Risky!], because the flap just won't die.

Check out this series of e-mails sent to students by Ritchie King '06. All he wanted was to do a little innocent activism. Instead, he fell face-first into a boobie trap of circumstance. Read on: 

Date: 15 Apr 2007 23:10:44
From: Sustainable Dartmouth
Subject: Free T-Shirts!
To: (Recipient list suppressed)

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*CARRY YOUR TRASH WEEK 2007*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\

because there is no 'away'...

Lug your garbage around with you for a week wearing a free, ecostylish, supersexy "Ask me Why" tee (they're made by American Apparrel, so you'll know you'll look your best and be your most guilt-free)

We'll all congregate on the Green on Earth Day (Sunday, April 22) to weigh our individual trash bags, make a big pile, take pictures, sunbathe, have a drum circle, smoke lots of pot...okay, maybe not the last two or three. ...

Looking forward to seeing your garbage next week!

We have no idea what transpired over the course of the next day, but it must have been ugly, because then came this (note: "blitz" is Dartmouthese for campus email):

Date: 16 Apr 2007 11:53:13
From: Sustainable Dartmouth
Subject: A Clarification and an Apology
To: (Recipient list suppressed)

Sustainable Dartmouth owes the entire Dartmouth community a clarification and an apology regarding the mass blitz that was sent out last night with the subject line "Free T-shirts."  First of all, it should be noted that the blitz was not a collaborative effort but solely my own.  Thus all blame should be directed towards me and not Sustainable Dartmouth as an organization.

In the blitz, it was jokingly suggested that those who participate in "Carry Your Trash Week" congregate on the Green on Earth Day and, among other things, "have a drum circle and smoke lots of pot."  Drum circles are a very serious rite in many cultures and should not be trivialized in the context of those cultures.  The intention of the blitz was not to refer to the ceremonial drumming of any particular culture but rather to refer to improvised group drumming that is, in American pop-culture, associated with stereotypical "hippies."  The blitz was intended to be self-exploitative:  I was poking fun at the stereotypes of environmentalists in an effort to disassociate myself and other environmentalists from these stereotypes.

When I sent this blitz out, I presumed that the primary cultural context in which it would be received was American pop-culture.  I had ignorantly forgotten that the Dartmouth community is its own cultural microcosm with its own history, collective memory, and context.  It was brought to my attention that, because of this context, and specifically, events that transpired this past fall, the use of the term "drum circle" would foremost call to mind the ceremonial practices of Native American groups.  Moreover, it was pointed out that because "smoking lots of pot" was mentioned right after "hav[ing] a drum circle," I was insinuating a connection between a Native American rite and the use of marijuana, trivializing the former in the process.  It was never my intention to do this.

Due to the sanctity of the drum and the practice of group drumming in many cultures, it was disrespectful to refer to such practice, in any context, so lightly.

I apologize for writing and mass distributing last night's blitz.  I feel I have done the Dartmouth community a disservice and can only hope that it has not been too damaging.

Sincerely,
Ritchie King   D'06 Th'07

April 18, 2007 11:00 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (33) | Read more: Dartmouth

PROVIDENCE, April 14 -- Corporate sponsorship can be a beautiful thing. For the 2007 Ivy Film Festival, it was a lifesaver. Not only did it give students the opportunity to make industry connections and likely gain access to coveted mail room jobs at the major studios, it also gave the audience exactly what it needed to weather a student film marathon: Red Bull and an open bar.

This year's festival was sponsored largely by Current TV, the cable channel and Al Gore brainchild that solicits and broadcasts viewer-created content -- or as they call it, "VC squared" (a phrase we do not object to, because yes, it is worse than the Vietcong). It's sort of a perfect fit: Current is desperate for content, and student filmmakers are desperate for eyeballs. Did we mention the open bar?

We didn't get to catch all the films, but the "clips" screened at the awards ceremony were so long that we might as well have. The audience and judges fairly slobbered over Rom Alejandros' "Roskosmos," a short set aboard a doomed Russian spacecraft -- antigravity and all -- which won best undergraduate film and the audience choice award. Best comedy was "Ode to Fredo," a one-note-but-still-funny musical reimagining of Fredo's death in The Godfather Part II. The winning animated short was "Phantoms of the Night," a stop-motion one-night-stand between two salt shakers. (If anyone in high places is reading this -- festival founder David Peck, this means you -- we'd push hard to get these movies up on YouTube.) 

