No, actually that headline is totally false. It belongs to the more interesting article the WSJ should have written. But in any case Collegiate does have the highest percentage of students who enroll in either "Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins" in case that motley group means anything to you.

In this article, which is clearly aimed at soliciting the self-satisfied clucks of its affluent readership, the WSJ employs what is possibly the most dubious methodology of all time in order to produce a fancy ranking of high-schools. See if this exercise makes any sense to you:

Weekend Journal looked at the freshman classes at eight top colleges -- Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins -- and compiled a list of the students' high-school alma maters. The survey ranked the high schools based on the number of students sent to those eight colleges, divided by the high school's number of graduates in 2007, limiting the scope to schools that had senior classes of at least 50. The "success rate" column represents the percentage of students in each high-school's graduating class that attended one of our chosen colleges.

Pomona, seriously? In any case, all of the usual suspects put in an appearance, NYC private schools (Collegiate, Trinity, Chapin, Brearley), New England boarding schools (Andover, Exeter, Groton, Deerfield), the famous magnet schools (TJ, that school in Illinois that's like TJ) , and the schools that make local sense (Princeton High School) But there are also some schools nobody saw coming, like Daewoo Foreign Language High School, located in Seoul.

After the jump -- the chart of schools, with juicy glosses like, "The school, founded in 1635, sent 25 kids to Harvard--more than any other high school on our list," and "Many students at the Jewish day school spend a year in Israel before college, which the school says may affect its numbers in our survey."

Continue reading "According to the WSJ, Collegiate School is Best Ivy Feeder" »

November 30, 2007 9:00 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (66) | Read more: Ivy League , wsj

• Brown: "Brown students pretend not to be nerds, but they really are," jokes English and medieval studies professor who lectures on Elvish and Orkish languages.
  
• Brown: But nerds still have sex. So go and get your free and confidential HIV test today!
  
• Dartmouth: "Outsiders who don't understand the intricacies of Dartmouth's social life sometimes dismiss our fine educational institute as a hotbed of debauchery for drunkards and alcoholics."
  
• Dartmouth: Well it's hard to break stereotypes when you devote an article on hangover remedies...
  
• Dartmouth: ...hangover myths...
  
• Dartmouth:...and on shameful morning after stories, all in the same damn issue.
  
• Princeton: American farms are as evil as investment banks.
  
• Penn: Perhaps all the crime is taking its toll on applicant numbers this year.

-- Compiled by James Yu 

November 30, 2007 7:40 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: RagTime

Okay, so, Cornell seems to be far less freaky than its other Ivy League brethren. Columbia apparently has a sex club. AND WE HAVE MORE STUDENTS! We currently have one girl and two guys. We want male inquiries, as it is an orgy.

Cornell is lame. I'm only in college for another year. I want to do something crazy. Let's start an orgy or at the very least, a foursome. This post, then, is looking for a male participant in an orgy with me and other people. Please only straight men for this event. The men have requested that it's a blanket requirement, I guess.

Let's get this straight: One girl wants a herd of anonymous straight men to clusterfuck her, and since the dudes aren't interested in touching each other, we assume they'll be taking turns on her? Wasn't there a Law & Order: SVU about this? "I'm incrediblyyyyyyyyyy sexual," our darling nymph adds. "And bored."

For your titillation and/or terror, post preserved in full after jump.

Continue reading "Cornell Orgy Planner: "I'd prefer this not get awkward"" »

November 29, 2007 8:59 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Cornell , Sex

• Cornell: Place called "Ithaca Gun Factory" not as cool, lead-free as it sounds. Also, not a gym.
• Dartmouth: "Outrageous and even at times egregious, Young Ivy touched on everything from having to cram for finals...to crazy dance parties with girls who have “turkey in the back and are wide at the hips.”
• Harvard: Ouch, that's a cruel lede to read if you're Martin S. Feldstein
  
• Harvard: Good article, better headline.
  
• Penn: Is there any political gesture more useless than a quilt?
  
• Princeton: A tearful coda to a once whimsical tale of public urination.
  
• Yale: "Yale oughtn’t be thus," concludes op/ed on classism at Yale.
  

November 29, 2007 2:00 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: RagTime

Let us contemplate the possibilities.

1. You're out of sunblock and don't want a burn; you happen to find a can of black paint next to your swim trunks in the back of your closet.

• Not okay to wear blackface.
  

2. You are going to a "Vaudeville" theme party but you can't find your ventriloquist's dummy; your goth girlfriend offers to share her black makeup.

• Still not okay to wear blackface.
  

3. You are a student at Princeton University planning a run for Student Government president. It is Halloween, and you think it'd be funny to be "Peter Pan's Shadow" by painting your entire body black and running around terrorizing people. You don't mean to be racist, and you have tons of black friends, anyway, and they all think it's okay.

• Definitely not okay to wear blackface, especially if there are cameras present.
  

