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.

Amuse yourselves.

Hi, this is Michael, the guy who disappeared? Well, it’s that time again, when Nick and Chris, sorely disappointed, brush off the old and usher in two new guest editors to amuse and delight. Oh, the times we had: We watched the claws come out and saw the blood of source code spill. We watched as Columbia, once again, jacked its own students while Cornell’s mystic buzz machine won every award, ever. We even read a book! And listened to rap! And discussed, like, world politics or something! Oh, and we discovered that the worst people in the world are really –SPOILER ALERT!!!– into ranking themselves. There was some other stuff, too, but I’m tired of typing and you’re tired of reading.

Maureen would have contributed to this post, but the trauma of editing IvyGate made her need to go out and drink heavily tonight. She wishes our readers the best, even the one who called her a whore, because she’s forgiving like that.

Seriously, it was a lot of fun, so be nice to the new guys. We hear they’re even better than us!

–MICHAEL MORISY and MAUREEN O’CONNOR

The Ivy League’s resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom Cornel West returns to hipster-hop with the release of his second rap album, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, featuring the likes of Prince, Talib Kweli, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Rhymefest, and the late Gerald Levert.  Which is impressive and all, but seriously, where’s Kanye?  This is totally up his alley.  They even have the same last name!

Professor West’s first album, 2001’s Sketches of my Culture, predicated the professor’s public spat with Harvard ex-prez Larry Summers and the professor’s subsequent break from the university in favor of Princeton.  Though his new boss, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, has yet to comment on Never Forget, West thinks she’ll be hipper to the project than Summers was.  In a Boston Globe article West speculates,

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

A vocal opponent of misogyny and hedonism in contemporary hip-hop, West portrays his music as a “danceable education” reaching towards the genre’s socially progressive roots.  “We’ll go from the bling-bling to Let Freedom Ring” Brother West raps in “Bushonomics,” before giving a shout-out to militant beat poet Gil Scott-Heron.  The track features New York MC and black progressive Talib Kweli denouncing “voter registration with no scope of education,” “whore-mongerers,” and “war-mongerers” alike.  Listen to it, and Prince collaboration “Dear Mr. Man,” below. Bushonomics Cornel West and Talib Kweli Dear Mr. Man Cornel West and Prince –MAUREEN O’CONNOR
 

• 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.

–MAUREEN O’CONNOR

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.

Eureka! The Harbor area is poised to spontaneously combust at any moment anyways, and Light’s just helping it along, similar to controlled burns for forest fires. But as the charges leveled against the suspended Eli go from amateur gun collector/ceiling artist to bomb developer/raging pyromaniac, we find the kid not so much malicious as just unable to get past that Freudian fascination 13-year-old boys have with 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.

But it’s not just the man trying to dim the Light: Momma is, too. Newsday quotes an e-mail Light sent to a friend: “my mom saw them and was like ‘are those tank shells for the new gun that we’re getting for you?! Can we reverse the order?!’ It was pretty funny… they are very large bullets…”. Haha, silly mom! Tank shells? That’s crazy talk woman! At least until little Davey gets a tank to shoot them from. Meanwhile, the defense is trying to play it off as shenanigans :

“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.”

Boys will be boys, Your Honor, boys will be boys. Go read the article. It’s worth it.

–MICHAEL MORISY 

*[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.

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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.”

French ties the herd-of-editors tactic to the downfall of meritocracy, or maybe the annoying availability health care for co-eds (would Mr. French prefer it to be less available?).  We just want to know how many editors signed off on this, and whether they received promotions for it. –MAUREEN O’CONNOR

Elite upper education is the new black. Or, more accurately, it’s the new Bratz doll, with tarted-up student heroines taking over the chick lit shelf and associated mascara-wearing media.  It all started when Gilmore Girls‘ Rory went to Yale.  Or when Curtis Sittenfeld’s Groton-inspired novel, Prep, hit the bestseller list.  It could have ended with Kaavya’s plagiarism scandal, but the ensuing discussion of stressed-out, too-pressured teens (and hints at an unabashed sense of entitlement) is all part of the Ivy League mystique that is so-hot-right-now.  And so the paperback-craving masses continue to demand CVs with their fiction.

Enter Diana Peterfreund, Yale ‘01, Geology/Literature double major and certified hottie (her swelling bosom appears on several romance novel covers), author of the work-in-progress Secret Society Girl series, chronicling the plight of a smart, sassy “Eli University” student tapped by ultra-intimidating secret society “Rose & Grave.”  Two SSG novels are in stores now; a third is on the way.

There’s a one-to-one correlation between reality and Peterfreund’s fiction, right down the last roman numeral behind each Digger’s (as R&G members are known) name.  Crib sheet including excerpts and a couple spoilers, after the jump.
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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.

The entire 70-item list after the jump.
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