Other highlights came in non-celluloid form. In his opening remarks, Peck was in high spirits, dropping more f-bombs than verbs (the guy has been in a taxi with fucking Oliver fucking Stone!). Big-shot director Doug Liman, Brown '88 -- best known for directing Swingers, worst known for the human rights violation that was Mr. and Mrs. Smith -- stopped by to talk about how his "Rocks for Jocks" work ethic paid off. He admitted at the outset that he hadn't prepared any remarks -- you can take him out of Brown, but you can't take the Brown out of him. But ten minutes deep into a tangential anecdote about hiking in the Alps, the apparent lack of preparation stopped being so endearing (although the girl with the walrus-laugh sitting in the back might disagree). (See the Herald article on his lecture here.)

At the final ceremony, Actor John Cho, who you know as the less famous half of Harold and Kumar, showed up to accept an award that had something to do with cinematic accomplishment and diversity. Cho was remarkably humble as he accepted it: Don't forget he's the guy who chanted "MILF" alongside Stiffler in American Pie. "I don't know if this is deserved," he said, "but let's hope it's prophetic." In other words, let's hope Harold and Kumar Maybe, Possibly Go to Amsterdam, or whatever it's going to be called, doesn't suck.

Then everyone went and drank.

April 17, 2007 2:06 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Brown , field trip , ooh look at us we used a dateline

Just the other day, a friend had this as his away message: "I really don't care how much you loved Kurt Vonnegut." It's a good thing, too, because we were just about to spill to him about how sad it was, what a loss, so it goes, etc. But then we realized why his callousness made sense: This guy went to Cornell. So did Vonnegut. He worked on the paper. So did Vonnegut. Seriously, Cornell Sun staffers must spend their college careers so steeped in all things Vonnegut that the recent outpouring -- sometimes respectful, sometimes awful -- was just the last straw. Who can blame them for being sick and tired of hearing about Kurt Vonnegut?

Still, the Sun has given the man a proper burial. Last week they posted a commemorative section dedicated to the author, who worked at the Sun in the early 40s before dropping out to go to war. The Sun ran a straight obit, an affectionate editorial, a video of speech he gave at Cornell a couple of years ago, and some poems Vonnegut himself must have submitted to them in recent years. They've also collected a few pieces he wrote for the paper. It's him, all right. One editorial begins:

Wendell L. Willkie, political yo-yo from the Hoosier State, has demanded a second front -- while wearing a rumpled blue serge suit with egg on the vest. This homespun corporation lawyer, probably the last presidential candidate to be born anywhere near a log cabin, has set all England (excepting the stupid military authorities) yapping like a pack of underfed dogs in a kennel.

They also re-publish an excerpt from Vonnegut's speech at a 1980 banquet, in which he talked about life as a Sun staffer:

We on The Sun were already in the midst of real life. By God, if we weren’t! We had just designed and written and caused to be manufactured yet another morning newspaper for a highly intelligent American community of respectable size -- yes, and not during the Harding administration, either, but during 1940, ’41 and ’42, with the Great Depression ending, and with World War Two well begun.

I am an atheist, as some of you have gleaned from my writings. But I have to tell you that, as I trudged up the hill so late at night and all alone, I knew that God Almighty approved of me.

Any malnourished, sleep-deprived college paper drone knows exactly what he's talking about.

April 17, 2007 10:10 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Cornell , cornell sun

• Columbia: J-school student escapes perv after being raped, tortured [Daily News]
  
• Cornell: Paula Zahn disappointed with race relations at Cornell [Sun]
• Dartmouth: Fratty environmentalists wanted to stage rally for "sustainable keg policy" [The D]
  
• Penn: Next stop, Chippendales [DP]
• Penn: No death penalty for (alleged!) wife-bludgeoning econ prof [DP]
  
• Princeton: Eating clubs to be bathed in harsh, eye-melting glare of flourescent bulbs [Prince]
• Yale: Another flag desecrated at Yale! [YDN]

April 16, 2007 12:27 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: Columbia , Cornell , Dartmouth , Penn , Princeton , RagTime , Yale

Performing CPR on Pablog last week (his sinus rhythm is still flatlining; clap harder, damn you!) made us guiltily wonder who else was toiling away out there on the student blog-quad, under our radar. We do have a blogroll, way over on the right somewhere, but it was last updated around the time Lincoln was shot; and we do have our Blog Man on Campus critic, who chimes in every so often. But there's obviously a ton of sites we miss, and so, with open hearts and open minds, we set out looking for signs of life.

