A search for IvyGate's sleek Wikipedia page now yields nothing. The page underwent a deletion review and was ruled undeserving of Wikipedia's (apparently limited) real estate, for lack of notability. (To see the full details, click the image.)

The initial hater was Wikipedian "Biggspowd," who argued on August 20 that "The references listed just mention the blog in passing, not on it's own merit." Two words, Biggspowd: New Yorker. That is a magazine of repute. You are not.

A talk ensued with Biggspowd's Crabbe-and-Goyles "Corpx" and "Aarktica" questioning IG's "long term historic notability." I had been on Wikipedia when I first read this. At the time I was browsing through some of Jeopardy's 5-day champions from the early '90s, many of whom have their own pages. So. This. "Long term historic notability." You decide.

The Pontius Pilate figure was admin CitiCat, who deleted the IvyGate page on August 27, the same day that "Image:Cher_in_hell_on_wheels.jpg" and "Tourettes Guy" underwent review and a day before "Rank insignia of the Galactic Empire" and "Croatophobia" sat in cyberrelevancy court.

Back to CitiCat, who sentenced our personal Jesus to death. The CitiCat admin page reveals the provincial governor's felis sylvestris namesakes:

CitiCat calls these "two of the various fuzzy occupants at my home." CitiCat has "been using the internet pretty much continuously since 1987." CitiCat is a 38-year-old man. CitiCat kills dreams.

We want to know everyone's opinions. Is IvyGate worthy of a Wikipedia page? Do our recent highlights--the L.A. mayor's son's confessing crimes, the early leak of the USN&WR rankings--make us as historically notable as Jerome Vered, who won a week's worth of Jeopardy! in 1992? Why would the admins ever consider deleting Galactic Empire rank insignia? To whom would the Storm Troopers answer?!

Or is this some relic of the Jim Cro-atophobe Laws? Because we will play the Croatophobe card, you catfucking Cro-Magnon.

--JIM NEWELL (Remember me?)

P.S.: Someone make the new IvyGate Wikipedia page and fight out the historic notability there.

UPDATE 2:40 p.m. Thursday: The rumors on the comment boards are true. IvyGate's Wikipedia page v1.2 returned in the wee hours of August 30. The hero was Wikipedia admin Wikidemo, famous for creating the Francis Ford Coppola, Redheaded Slut and--yes--"Impossible is Nothing" pages. Wikidemo, according to the IvyGate article's history, restored and updated it to "overcome any 'single news event' concerns." It is much more thorough than the old article, devoting a long paragraph to Chris Beam's dad.

CitiCat, meanwhile, has suffered his greatest defeat in 20 years of Internetting.

August 28, 2007 5:48 PM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (41) | Read more: citicat , croatophobic admins , jeopardy , new yorker , wikipedia

August 27, 2007 6:01 PM by Nick Summers | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: IvyGate

August 25, 2007 11:38 PM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Drinking , bums , clapter , guest editors , links , recap , slacking , tasty , the clap

"I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers," he says. "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction."

August 25, 2007 8:14 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Cornel West , Harvard , Larry Summers , Princeton , Shirley Tilghman , guest editors , music

• MetaEzra: Cornell continues to top every single off-beat rankings list, this time for community service and social mobility.

• Cornell Sun: Cornellians also top the "oh shit RIAA is ruining my life" list, as 16 students from last May's file sharing fiasco get slapped with new lawsuits.  Elliott Back offers a few more four-letter words.

• Associated Press: Facebook's newest rival, Playboy U, gives a whole new meaning to "poke."

• Insider Higher Ed: How to make a college student like a textbook: Just add pictures!

• Columbia Daily Spectator: Somewhere, Nellie McKay is smiling.

August 24, 2007 7:29 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Columbia , Cornell , Facebook , RIAA , guest editors , rankings

New information on David Light, champion of the second amendment, has been released and places much of what has been written and said in context. Sure, there was the misunderstanding with the shots into the ceiling and not-so-subtle death threats, but Newsday reports that the kid's really an environmentalist at heart:

The affidavit cites e-mails to friends in which Light allegedly describes throwing pounds of chemicals into New Haven Harbor and the ocean to create explosions.