PUSG presidential candidate (the Prince says he's a shoo-in) Josh Weinstein '09 found himself in Blackface Situation #3 freshman year, and judged it okay to post the shady pictures on his blog, complete with Malcolm X and Rosa Parks references. Though Weinstein removed the material more than a year ago, a "Concerned Undergraduate" (who set up an e-mail account solely for the purpose of anonymously tipping this story) sent it to us this week, which means "Concerned" saw and copied the material years ago and has been sitting on it ever since.

Smear campaign? Inigo Montoya-level vendetta? As for how this will affect Weinstein's candidacy, let us not forget Princeton's election last year of president Rob "Rodent-Roast" Biederman, pyromaniacal torturer of squirrels (who only had to beat Grant "Get-Off-Our-Campus" Gittlin, banned from student housing due to extreme disciplinary disturbance). Which is to say, Princeton has a high tolerance for faux pas.

View the pictures, blog entry, and Weinstein's new statement on the matter, after the jump.

Continue reading "Is ever OK to wear black paint on your white face?" »

November 29, 2007 10:24 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (98) | Read more: Princeton , student government

The above photo comes from Gawker and shows Harvard student Hillary Dobbs, daughter of CNN national anchor and eminent xenophobe Lou Dobbs, kissing a girl. Which is a crime, you know. As long as she's not kissing a Mexican, right Lou? 

November 29, 2007 8:29 AM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Harvard , famous daughters , lou dobbs

• Brown: "Brown is not a random sample of the population as a whole" and other shocking tales.
• Columbia: Probably time to delete that "Soulja Boy" you downloaded off Kazaa.
• Cornell: Someone sounds a bit jealous!
• Dartmouth: How could booking two rap acts called The Cool Kids and Young Ivy instead of Spoon ever not turn out successfully?
• Harvard: "Bryan had put on his Harvard-preppy look: white button-up, Harvard sweatshirt, tight jeans. An earring glinted in each ear. He was ready."
• Penn: "Some think he is a missing person or the victim of a violent crime. Others suggest he's an American Apparel model"
• Yale: How is watching The Bachelor not inherently the show's most crippling problem?

November 28, 2007 11:28 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: RagTime

Every year or so, I wonder what Vail Bloom, Princeton ’04 and former Maxim “Hometown Hottie,” is up to. For a while she was really into making out at Princeton’s Tiger Inn, where “it's always dim, which is convenient for sketchy make-out sessions in the corner." More recently, she’s been “mentoring young people and tutor[ing] middle and high school students… [and] running and hiking.”

Thanks to you, tipsters, I wonder no more. Vail now plays Assistant District Attorney Heather Stevens on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. Here’s a clip of her being all sexy and lawyerly.

It’s great to watch people making it, especially when they’re super-hot and they’re not actually making it. More incredibly well-acted scenes and clips after the jump.

Continue reading "Princeton Hometown Hottie Really Making It in Hollywood" »

November 27, 2007 4:37 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (19) | Read more: Princeton , famous people

Being a female at Penn has never been harder. On top of your average undergrad milieu of date rape and roofies, the ladies of Phila also have to worry about wife-killing professors, penis-wagging cops, and now, panty-sniffing stalkers.

Penn '08 Diexia Wang is out on a $200,000 bail for stalking half a dozen undergrad ladies and running off with their underpants and "high-end purses," the latter of which is slightly baffling since we assume lady-stalking means he is straight? Maybe Mr. Wang needed the designer accoutrements for toting around his growing coterie of stolen a-cooter-ments.

De Wang's Panty Party came to its dramatic end when Mr. Wang snuck into the room of a female resident of Harold C. Meyer Hall using a stolen dorm key (which is legitimately creepy, so I'll refrain from using a pun for a second). The victim's roommate probably received the shock of her life upon witnessing a strange male enter the room with a key (and maybe a Louis Vuitton purse in the crook of his arm), and called the cops. Wang was charged with burglary, criminal trespassing, harassment, stalking, and theft.

News coverage of Wang-gate is worth watching, if only to witness the effect of anchorman gravitas on the word "panties." As for commentary, we think the blonde who giggled and rolled her eyes at the camera said it best:

Ohmigod. That is SO. WEIRD. ...I'm glad I live NOT on campus. [emphasis hers; capitalized rendering ours]

November 27, 2007 2:05 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: Penn , crime

Rafael Robb, Penn professor of Economics, pleaded guilty yesterday to beating his wife, Ellen Gregory Robb, to death with a metal chin-up bar last year. Robb's plea agreement is for voluntary manslaughter, down from the first-degree murder charge for which he stood trial. Though voluntary manslaughter usually carries a prison sentence of 4.5 to 7 years, DA Bruce Castor says he will seek 10 to 20 for Robb.

Fox News correspondent Rick Leventhal, who met Robb in January, describes the professor's crime and confession:

Ellen was bludgeoned so badly investigators initially thought she'd been blasted at close range with a shotgun or rifle. The DA was prepared to introduce testimony from experts suggesting this was an "enraged blitz attack" by someone who knew the victim and was trying to "wipe her face off the map." ... He admitted staging evidence of a break-in at the house and disposing of the weapon and bloody clothes in a dumpster in Chinatown.

