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

Harmless enough. But then came the commenters. At first there were only high schoolers. But at some point — it’s hard to say exactly when — the joke turned on them, the tipping point tipped. A Davidson student in early March became the first college person to weigh in on the issue, and then, as word leaked across campuses from NYU to Notre Dame to BC to Skidmore, la deluge:

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

By early April, the board was getting dozens of comments a day, in pitch-perfect imitations of high-school-speak (that would, incidentally, make Don Imus proud):

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.

And so on. The group currently has 5,742 members, 900-plus wall posts, and in the photo gallery, there’s 8th grade “hoez” “mackin” on 9th graders by the “snak macheeenz.” Does this have anything to do with the Ivy League? No. We just wanted you to see it.

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.

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.

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.”

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]

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.

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.

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.

• 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]

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.

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.