In an e-mail to a friend in February, Light wrote that he had just received a shipment of a highly explosive chemical.
"I'm very very excited!," he wrote, according to the affidavit. "So... how soon do you want to do something dangerous??? cause it would be very easy to convince me to go out tonight."
In another e-mail in February to a Yale student, Light began by writing "Yea, haven't shot anyone lately," the affidavit states.

"Unfortunately because of the timing and the environment, this is going to be projected on a larger stage than it really merits," Dow said. "We're talking about a college student who allegedly made significant errors of judgment."

--MICHAEL MORISY 

August 24, 2007 9:58 AM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Yale , boom goes the dynamite , david light , freudian , guest editors , guns , new haven

*[Ed. note: Nick here. IvyGate ticks off the subjects of its coverage fairly regularly. Usually, it's easy to parry their take-this-down demands and libel threats because they act like bullies and jerks. In 12 months, there's been one exception: Steven Roy Goodman, who says our characterization below is unfair. And after the exceedingly polite, rational and productive conversation we just had, I have to agree. He seems like a stand-up guy, and, thinking back to my own miserable college application days, it would've been good to have someone like Goodman around to make the process sane and bearable.

Anyway: It's our policy to never delete stuff -- if we make an error of fact or taste, we correct it transparently, not by disappearing stuff off the site. Were we to ever make an exception, it'd be for nice guy Steven Roy Goodman. NS]

The college applicant arms race for increasing levels of achievement, polish, and panache has a new weapon: mistakes.  An Associated Press article reports that snake-oil salesman* college counselor Steven Roy Goodman "tells clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their application," like bumping a low SAT score up a few hundred— I mean, with a carefully-chosen typo.

What Mr. Goodman is going for is "authenticity" — an increasingly hot selling point in college admissions as a new year rolls around. In an age when applicants all seem to have volunteered, played sports, and traveled abroad, colleges are wary of slick packaging. They're drawn to high grades and test scores, of course, but also to humility and to students who really got something out of their experiences, not just those trying to impress colleges with theiréreséme'.

Authentic typo from the original text.

Continue reading "Hot New Admissions Accessory: Mistakes (UPDATED)" »

August 23, 2007 10:49 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (16) | Read more: Admissions , guest editors

Uproar at conservative education blog Phi Beta Cons (part of the National Review Online) over the revelation that the Harvard Crimson has literally hundreds of editors.  800 last year, to be exact -- that's one in every eight undergrads.  Beta-Con Travis Kavulla, Harvard '06 and former Crimson editor (the real kind) explains,

The designation was meant to convey voting membership in the editorial board, rather than the term's more current meaning of supervisory control. ... The real credential to look for, should you encounter an "editor," is not whether the person is merely a "Crimson editor"—which means he's completed a semester-long "comp" (a training regime which used to stand for "competition" and now stands merely for "competence": no joke) and has a full by-line and a vote in editorial-board meetings.

Fellow Beta-Con and Harvard Law grad David French suspects resume padding:

I myself used to hold the title of "editor" of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a proudly conservative publication. When I was in school (1991-1994), everyone who helped edit articles was called an "editor," and we were explicitly told that the journal’s leadership gave us that title to "make our resumes look better."

August 23, 2007 7:50 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Harvard Crimson , guest editors , politics

Continue reading "Ivy League Beach Read: Secret Society Girl" »

August 23, 2007 2:33 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (15) | Read more: Diana Peterfreund , Princeton , Secret Societies , Yale , celebrities , guest editors , skull and bones

Though it originated as a method for getting crusty old professors up to speed, Beloit College's "Class of 2011 Mindset" list is, to our text-messaged-addled minds, more like one of those ubiquitous "You know you're a child of the 90's if..." Facebook groups.  Class of '11ers can invert its meaning to get a sense both of themselves and what they've missed.  For example,

20.  Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.