Blogs it took to piss us off: 1.

We want to like Yale blog 06520-2848, we really do. The site's name, for starters, we assume is a middle finger to the insufferable Harvard magazine 02138. And when we saw the April 6 entry, we got straight-up Christmas-morning-when-you're-seven giddy. You know Gawker's delightful Blue States Lose column? (For those who don't: a caustic -- even for Gawker -- observer rips on the 10 most obnoxious hipster pics from photo sites like Misshapes, Last Night's Party and the Cobrasnake.) Well, 06520 has his own little imitation, except the pics are of drunk Yalies at New Haven dives like Toad's and BAR.

Ordinarily, this feature, called "Go Shawty!", could not be more up our alley if we purchased an actual alley and paved it with printouts. But then we started to actually read the copy underneath each photo, and ... let's just say Mr. ZIP Code gives IvyGate commenters a run for their title of Worst People On The Internet.

Through five "Go Shawty!" installments (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), blogger 06520 probably couldn't be more hateful or misogynistic if he tried. Literally, there isn't a single photo of a girl that doesn't reduce her to a sex receptacle. Mix in some casual racism and contempt for anybody that doesn't look like they attend Yale, and you have a caption contest that accomplishes the impossible: 06520 makes sloppy-drunk kids at Toad's come off decent by comparison.

UPDATE 2:45 p.m.: Silly ZIP code! Deleting posts from your web site doesn't mean a "thang," in shawty parlance, to Google Cache. Archived copies of the pages are here. While we're updating: we forgot to mention that we emailed 06520 late last night and haven't heard back.

April 16, 2007 12:16 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Blog Man on Campus , Yale , gawker , this is why people hate the ivy league

The bizarre message above has greeted visitors to thedartmouth.com for at least the last 36 hours. We're not sure what Al Gore has to do with web-publishing a college newspaper, but here's a message to the commenter who complained Monday that we've been ignoring The D in RagTime: You're in charge of letting us know when the precipitation lets up. (Actually, a D staffer just gave us a sneak peak at the redesigned site, which looks like a snazzy improvement; they say it'll be up soon.)

Anyway, staring at this has inspired us to "investigate" (read: Wikipedia) something that has always jiggled the needle on our BS meter: The Dartmouth's claim that it is America's oldest college newspaper, founded 1799. It just seems off, just like the way they call their top editorial board "the directorate." (Really.) Wiki says that...

...the Hanover newspapers existing then are unconnected to a monthly literary magazine that students established around 1843, which is the publication that evolved into the current paper. For that reason, The Dartmouth currently (2006) states that it is in its 163rd volume.

Guh? Clearly we are gonna need more info than this. Can anyone who's familiar with Dartmouth history weigh in? Probably, there's no point to digging further -- this is an area in which the Yale Daily News says it's the "Oldest College Daily" (its alumni org is vomitously called the "OCD Foundation"); the Harvard Crimson says it's "the nation's oldest continuously published daily college newspaper"; and the Columbia Spectator claims "second-oldest" status, without noting who's first. Help us out, readers: who's lying least?

April 13, 2007 12:45 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: Columbia Spectator , Dartmouth , Harvard Crimson , Yale Daily News , the dartmouth

"If you believe," Pan shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Pablog die."

Many clapped.

Some didn't.

A few little beasts hissed.

The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Pablog was saved. First his voice grew strong, then he popped out of bed, then he was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. 

Standout Harvard Crimson blogger Pablog is back from his thesis hiatus, and since he announced it with a ressurection analogy, we figured we'd do what we've gotten quite good at when it comes to Pablo Torre '07: writing later, on the exact same topic, and much less funny. Note exhibits A, B and C, among surely many more. Seriously: if some other blog tried to claim, in the face of such evidence, that it wasn't blatantly ripping off the faster site, we would immediately call them liars, with impunity. So the fact that Pablog actually believes our occasional mortified emails proves that he is not only a witty god-prince of the college blogosphere, but a benevolent one as well.