Chilling as the crime was, Robb's proclaimed rationale was perhaps strangest: During an argument about a holiday trip Ellen would be taking with the couple's daughter, Olivia, Rafael grew enraged at the suggestion that the girl would miss school. "At one point," he testified, "Ellen pushed me. ... I just lost it."

So this was over an elementary school girl's attendance record? We wonder how the professor dealt with the half-empty lecture halls that populate undergraduate Economics. To the Penn students and economists in the audience: WTF was this guy's deal?

November 27, 2007 10:54 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (17) | Read more: Penn , crime

• Dartmouth: Students unable to locate Germany on map; entire world unable to locate Hanover
• Penn: Despite two shootings, a rape, and that creepy flasher-cop, Public Safety says 38th & Chestnut is fiiiiine
• Brown: "Money Smart Kids Clubs Program" collaborates with "Making Connections Providence" to win "Most Patronizing Name for Community Service Group Prize"
• Harvard: Grad student murder trial gets grizzly
• Yale: Safety standards under investigation in accidental Drama student death

Continue reading "Ragtime November 27, 2007: Afraid for our lives" »

November 27, 2007 8:34 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: RagTime

As the name of her blog expressly expresses it, Eleanor Mulhern (P '07) hates everything. Except talking about how much she hates things. This blog is pure negative energy. The pattern is simple: begin with a question ("Why is there that cheesy side-story in Independence Day?", "Why is Lohengrin played at so many weddings?", "Why do people struggle at staircases?") and then answer that question in the form of a vituperative rant. Why is the internet so wonderful?

As usual, here are a bunch of quotations which may entice you to read more: 

"Why do middle-aged women dress like débutantes? Why do fat girls dress like thin girls? Why do women not know to buy strapless dresses a size down?"

"Irregardless" is a vile addition to the vernacular and should be expunged without delay. Failing that, people who use it should be shunned.

And really, with a name like D'Brickashaw, if you don't make it to the NFL, what can you do? Work at a bank? Seriously.

Turn signals are not just for fun. They are not just pretty flashy lights. They are in fact intended to help other people on the road figure out what you, with your tiny little pea-sized brain, are going to do with your automobile.

Hallowe'en candy does not make your kid fat. Do not make him dread Hallowe'en because you are simultaneously too lazy and too interfering to be a good parent.

The candy might make him sick for a day, or bounce off the walls. This is a small price to pay for his not hating you for the rest of his life.

Her blog can be visited here.

Got a blog you want featured? Email us.

November 26, 2007 2:42 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Blog Man on Campus , Princeton

• 
• Brown: Solja boy!
• Columbia: "A couch was found infested with fruit flies after someone spilled a bottle of juice and didn’t clean it up."
• Cornell: A history of violence.
• Dartmouth: Zywicki kinda sorta regretting his big mouth.
• Harvard: Predatory lending, almost as important as teaching undergrads.
  
• Princeton: $68,000 for "better laundry facilities."
  

November 26, 2007 11:45 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (5) | Read more:

Happy Turkey, everybody!

November 21, 2007 11:48 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (45) | Read more: douche , john fitzgerald page , worst person,

• 
• Brown: Custodian writes letter to the editor...awk
• Columbia: Three-part (1 2 3) reflux to Columbia diet strikers.
  
• Dartmouth: Dartmouth Stories Project has nothing on the Dartmouth police blotter.
• Harvard: “You are so saucy,” he returned, as ripples of applause and laughter erupted from the crowd."
• Princeton: "I'm not going to wax nostalgic about the loss of the Butler Quad." And I'm not going to finish this column.
• Yale: When a student dies, can we all agree that telling us about their "final" facebook-update isn't necessary?
  
• Yale: Some sad trash-talk.
  

November 20, 2007 2:11 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: RagTime

IvyGate has obtained a more complete transcript of Mr. Zywicki's remarks, as well as his responses during a Q&A session, from the educational conference which took place at the John William Pope Center in Raleigh, NC last month.

In addition to being frankly inarticulate, Mr. Zywicki displays a level of self-righteousness more commonly associated with the Gatorationist International students on hunger strike. Read his words and judge for yourself.

Continue reading "Brief Zywicki Update" »

November 20, 2007 1:46 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: Dartmouth , constitution , green putsch , zywicki

Recently surfaced on YouTube: Dartmouth trustee Todd Zywicki at this year's John William Pope Center for Higher Education conference, discussing his Dartmouth-leadership peers:

Those who control the University today, they don't believe in God and they don't believe in country. University is their cathedral. Their entire being, both those who fund it and those who teach within it, are tied up in the universities. It is basically their religion.

This should make for good small talk at the next trustee/administration cocktail party.

Zywicki, who is also a law professor at George Mason University, was part of the alumni-trustee power bloc that precipitated recent changes to Dartmouth's constitution. His massive CV includes titles like "Deadbeats Cost All of Us Dearly" and "Is Tony the Tiger Making Kids Fat?" (answer: yes, but it's worth it, because obese babies have extra-chubby-wubby cheeks!) Even worse, however, than fat kids and lazy people are liberal pansies and their Catholic-but-not-in-the-good-Jesus-way doctrine:

The establishment within these universities is vicious. They are vicious people. They have their own dogma. ... There is a new dogma that is environmentalism, feminism, and, uh, that is the dogma. And they will enforce it viciously. We have the Spanish Inquisition, and you can ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish Inquisition lives on academic campuses today.