27.  Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.

55.  MTV has never featured music videos.

Continue reading "What the Class of 2011 Doesn't Know" »

August 23, 2007 12:08 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Class of 2011 , beloit , guest editors

You know how, every time new quantitative info on Ivy League competitiveness comes out, people joke about penis-measuring contests?

--MAUREEN O'CONNOR

August 22, 2007 11:11 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Harvard , Harvard Crimson , guest editors

While Facebook recently had a minor security-related glitch, ConnectU's flaw is far more serious. A malicious attacker could use this to easily break into user accounts, damage or delete internal databases, or probably much worse. ... This bug is one of the most elementary security bugs that can exist in a PHP website. It's a clear sign of a shoddy, amateurish effort; my coworker Dave Fayram, a web engineering expert, describes it as "shameful."

August 21, 2007 8:17 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: ConnectU , Stanford , guest editors

Noting that "identifying America's best colleges is about as exciting and useful as naming your favorite luxury sedan (Audi)," Radar breaks out their Back-to-School "Worst Colleges in America" list.  Naturally, the only Ivy to meet Radar's rigorous low standards is "America's Best Safety School," Cornell, where "low academic satisfaction, an oppressive Greek system, and a boring host town have inspired dozens of depressed students to hurl themselves over campus gorges."  Distinguished alumni Ann Coulter and Bill Maher earn negative points for their alma mater, as do "the ugliest girls in the Ivy League" (in Cornell's defense, that is why Ithaca College exists). And then:

"I haven't overheard a single intellectual conversation in three years, unless it was between Indian or Asian students," writes an architecture major on Students Review.

Come on, Radar -- you're not supposed to ask architecture students about the social life; they only leave their Rand Hall cells to stock up with a visit to the local fraternity coke dealer!  Try the cool-looking dude in the cowboy hat from the Orientation 2007 guide.  He's totally macking the hot goth chick in the front.  And you know he and the Asian guy talk Sartre all the time.

More "worsts," after the jump.

Continue reading "It's Opposite Day! Cornell "Hottest" and "Worst"" »

August 20, 2007 9:17 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (20) | Read more: Cornell , guest editors , orientation

Penn grad Zachary Michaelson lands on the cover of Trader Monthly's "Top 30 Under 30" edition this month (link goes to companion website, Trader Daily).  Which is cool for Zach, but pretty sucky for Trader Monthly, seeing how their cover boy was already out of his job at Fortress Investment by the issue's debut.

Actually, it's not that cool for Zach, either.  (Did you really think he'd get off so easily?) Now he's the laughingstock of Wall Street blog DealBreaker, where former co-workers are dishing on how "totally full of it" the alleged wunderkind was.  Some claim Michaelson never even held the position "portfolio manager."  Then again, his CNBC interview billed him "global portfolio manager specializing correlation modeling seeking trades that are at once global, macro, and relative value," so the two-word title is a sin of omission, if anything.  DealBreaker readers have already christened Zach the next Aleksey Vayner.  Impossible is nothing?  Or a ridiculously ill-timed job loss, paired with the modicum of tool-itude we have come to expect from basically everyone on Wall Street -- especially the young hot ones?

We were inclined towards the latter and willing to give Zach a break.  But then one of his Kappa Sigma brothers from Penn wrote in:

He was... kicked out of the house for trying to start a fight with his roommate with a hammer because his roommate was smoking in the room.  When his roommate pushed him away, Michaelson called the police.  He also threatened to expose violations by the House if we didn't let him live in the chapter house.

Silly boy -- homoerotic frat fights are for paddles, not hammers!  Sources conflict as to whether Michaelson was kicked out, or quit as soon as he realized he could not secure the 5 (out of about 40) votes necessary to maintain house residency.  We're still wondering how assault with a deadly weapon and the threat of blackmail amounted to the support of a single Kappa Sig (apparently there were three).