Worrisomely, though, Pablog has not written one of Pablog's signature third-person posts since that Easter eve emergence. Do you want him back as crack-bad as we do? Then clap! Clap harder! Clap, you sons of Pablog, clap if you believe!

April 13, 2007 8:52 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Harvard , pablog

In the latest installment of Tasty-Ass Sandwiches of the Ivy League, Harvard scribe Will Payne violates all social customs about typing with your mouth full.

Grendel's Den, a cozy Harvard Square restaurant that takes its name from the Beowulf antagonist (and not, disappointingly, from the alternate phrase for "taint"), has a motto above the door: "Resisting the tide of corporate homogenization since 1971." It's true -- even as the Square gets overrun by the twin threats of wrap and burrito, which a judge in Worcester actually ruled is not a sandwich [Ed.: We may or may not file an amicus curiae on the appeal], Grendel's reaffirms on the daily a fundamental truth that no amount of Qdoba will ever change: that everything -- everything -- is better between two slices of bread. 

Case in point: their legendary French Dip Sandwich. At the absurdly reasonable lunchtime price of $3.95 (that's with chips), this holy trinity of beef, broth and bread proves that you don't need your own personal endowment to indulge.

The French Dip, it is claimed, was discovered accidentally during the 1910s in Los Angeles, when a cook dropped a roast beef sandwich into a bowl of beef jus. In keeping with its baptismal origin, the sandwich was originally served pre-dipped, but Grendel's follows a more recent tradition by serving the cup of jus on the side.

It's this performative twist -- the Anointment -- that earns the French Dip its legendary status. There are few things better in this cold Cambridge of term papers than dipping two hefty sandwich halves into a bowl of piping hot beef gravy, biting through a crisp and warm outer crust of bread into the succulent layers of prime roast beef piled inside, and walking away only five dollars lighter (albeit a few pounds heavier). 

Like French fries, the sandwich has little to do with the land of Asterix and McDo (adding Dijon mustard doesn't help much, however good it tastes). Instead, it is one of the few remaining carryovers from the Golden Age of American sandwiches -- the perfect synthesis of culinary conservatism and American populism.

Or, put another way, fuck wraps.

After the jump, more Harvard sammiches...

Continue reading "Tasty-Ass Sandwiches of the Ivy League: Grendel's French Dip" »

April 12, 2007 12:05 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: Harvard , tasty-ass sandwiches of the ivy league

In our pretty, pret-ty, pret-tay harsh criticism of Harvard-Radcliffe TV, we firmly believe that we've been more justified than a certain debut album. But we're not totally unfeeling, and we know that actual humans with actual (if Ivy-distorted) senses of self-worth work there. And so now, with trumpets, we blare to the heavens that there is a clip on their web site that is hilarious! And original! And doesn't make our life hurt!

It's a single take of Harrison Greenbaum '08 performing standup at the Comedy Studio (a brilliant Chinese restaurant attic of a comedy club where half of us spent our high school weekends getting a real education). You might recognize him as the one funny guy from Monday's comedic Titanic; we actually thought about calling him out for praise then, but decided it wouldn't be fair if we didn't also call out that Francesca chick for being so damn pleased with herself after every punchline. Anyway, enjoy it, HRTV folk; and to the rest of you, we pledge to not revisit this topic for a long while.

April 11, 2007 6:57 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Harvard , YouTube , hrtv

We've all fantasized about writing, ah, creatively to our respective alumni magazines on behalf of friends and, more likely, enemies. But very few of us have actually done it. (There was the time someone from our high school wrote in saying that a classmate -- a gentleman of a certain girth -- had hiked Everest.)