Does that make Drew Gilpin Faust the pope? Or maybe she's Jesus, whom Zywicki namedrops later. Either way, it's a riot. Videos and partial transcript from the anti-Dartmouth and diatribe after the jump.

Continue reading "Dartmouth Trustee Pulls a Coulter: Academics "don't believe in God, don't believe in country."" »

November 19, 2007 3:56 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Dartmouth , politics

Every year among the dozens of prestigious scholarships pursued by ambitious Ivy League seniors, the Rhodes is unquestionably King. Past recipients include David Souter, James Fallows, Peter Beinart, Bill Clinton, James Searle, and multiple bedroom partners of Hillary Clinton. It's easy to see that Shayak Sarkar (H '08) has the coolest name of any Rhodes Scholar of this year, but let's see how the Ivies (and non-Ivies) stack up with one another in an only slightly less pointless way:

University of Chicago -- 3 (Nadine Levin, Isra Bhatty, Andrew Hammond)
Stanford -- 3 (Laurel Gabler, Scott Thompson, Aaron Polhamus)
Harvard -- 3 (Clara Blaettler, Shayak Sarkar, Sammy Sambu)

Princeton -- 3 (Sherif Girgis, Brett Masters, Landis Stankievech)

Columbia -- 2 (Jason Bello, George Olive)
University of Georgia -- 2 (Deep Shah, Katherine Vyborny)
St. Olaf College -- 2 (Ishanaa Rambachan, Nicole Novak)

Yale -- 1 (Benjamin Eidelson)
Dartmouth -- 1 (Adam Levine)
University of Pennsylvania -- 1 (Joyce Meng)
Swarthmore -- 1 (Rebecca Brubaker)
MIT -- 1 (Melis Anahtar)
United States Naval Academy -- 1 (John Blaine Moore)
Florida State University -- 1 (Joseph O. Shea)
UT at Austin -- 1 (Sarah Miller)
Ohio State University -- 1 (Jessica Hanzlik)
Caltech -- 1 (Todd Gingrich)
United States Air Force Academy -- 1 (Hila Levy)
Georgetown University -- 1 (Pravin Rajan)
University of Oklahoma -- 1 (Andrea DenHoed)
United States Military Academy -- 1 (Jason Crabtree)
University of Southern California -- 1 (Reede Doucette)
University of California-Berkeley -- 1( Asya Passinsky)

Trivia: which Rhodes Scholar went on to become a Nazi general?

UPDATE: This post contained many errors. For some reason, the PDF supplied by the Rhodes Trust seems to be incomplete. I'm never making a post with information again.

November 19, 2007 10:30 AM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (21) | Read more: rhodes scholars

• 
• Brown: It's really terrible when Ivy League dailies get all cutesy...
• Cornell: But of course the Sun is still worse at it than the Herald.
  
• Columbia: Hunger strike is over, but self-important rhetoric is just getting off the ground: "The day after the revolution is just as important as the revolution itself,” hunger striker Emilie Rosenblatt, CC ’08, said. “Our work is just beginning.”
• Princeton: Blah blah blah Rhodes blah blah blah.
  
• Penn: New security intitiative, but let's just say on the record that they're not hiring any more security guards.
  
• Dartmouth: Blah blah blah Rhodes blah blah blah.
  
• Harvard: The Game, The Aftermath.
  

November 19, 2007 8:52 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: RagTime

Look, just look, at these people "embracing their cultural differences." Literally. The picture comes from an article in yesterday's "Street" section of the Prince which describes an "an unconventional kind of celebration." organized by an enterprising Londoner and his "close multicultural friends." The article explains:

With a small group of other international students who had stayed behind for the holiday, [the Londoner] decided to create a new tradition. For an unconventional Thanksgiving dinner at a local student's house, students embraced their cultural differences by dressing in the traditional formalwear of their respective countries.

OK, Prince, my only question is this, "In what possible universe would international students actually do this?" You mean they were so broken-up about "missing out" on Thanksgiving that they decided to stage their own multi-cult version? Really? To be perfectly frank, I don't  think I want to attend a university where these sorts of brochure-able celebrations of diversity spontaneously take place.

Many of them also prepared a native dish to bring along.

Really?

It was great. We had people from Germany, Argentina, Nigeria and a bunch of other places,

A bunch of other places, huh?

the nontraditional Thanksgiving dinner gave him and his friends an outlet to discuss the traditions of their countries and learn about the customs of others. The dinner was such a hit that it is now a ritual among [the Londoner] and his close multicultural friends.

Really? really?

Let's take a closer look at that picture. Why is the "Scotsman" rocking a blazer with his kilt? Who is the fellow wearing what appears to be an inside-out Burberry jacket? Is this the rarely-glimpsed British "native dress"? What kind of cross-cultural embrace exactly is going down between the Slav and the Arab, the latter of whom, I see, has brought his culturally-emblematic hookah to this postmodern T-giving.  Finally, why does every single person in this parody of a candid appear to be trying desperately not to laugh?