View Michaelson's CNBC interview and more "Top 30 Under 30" tidbits, after the jump.

Continue reading "But really, will there ever be another Aleksey?" »

August 18, 2007 10:16 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (25) | Read more: Penn , aleksey vayner , guest editors , kappa sigma , zachary michaelson

• Newsweek: Facebook "is as much a part of campus as finals, iPods and beer."

• Huffington Post: Newsweek is as cutting edge as our great-aunt Hilda who wears orthopedic shoes.

• Time: Red Bull and video games are Princeton's new cocaine.  No, seriously.

• The Dartmouth: Rich alumni group launches public attack on trustee board policy, starting at the New York Times' home page.

August 18, 2007 5:09 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Dartmouth , Facebook , Princeton , guest editors

Nadia Abu El-Haj, assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard is the author of Facts on the Ground, which questions the archaeological record behind Israel's Jewish origin.  The ancient kingdom of Israel and Judah, Abu El-Haj writes, are "pure political fabrication."  Citing lack of academic rigor and throwing the "pure... fabrication" label back at Abu El-Haj, the "Deny Nadia Abu El-Haj tenure" petition had 1240 signatures at press time, nearly all of which were accompanied by the undersigned's academic qualifications, mostly from Columbia and Barnard.  Petition author Paula Stern Barnard '82, runs the Stern Group, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C. runs blog A Soldier's Mother.

Some say Stern's position in international business and policy as the mother of an Israeli soldier gives her petition ulterior motives (edit: whoa. this stuff gets crazier by the minute.).  "Grant Nadia Abu El-Haj Tenure" had 266 signatures at press time, nearly all boasting impressive academic affiliations.  "Grant" also gestures to racial prejudice, claiming Abu El-Haj "has been singled out from among many other authors who make the same points essentially because of her last name."  "Grant" petition author Paul Manning of Trent University writes, "We believe that these attacks on Ms. Abu El-Haj are part of an orchestrated witch-hunt (reminiscent of course of McCarthyism) against politically unpopular ideas."

Manning is the second Ivy academic to cry "McCarthyism" this week.  On Tuesday Harvard sociologist Neil Goss announced his finding that "A greater percentage of social scientists today feel that their academic freedom has been threatened than was the case during the McCarthy Era," with Middle East researchers leading the quashed-freedom brigade.  Yesterday Yale University Press narrowly escaped a lawsuit that, in the UK, forced Cambridge University Press to pulp its stock of Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, by Matthew Levitt (meaning the American edition remains in print).  Abu El-Haj's criticism comes mostly heavily from Jewish organizations, whereas Levitt's detractor is KinderUSA, a pro-Palestine non-profit that claimed libel.

EDIT no. 1: Thanks Professor Manning. Ivy or not, you can edit our essays any day.

EDIT no. 2:  This is ridiculously complex.  Just go to the comments; Paula and Paul are letting their hair down there.

Continue reading "Tenure Wars and Burned Books: Middle East Meets Ivy League" »

August 18, 2007 4:54 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Barnard , Columbia , Matthew Levitt , Nadia Abu El-Haj , Yale University Press , guest editors

Rudy Giuliani's kids may not be on the trail with him this time around (the above images feature son Andrew at Giuliani's mayoral inauguration in 1994), but the presence of his daughter Caroline, Obama-curious Harvard '11, was felt at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire yesterday.  A New Hampshire woman asked how the ex-mayor could expect voters' support when he did not even have the support of his children.  The Associated Press reports,

"I love my family very, very much and will do anything for them. There are complexities in every family in America," Giuliani said calmly and quietly. "The best thing I can say is kind of, 'Leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone.'"

This from the guy who said he'd bring his wife to cabinet meetings.  Judith Nathan aside, the question of how much scrutiny politicians' children deserve -- or ought to be shielded from -- remains hotly contested.  Caroline's Facebook affiliations seem relatively benign to us; but what about Antonio Villaraigosa Jr. bragging about his powers of persuasion with the LAPD?  (Dad Antonio Sr. is the mayor of LA)  Are there times when the sins of the child reflect on the father?  And what value do the "sins" of a teenager talking big on the internet have, anyway? 