Well, Jonathan Nathanson, Yale '02, has lived the dream. And judging from the correction in the latest issue of Yale Alumni Magazine, it was well worth it:

Nathanson's struggle teaches us much about the art of making stuff up about other people:

• Make it plausible. A friend's coming out party is much more likely than, say, his getting hospitalized by a dray of furious squirrels.
• Go the extra mile. If they need an e-mail confirmation, create a dummy e-mail account. If they need verbal confirmation, phone them up. If they need the person to confirm in the flesh, develop Face/Off technology, kidnap him and adopt his life as if you were the real Yale alumnus. 
• Never, never own up. On this count, Nathanson failed miserably. He had plenty of excuses, too, starting with the obvious: that someone was in fact impersonating him, Jonathan Nathanson (which sounds like a fake name in the first place).

Now it's your turn, Vogel. Revenge submission?

April 11, 2007 8:27 AM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (19) | Read more: Yale , alumni magazines , gawker

• Brown: Friends don't let friends play music with formerly genocidal nations. [Herald]
  
• Columbia: Barnard prez to step down. Is Larry Summers busy? [Spec]
  
• Cornell: Prostitute "learned a lot" while working as call girl: selling own body is "profoundly feminist act." Discuss [Sun]
  
• Harvard: With healing balm of laughter, Simon Rich ends Crim-Poon rivalry for all time [Crimson]
• Princeton: Too Chabad [Prince]
  
• Yale: Rhodes scolarships: backlash to the backlash! [YDN]
  

April 9, 2007 4:40 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: RagTime

These are dark days for Harvard-Radcliffe Television. First, they gave you Love|Hate, a Harvard version of Best Week Ever that somehow failed to retain any of the positive qualities of Best Week Ever. Now they've applied the same winning formula to that holy of holies, The Daily Show.

We haven't seen any actual episodes of On Harvard Time -- and we fully intend to keep it that way. The five-minute trailer alone, watchable (only in the most literal sense) below, nearly made us pull an Oedipus and reach for the darning needles. A full half hour of this stuff and we'd probably emerge nothing but a mumbling husk, rocking back and forth, eyes distant.

The sad part is, On Harvard Time could have worked. Just look at something like The Onion TV, which gets the tone right. Unfortunately, OHT is a lot closer to Fox's tragic attempt at political satire, The Half Hour News Hour, only without the ideological bent. Sure, experimentation is important. It also takes courage to put yourself out there, especially in the arts. But some dogs -- even puppies like On Harvard Time -- just need to be put down out of mercy.

P.S. -- Negativity is bad for your health. Will someone please e-mail us about some good campus shows?

April 9, 2007 4:10 PM by Chris Beam | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: Harvard , hrtv

We go back and forth on who we support in ConnectU LLC v. Thefacebook, Inc., the lawsuit that alleges Facebook venturetard Mark Zuckerberg stole his billionish-dollar idea from three other Harvard undergrads: bros Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss '04 and Divya Narendra '04. On the one hand, social networking sites, including several pegged to college, were popping up all over the place back then, so it's hard to say Zuckerberg "stole" the "idea" from anyone. And Facebook took off because of its simplicity, not because of any one function that may or may not have been ganked.

On the other hand, the ConnectU guys lay out some pretty scummy facts. They asked Zuckerberg to code a remarkably similar site and made clear that they needed to race to market to succeed. The pasty recluse secretly switched to his own project, while keeping the trio under the illusion he was still toiling away for them. The launch of Facebook caught them flat-footed, and while business is business, we guess, that doesn't seem quite kosher.

Anyway, thanks to a tipster with Lexis, we've looked at some recent court filings in the case. It's a David vs. Goliath situation; to win against zillion-dollar Zuckerberg -- they're alleging fraud, breach of contract, unfair business practices, copyright infringement, etc etc etc -- the Winklevosses and Narendra need to really have their act together. Here's a portion of a Narendra deposition; see if you can spot the difference between this and the "You can't handle the truth!!" scene from "A Few Good Men":

On second thought, maybe it's not so bad Zuck took over.

April 9, 2007 9:12 AM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Facebook , Harvard , Mark Zuckerberg

Just as your corneae were about to glaze over on the subject of plagiarism, there's more! Suture those eyelids open and let IvyGate media critic Kathy Gilsinan fill you in:

You may remember this week's re-re-re-hash of the classic story in which a young writer -- in this case Yale's Makda Asrat -- jacks a few sentences from an established one, becomes the subject of a contrite-yet-self-righteous editor's note ("committed to e