In case it's not obvious at this point, the picture is staged, and the event in question never took place (so our tipster informs). But maybe the real travesty is that the Prince chose to devote its entire "Street" section, which is ostensibly a register of cultural life at Princeton, to Thanksgiving recipes ("This week, 'Street' brings you the dish on Turkey Day at Princeton.") That's like the 3rd food-themed "Street" this year.

November 16, 2007 4:11 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (19) | Read more: Princeton , daily princetonian , great moments in college journalism , thanksgiving

There's really no rationale for posting this video other than its arrival in our inbox and its tenuous association with Dartmouth University (College?).

Enjoy!

November 16, 2007 3:42 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (17) | Read more: Dartmouth , YouTube

Here's an email/article from Hillel, normally relegated to the spam folder, that found its way into my Princeton University inbox. The title says it all: "Jews Who Abuse."

Sometimes nice Jewish boys aren’t so nice. Just ask Shira D. Epstein... 'You wouldn’t think that a guy who was pre-med, well-dressed and going to Hillel on Friday nights was bad in any way,' says Epstein."

This isn't news to me. While we men of the Chosen People don't beat our wives, we are capable of inflicting devastating psychological abuse on our women, usually in the form of insanely passive-aggressive behavior.

You want me to make a right turn on red? You sure? Because if I get a ticket, well, it's not gonna be my fault. And by the way, you look ugly today. What, me? I didn't say anything mean. Come on, why do we always have to fight..."

Watch out, shiksas!

After the jump: the article in full. 

Continue reading "Shiksas, Beware: Jews Who Abuse" »

November 16, 2007 2:04 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (11) | Read more:

• 
• Brown: This is what happens when you drink the haterade. Brown demolishes your house.
  
• Columbia: The hunger strike is starting to annoy some people.
• Cornell: Racial tensions by the Cayuga's waters? Well, sort of.
• Princeton: "Students observe National Transgender Day of Remembrance."
• Penn: You want tenure? Well, if you're going to teach at Penn, the Most Dangerous University in the Ivy League, we're going to need a background check.
  
• Dartmouth: "I want the America of the Boston Tea Party, the Gettysburg Address and Joe DiMaggio."
  
• Harvard: Another history lesson. "Yale, then called the Collegiate School, spent its infant years getting passed around from city to city like a plate of cheap hors d'oeuvres until its founders finally settled on New Haven, Connecticut in 1718. Now, we know hindsight is 20/20, but really—New Haven?"
  Yale: "Harvard consistently suffers from a serious form of arrogance, something that the Greeks would call hubris." Et tu, Brute?

-- Compiled by James Yu

November 16, 2007 12:29 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (5) | Read more:

Demonstrating that those cute little "Honor Codes" are no match for the ruthlessly grade-grubbing tykes of the Ivy League, somebody stole a set of Organic Chemistry exams at Princeton on Monday. The thief arrived to take the exam early (everyone else takes it today) and was probably knee-deep in the studious-kid blackmarket within minutes, bartering answers for sex, drugs, and fast cars because anyone whose vice is cheating on pre-med exams is likely wanting in the actual-vice area. Instructors pulled the ol' "George Washington and the Cherry Tree" gambit, announcing to the entire class on Tuesday that the know exactly who did it, but are waiting to see if the guilty one is honorable enough to step forward on his own.

The teachers' evidence? The early exam sign-out sheet, which would be the worst evidence ever, but apparently one person wrote down his name, then thought better and erased it, and never turned in an exam. The question now is whether the eraser-armed villain was dumb enough to use his real name, which would swiftly move this story from the realm of "sad grown-up optimism on the honesty of young people" to "OMG, Princeton kids are DUMB."

According to the Daily Princetonian, students "expressed disbelief that their classmates would attempt to gain an unfair advantage on the midterm." Please, have they never seen "The Perfect Score"? Cheating is what we smart kids do, especially when we're Scarlett Johansson flashing our panties at a delinquent Jack Black who is busy buying beer from Tom Greene so they can steal the SAT and make love to Tom Hanks' son in Orange County. Wait, that was, like, every teen movie in the last decade. But you can see Scarlett's panties after the jump, if you want.

Continue reading "Princeton Orgo Cheater Maintains Delusion that the Erasers on Pencils are Actually Magic Bullets" »

November 15, 2007 3:34 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Princeton , cheating

After nine whole days (or is it ten? how long did Gandhi strike for? Weeks? Months? And imagine: he did it without Gatorade) two more of the strikers have dropped out.  Threatened with being put on involuntary medical leave, activist/heroes Emilie Rosenblatt and Bryan Mercer decided they sort of wanted to graduate on time, Manhattanville and the metaphorical octopus be damned. This leaves just two of the original 5 still starving themselves so that Columbia won’t continue to starve their hearts and minds.