And what about poor Chelsea Clinton, who had the terrible misfortune of going through puberty while her dad was in the White House?!  Let's set a ground rule:  Kids with braces should be off-limits.  --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

August 17, 2007 10:29 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: Antonio Villaraigosa , Caroline Giuliani , Chelsea Clinton , Rudy Giuliani

After stinging criticism that the U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings were "dubious" and possibly even damaging to low-income students (leading to many safety schools small liberal arts colleges boycotting the whole process), the magazine vowed greater transparency and "substantial changes in methodology". Today, we can see what a radical changes Mort Zuckerman has wrought (or not), and how the results are sure to send the insecure into spasms of self-doubt once more.

Here's how the Ivies stacked up:

1. Princeton University (NJ) (2007: Ranked 1st)
2. Harvard University (MA)  (2007: Ranked 2nd)
3. Yale University (CT) (2007: Ranked 3rd)
5.   University of Pennsylvania (2007: Ranked 7th)
9.  Columbia University (NY)   (2007: Ranked 9th)
11. Dartmouth College (NH) (2007: Ranked 9th)
12. Cornell University (NY)  (2007: Ranked 12th)
14. Brown University (RI) (2007: Ranked 15th)

See the release in all its embargoed glory and the top 25 schools after the jump.

--MICHAEL MORISY

Continue reading "BREAKING: Columbia vanquishes Dartmouth in U.S.N.&W.R. College Rankings, world stops" »

August 16, 2007 11:02 AM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (226) | Read more: Columbia , Dartmouth , Harvard , Princeton , Yale , rankings , ridiculous headline

Complete the sentence: Cornell's rejection rate is artificially high due to ________.

    (a) Confusion regarding 7-college system and related application process
    (b) Sheer idiocy of its applicants

MetaEzra faithful will recall last year we were tickled pink when it turned out that over a thousand applicants to Cornell failed to indicate what college at Cornell they wanted to apply to. ... Well, it turns out they did it again. This year over 1,300 high school seniors lost any chance of gaining admission to Cornell before even submitting their application. That's close to five percent of all applicants! And, as a result, assuming you took the time to actually completely fill out the entire application form, the acceptance rate to Cornell is a couple of percentage points higher than what will be reported in U.S. News and World Report.

Compare notes and discuss amongst yourselves.

[MetaEzra] --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

August 15, 2007 9:25 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (19) | Read more: Cornell , guest editors

Earlier this month, hundreds of universities rallied behind their Israeli counterparts and signed a petition in opposition to a proposed UK boycott of that nation's academics. The presidents of Dartmouth, Cornell, and Princeton all signed on to the statement that Columbia President Lee Bollinger drafted. Heck, even Penn President Amy Gutmann, of faux suicide bomber photo op fame, signed on. Sure, it's mostly just a feel-good resolution that might actually make things worse, but these kinds of things are the bread and butter of academia. Religion masquerading as science? Sign a petition. ROTC knocking at your campus' doorstep? Sign a petition. A rape and/or use of racial epithets may or may not have occurred at a lacrosse team and/or private gathering? Sign a petition.

Except Harvard President Drew Faust does not roll that way, especially not in a way that would have her name printed a good 4 pts. smaller than this riff-raff Bollinger. You can almost feel the frigidity:

Finally, while I am most comfortable expressing my views on such matters directly in my own words as opposed to signing group statements or petitions, I obviously join many colleagues throughout the international academic community in denouncing unequivocally an action that would serve no purpose and would fundamentally violate the academic freedoms we must defend at all costs.

In other words, Faust may agree with what you say, but will defend to the death her right to say it separately. And indeed, a good 15 minutes of intense Google searching could not find a single, lone petition or joint letter that Faust has signed.

Of course, all that is still a bit more admirable than what's been insinuated as Yale's reason for not signing on: Fear of alienating big donors. Come on, Yale, you've got your racially-charged stereotypes all backwards!

August 15, 2007 11:03 AM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: Columbia , Harvard , Israel , Palestine , Yale , guest editors , petitions

August 14, 2007 2:39 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: ConnectU , Facebook , guest editors

Sorry for the sparse postings yesterday, but we went all Howard Hughes upon hearing of the latest killer: Pollution. As in, it kills 40 percent of everyone; more than AIDS, heart disease, and Dateline: To Catch A Predator combined. Scary stuff, but Cornell prof David Pimentel says it's so, and his curriculum vitae is so big and long we're too self-conscious to argue. Plus, he had some hippie grad students read, like, a 120 trillion published papers on the topic, so we're pretty sure he knows what's up.

Basically, Pimentel theorizes that starvation and unsanitary living conditions equal death. And this whole time we thought that combination was just typical college living! It turns out that there are whole countries, like India, which are just big frat mixers.

But if you read between the lines, Pimentel's beef isn't really with pollution. It's with all those pesky people MAKING the pollution. A few years back, Pimentel was one of those Sierra Club candidates dubbed "xenophobic" and "bigoted" by reactionaries when part of his platform for being elected to the board of directors was closing off the borders and regulating the U.S. population. While we hear that sort of talk is common with the plebes, it didn't sit well with the ivory towers of the Southern Poverty Law Center, MoveOn, and the Anti-Defamation League.  Pimentel's bid ultimately failed as those groups tastefully compared his ideas to those of the Nazi party (despite the cult-leaderish picture above, that characterization may have been a wee bit harsh).

So what does the good professor prescribe? In a speech a few years back, he hypothesized that the total sustainable world population should be about two billion peeps, a little less than a third of what we have to deal with now. Sounds about right to us ... Any more than that, and driving the Jersey turnpike gets damn near impossible. --MICHAEL MORISY 

August 14, 2007 1:59 PM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Cornell , Ithaca Urinal , Marshall Applewhite , big and long , cult , guest editors , nazis , population

Of course, Columbia has a sterling reputation as far as kickbacks go, and Kathleen McDermott, Columbia's director of global programs, insists there is nothing untoward here. The trips provide "real access," she said, "in a way you wouldn't necessarily have ... if I were on my own." And by "real access," we'll assume she means real Habanos cigars on real Cuban beaches, sipping drinks with real tiny umbrellas in them, while CU cashes in on each student who goes abroad.

Admittedly, however, Columbia does have the tough job of making sure that these foreign institutions are up to snuff. A few years ago, Columbia student Brendan Jones ignored warnings from the global programs office and went to Oxford University, the Brit equivalent of Phoenix University Online. Oxford was not on Columbia's list of allowed schools; to avoid repeating his junior year, Jones was forced to transfer permanently to the third-bit alma mater of 47 Nobel prize winners and 25 British Prime Ministers.

Have any horror stories or, better yet, personal experience in getting your wheel greased? Anonymity still guaranteed at ivygate.guest@gmail.com --MICHAEL MORISY

August 13, 2007 6:20 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (14) | Read more: Columbia , Oxford , guest editors , study abroad

The hot 25 opens with "Hottest Ivy" Cornell University:

Unlike the other Ivies, Cornell is a land-grant college emphasizing problem solving as well as scholarly debate. The university boasts a world-class engineering college and top-flight liberal arts, science and fine arts. The hotel school is considered the world's best. Cornellians, proud of the variety on campus, point to the president, David Skorton, a cardiologist, jazz musician and computer scientist who is the first in his family to have a college education.

"Hottest for Rejecting You" goes to the crimson prude, Harvard, for rejecting 91.03% of applicants for the class of 2011.  Though Columbia College proved marginally more frigid by rejecting 91.05% of her high school suitors, sluttish acceptance rates at the Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science, and School of General Studies, reduced net exclusivity.