According to Bwog and The Spec, Columbia has acceded to several of the strikers’ zillion demands, mostly to keep the Manhattanville expansion off the table. But when looked at carefully, these “concessions” are mostly things Columbia had under consideration on Day 1 of the strike, like making Major Cultures a potential part of the Core. Columbia is basically promising to consider the strikers’ demands at some point in the future.

Still, the strikers’ semi-literate-look-at-me-mom-I’m-using-big-words-and-am-so-smart-even -though-I’m-in-junior-high-school blog is filled with awkward gurgles of joy:

We are pleased to announce that after a day of great adversity, we have emerged with significant victories on many of our demands and a clear vision of what student power can accomplish.”

Yes! They defeated the Burmese junta! They ended the war in Iraq! Oh, wait, wrong cause. Nope, they’re just  super-excited about the mandatory “anti-oppression” training they’ve won for all new faculty, which sounds more like a workplace dystopia straight out of Office Space than something that will effect social justice in our time.

After the jump: the New New Left bends PrezBo to their will! A list of Columbia’s concessions.

Continue reading "Hunger Strikers Achieve Social Justice in Our Time, Along With Mandatory Anti-Oppression Training" »

November 15, 2007 2:50 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (7) | Read more:

• 
• Columbia: Infantile leftists demand bottle back.
  
• Columbia: If only there were some way both sides could lose.
• Dartmouth:"my silent fears were confirmed when fairly recently I was introduced to a fraternity pledge who, upon learning my age, abruptly reminded me that I was 'washed up.'"
• Harvard: Grad student downloads five million articles from Faktiva, all of them written by Joyce Carol Oates.
• Penn: Interactive crime map = really cool.
• Princeton: "No, I think I'm just going to stick with the elliptical today."
• Yale: Does the $3 per day include Gatorade?
  

November 15, 2007 1:06 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

Official word from Penn's Division of Public Safety: The uniformed individual who gave new meaning to "packing heat" when he exposed himself to a female student was not some rando who stole a uniform (as was previously guessed), but an actual officer on the payroll of Allied Barton (the mercenary squad that staffs 80+ weapons-wielding positions for Penn).  Allied guards fill street patrols and walking escort positions.  Which means, the security guard who walked you back from the library the night you were out studying late, and you asked for an escort because it was dark and scary and you were afraid a creepy pervert might jump out and wave his penis at you? Guard and perv were one and the same, this time.

While we anxiously await details on the offending guard (like how many inches and how does it hang), get a load of Public Safety's official memo on the incident and measures they are now taking to ensure the "walking escort" service doesn't become that kind of escort service. After the jump.

Continue reading "Penn Responds to Bad Cop Allegation: Yup, He's One of Ours" »

November 14, 2007 4:29 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Penn , crime

November 14, 2007 4:06 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: Princeton , football , frats

Always eager to jump on trends started at cooler city schools, but a few months later and kinda watered down, Princeton hops on the racist graffiti bandwagon this week (if pink chalk on a slate sidewalk counts as grafitti). Incensed Prince columnists discovered the chalky expression of hate on a sunny Monday afternoon and got all English-major-y about it:

The pink chalk graffiti disregards this right [to define one's own sexuality] by stating categorically that white girls are promiscuous. Not only that, but the term "put out" implies sexual gratification for the sole benefit of the male partner, taking away any power and respect for the woman. The word "girl" also implies subjugation that, especially in this instance, is out of place on a college campus.

If only the chalk-wielding hooligan had chosen more PC terms! "Do self-actualized Caucasian womyn engage in mutually pleasurable intercourse?" or, "I wonder if making a pretty-pink naughty in front of my dorm will make me famous... YES!" To the columnists' credit, their school has a history of chalk-fueled hate. Doodling children and hopscotch squares: Princeton's baddest thugs.

November 14, 2007 3:29 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Princeton , racism

A recent Huffington Post article has uncovered a piece of truly startling news: your professors are giving crazy amounts of money to Democrats, and just about none to Republicans (it’s 86%-14%, to be exact). Most people will shrug it off, but we’re hoping this will galvanize the like 27 Ivy League celebrants of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week to go on a hunger strike.

Ivy League professors have given $470,000 this election cycle, which is significantly less than just about every special interest group ever. Obama has taken in $205K from this very important lobby; Hillary has received $147,000. Even Mitt has got in the game, amassing $33,000. If only BYU was in the Ivy League!

Poor conservatives! They’re really struggling these days, what with control of the White House, the Supreme Court, and until recently, Congress. At least the liberals still have their Ivory Tower.

After the jump: the HuffPo’s article in full.

Continue reading "Ivy League Profs’ Zillions of Dollars of Academic Blood-Money Going to Democrats" »

November 14, 2007 2:48 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Hillary Clinton , barack obama , campaign money , democrats , professors

• 
• Brown: "'We got the name of the school changed for the day to James Brown University.'"
• Columbia: Coup d'prof!
• Cornell: Student Assembly rant or ill-conceived free verse poem?
• Dartmouth: "Thanks Soulja Boy. Love, Me."
• Harvard: "Mather intends to go ahead with its 'Crunk Clock' that will sound an alarm every half hour to indicate 'Crunk Time.'" 
• Penn: teh lolpenns r teh lolcats wif penn. lol. kbai. 
• Yale: Interest continues in Columbia model of hate-crime/ineffective response/hate-crime.

-- Compiled by Juli Weiner 

November 14, 2007 11:34 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (2) | Read more:

Perhaps finally noticing that someone put a bunch of tents on their lawn, the Columbia administration has responded to the Hunger Strike. In a University-wide email, they mainly cite initiatives that they're "already taking," including hiring some new ethnic studies faculty that they were already hiring anyway and talking about the Core curriculum in Task Force meetings they were already having. It may seem like their offer is basically, "How about we change nothing?" but consider this: When the hungry raised their voices to cry for a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs, the administration said that their ongoing review of that office "will be extended to incorporate consideration" of that. Guess incorporating consideration wasn't the pipe dream we all thought it was.

The Columbia College Student Council has formally stated its support for a less ludicrous version of the Strikers'demands. It almost makes you wonder if the representatives that Columbia students actually elected are more reasonable than those who appointed themselves through the alternative "pitch a tent and stop eating" method.

Of course, the student council doesn't have the media savvy to put a giant paper octopus in front of its tents. Somehow representing Columbia expansion, the octopus lasted about a day before it was covered with a besloganed banner to protect it from rain. Ah, Hunger Strike demands: the thin shield between reality and a melodramatic, confusing spectacle.

And the best news of all? The Hunger Strikers met President Bollinger outside his classroom to hand him some slogan-heavy balloons He gave half of them to a stranger on 117th Street before, as Spec has it, he "carried the remaining balloons into his compound." Striker Victoria Ruiz, CC '09, responded with what may be the best cryptic threat of the whole Strike: "This is the first of many things he will be receiving."

Possible other things he will be receiving:

• Party Hats painted as black as Bollinger's soul
• Cotton Candy as substantive as his response
• One of Those Things You Blow at a New Year's Eve party... painted as black as Bollinger's soul
• Tootsie Rolls

--J.D. PORTER

November 13, 2007 5:05 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (24) | Read more: Columbia , hunger strike , protest

A sad day for journalism when Glamour scoops US News & World Report on the upper education beat, but it happened this month when the former jumped on the "Every crowd around the pretty lady presidents!" bandwagon first. Yesterday's release of US News' "America's Best Leaders"  echoes Glamour's 2007 "Women of the Year" featuring Prezettes Ruth Simmons (Brown) and Shirley Tilghman (Princeton). In USN Simmons and Tilghman sit among notable peoples like Nancy Pelosi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicholas Kristof and Yo-Yo Ma.

Conspicuously missing from the list are fellow "Women of the Year" Drew Gilpin Faust (president, Harvard) and Amy Gutmann (Fairy Jihad-Mother, Penn), whose mere existence as double-X-chromosomed heads of Ivies is usually reason enough to split Simmons' and Tilghman's glory four ways.

November 13, 2007 5:00 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (2) | Read more: Brown , Princeton , Ruth Simmons , Shirley Tilghman , presidents

If Josh Duboff's (Y '08) blog, Text Message in a Bottle, looks like he made it in five minutes, that's because he probably did. What kind of stuff does he blog about? Certainly not ideas or politics, if that's what you were thinking. Some observational humor, some quirkography, and a lot of bitching about pop culture -- all in the best tradition of the internet.

I read the whole archive, and it's pretty funny. Here are two entries from a list (there are a lot of lists) entitled "awkward moments:"

1) When you are on the subway and your iPod happens to be on something like "Glamorous" by Fergie or "Bye Bye Bye" by N' Sync (this has never happened to me, obviously) and the cool guy who has just the right amount of facial hair and those really big noise-canceling headphones who is sitting next to you glimpses the album art on your iPod and looks away smirking.

3) When you are sitting with your friend Ed in the dining hall and that girl who you met at that party who you talked to for like 45 minutes walks by and you say to Ed, "Oh, that's Kara! You'll love her. She's great - really funny." "Kara," you shout! She doesn't hear you, it seems, and keeps on walking with her gaggle of girlfriends in hip outfits to the back of the dining hall. You shout "Kara!" again, this time a little softer (it's more for show than for actually getting her attention at this point). She doesn't turn around. Ed looks down at his half-eaten lasagna.

You can read more here. 

Got a blog you want featured? Email us.

November 13, 2007 2:19 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (15) | Read more: Blog Man on Campus , Yale

• 
• Brown: "Finding a social cause to support has become as trendy as trapeze dresses and skinny jeans. I was once eager to be a socially conscious hipster..."
• Columbia: “Activism is a part of who I am, but it’s not all that I am,” [Rosenblatt] said. This hunger striker interned for Sean John!
• Cornell: Ex university president got quite a compensation package...
• Yale: But not a good as Yale's current president.
• Dartmouth: The university totally pulls a Walmart on its employees.
• Harvard: Some very interesting Facebook statistics.
  
• Princeton: Op-ed columnist calls his own op-ed "absurd and ballsy." It's neither - just stupid.