Of course, the hot Ivies hold not a candle to "Hottest in the War on Terror" winner New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which is "in some ways the Los Alamos of a new age, this time focusing on searching suitcases and disabling roadside explosives rather than building the A-bomb."  Majoring in airport security, minoring in explosive-sniffing dogs, the average NMT student also has robust social life, due to the availability of pick-up lines like "Want to help me study for full-body cavity search class?"  Works like a charm. 

EDIT:  Looks like "Hottest for Liberal Arts" Princeton University isn't so hot at teaching reading skills, because I totally missed its inclusion in the 25 hot colleges list. Thanks to Cayuga and MITBitch for noticing.  Newsweek emphasizes Princeton's grant-only financial aid department and intellectual life. --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

August 12, 2007 5:06 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (60) | Read more: Cornell , Harvard , Jon Stewart , New Mexico , Princeton , guest editors

Or, so says indie cabaret star Nellie McKay.

The kind of twee singer/songwriter lass that male hipsters cream their tightest pants over, McKay is a Manhattan School of Music drop-out turned jazz-pop sensation based in Harlem.  And she hates Columbia's president!

New York Magazine caught one of McKay's shows last week:

If McKay, a passionate animal-rights activist and anti-corporate leftist who has lived in Harlem for most of her life, gave the night a theme, it was her disgust with Columbia University, both for its research on lab animals and its aggressive plans for massive expansion in West Harlem. She urged the audience to go home and type “Columbia is an asshole” into their search engines to see how many hits it got. "Is Columbia racist?" she asked, then, answering herself, said, "Yes." But she saved most of her bile for the school’s president, Lee Bollinger. “He just looks like a big, dumb jock — a doofus,” she declared.

Oh, it's on.  Fight!  Fight!  Fight!  We fully expect Columbia PR to come out with a statement incorporating the phrase "big fat stupidhead" any day now.  As for McKay, well, we'd make fun of her, but she's sort of tiny and adorable (did we mention said Bollinger-attack took place during a set in which she played the ukulele?) so the whole situation is more like a little puppy that thinks it can kill you by nipping at your heels.  To which we respond, "awww cute, let me scratch behind your ears and give you some free publicity, pookie." --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

August 12, 2007 1:59 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Columbia , Lee Bollinger, , Nellie McKay , guest editors

I'm Michael Morisy, Best/Worst Motto U. '07, former Sun editor and freelancer extraordinaire /cut-rate data entry specialist. I used to cover crime in Ithaca, but it just didn't compete with Philly, so I gave up that and decided to give gossip blogging a go. Like T.I./T.I.P., I emigrated from the South, so keep your water bottles/nasty comments to yourself, and we'll all get along great.

 

I'm Maureen O'Connor, Princeton '08, ex-lit-mag-editor and international slave to fashion,  now mostly glued to my computer as a regular at Shanghaiist (you know, the part of Shanghai that's really close to Princeton, NJ?) and some-time contributor to IvyGate.  Superficial and ethically dubious internet gossip is my calling.  So, if you have any, [insert witty tip-pandering comment here] :  

ivygate.guest@gmail.com

August 12, 2007 12:55 PM by Michael Morisy | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Cornell , Princeton , god , gossip , guest editors , truth

Our maligned guest stint has come to a close, ladies and gentlemen (we can hear you cheering already), and we're happy to say that it's been grand. We hope we were able to keep you from falling asleep during office meetings, at the very least.

They say it's dull in the summertime, but our two weeks has seen its fair share of scandalicious stories: Caroline Giuliani and Lucy Morrow Caldwell went head to head, the Ivy nerds took revenge, Hillary Clinton showed how she answered the voice crying in the wilderness, Yale's Beta Theta Pi fraternity went the way of the dodo, the Daily Pennsylvanian took heat from one of its own, a four-person crowd of fire-breathing bigots took Ithaca by storm and Cornell was simultaneously voted best and worst motto in all of academia.

(Oh, a few more things: sex, Kazakhs, gambling,