November 13, 2007 10:50 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (25) | Read more:

Penn is a some kinda hotbed for crime. Did you know that?! Yes, we're sure your moms told you if you ever considered applying to Penn. What these caring mothers do not know, however, is that Penn employs an elite squad of ex-Navy SEALS random hobos through the private security firm Allied. These guards protect Penn from the evils of drunk boys, and my, do they reign with iron fists! And all these poor souls ask for in return? Oh, a pat on the back, a reminiscing of times past, a 2-out-of-3 Rock, Paper, Scissors session. Not much. Maybe some pussy:

Hey all,

About an hour ago my roommate had a little incident that I thought you should all be aware of, since Public Safety sucks.

[She] was on her way home from rehearsal and an Allied guard on 38th and Chestnut offered to walk her home.  She figured she might has well have someone walk her since there have been a lot of robberies and such and our neighborhood lately.  When she got to the door of our house she thanked him for walking her and went to get her keys.  He said, "Miss..." and she turned around and he was holding his penis out at her.

Indeed, such was the tale of a Penn undergraduate female. Such a tease! Fortunately, when she filed the complaint, justice was served, served more, and then served yet again: The security office told her "some of their uniforms are 'missing,' so it might not actually be a security guard. Lovely." Yeah, the girl should've recognized that he wasn't legit given his neon blue pajamas with sparkles spelling "iz not security, iz hornee."

Silly Penn isn't just pretending this never happened, and Penn's Vice President for Public Safety, Maureen Rush, has sent out a public safety alert to the entire Penn community. Check it out after the jump, and remember: It's about penises. 

Correction: The VP for Public Safety's memo to the Penn community after the jump is in response to something far more grave, which we absolutely don't think is funny.

Continue reading "Penn Security Guard Whips His Cock Out On Some Chick" »

November 13, 2007 9:42 AM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (17) | Read more: Penn , crime

When we first took notice of Timothy Ferriss (P '00), he came across as an Aleksey-Vayner-esque megalomaniacal fraud. After all, his website was full of outlandish claims of personal accomplishment, and his book The 4-Hour Work Week (Amazon), or "4HWW" to those in the know, boasts that it will show you, "How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want."

But it seems we may have to amend our initial impression of Ferriss from "spectacular charlatan" to "oddball entrepreneur" and maybe, just maybe, "lifestyle pioneer." For one thing, as this incredible New York Times article explains, his book has become a huge hit with the nerds of Silicon Valley, and these guys are immune to gimmicky trends (except that one time)

From the Times article:

HIS methods include practicing “selective ignorance” — tuning out pointless communiqués, random Twitters, and even world affairs (Mr. Ferriss says he gets most of his news by asking waiters). Work crisis? Pay someone else to worry about it — ideally in Bangalore. On a bet, Mr. Ferriss even hired low-paid, high-skilled workers abroad to find him dates online. (It worked.)

Fact: I paid someone in Bangalore in to write this post for me. I am actually scuba-diving in Belize. Read the article, it's pretty interesting, and check out his blog.

November 12, 2007 5:30 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Princeton , timothy ferriss

Last time we wrote about our favorite this-guy-has-got-to-be-joking-but-he’s-totally-not, the Great Leader/Ivy League columnist Xiaochen Su was spewing out weird racist garbage all over the pages of the YDN. After a month-long absence to preside over the Chinese Communist Party's Annual Congress, the Great Leader/columnist makes a triumphant return in today's YDN.

In a piece entitled "Socialism in U.S. can cure capitalism’s woes,"  Great Leader Su writes about socialism, but not in the warm-hearted and well-meaning way of confused New Leftists who like to starve themselves.  No, Su is cold, clinical, Chinese:

The historical trend shows that the creation of a new socialism is necessary to prevent the reoccurrence of communist-inspired violence and instability that result in more poverty.”

So far, so good. Maybe Great Leader Xiaochen Su is just another Marxist-Leninist theoretician, right?

With desperation building up within the impoverished, only a brilliant leader — such as China had found in Mao Zedong — is needed to transform them into a formidable anti-government force.”

This is definitely the oligarchy-with-an-inhuman face of the Chinese Politburo. And then the clincher:

The government’s duty ends at pointing the people in the right direction; it is the responsibility of each individual to take that path and work hard.”

Whatever happened to “from each according to his capacity,” Great Leader? Oh, right: CHINA.

After the jump: the article in full. And you don’t even have look for it in your Daily Worker!

Continue reading "Chinese Politburo to Yale Daily News: Print Everything Great Leader Xiaochen Su Writes, No Matter How Batshit Insane It Is" »

November 12, 2007 12:42 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (26) | Read more:

• Columbia: All hunger strike, all the time, on every channel! (we'll cover this more, but first we'll eat breakfast, because reading about starvation makes a body want doughnuts)

• Cornell: "Can American Idol Change the World?"
• Cornell: "No, but Facebook can."
• Cornell: "As if. Facebook is totally corporate. I prefer Facebook's earlier work, before they sold out."
• Princeton: Alumni reminisce on the good ol' days when students really got drunk, uphill both ways!
  
• Penn: Forced to speciy "Student Murder Trial" versus "