Last seen seeking his cyber-fortune by objectifying college girls with Hot-or-Not clone Miss Facebok, Harvard's Daniel Wallace '08 is back... and revealing the inner machinery of the beast itself, Harvard admissions! With the prose of Viagra-peddling spam and the typograpical design of a ten-year-old's AIM profile,Wallace's GetIntoHarvard.net sells a 56-page, $27 pamphlet that will "triple your chances of getting into Harvard." The guide comes with endorsements from "Bryan Kang, Harvard senior," and "Ganesh Raj Kumaraguru, England," because Brits have those smart-sounding accents, so just being from England is a credential in and of itself.

But where, you ask, does Wallace's expertise come from? Well, first he got into Harvard.

Since then, I have read over tons of books, over 1,000 blog posts, too many forum entries to count, and continued learning from my own hands-on admissions experience, all to keep Get Into Harvard cutting-edge with the latest information. [boldface and italicization from original]

"To think!" writes Legion, "That’s over ten paragraphs a day... for four whole months!" We got a hold of Get Into Harvard (which is actually just a PDF file you pay to download), are providing a brief review and choice excerpts after the jump.

Continue reading "Harvard's Most Bestest Entrepreneur Reveals Admissions Secrets!" »

February 29, 2008 5:00 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Admissions , Harvard

It's not only Ivy League students who love plagiarizing. Sometimes even the White House gets involved. But White House aides don't plagiarize from just anyone! Nope, they get their source material from our right-wing buddies at the Dartmouth Review!

Timothy S. Goeglein, President Bush's chief liaison to religious groups, has admitted to plagiarizing a column he wrote for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel. 

"It is true," Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. "I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses." I guess Zac Townsend and his Brown cohort can sleep easier now.

According to the Washington Post, Goeglein "previously worked closely with Karl Rove and during the 2004 election was Bush's chief emissary to conservative political groups." Oh, how I tremble with glee! William F. Buckley would be shamed. Shamed!

Goeglein's column:

A notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College in the last century, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, expressed the matter succinctly. His wisdom is not only profound but also worth pondering in this new century. He said, “The goal of education is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.”

He meant that, I think, in quite a large sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of,

Jeffrey Hart in The Dartmouth Review:

A notable Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey often expressed the matter succinctly, “The goal of education,” he would say, “is to form the Citizen. And the Citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.”

He meant that in quite large a sense. He did not mean that you had to master all the specialties you can think of.

After the jump: more similarities.

Continue reading "The Ivy League Plagiarism Epidemic: And Now the White House Gets Involved" »

February 29, 2008 3:24 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: dartmouth review , plagiarism

As "Yes We Can!" parodies become a genre unto themelves, we jump on the bandwagon a little late with this charming little ditty from the Brown housing lottery contest, which awards the talented set of room-draw-ees first pick every year. It features a speech from Dean Katherine Bergeron about "loving school" and hating Wesleyan:

Naturally, Wesleyanites are thoroughly offended, but have decided to rise above the thoroughly low blow in the most mature way possible: Calling Brown "the school whose very name is the color of shit" on Wesleyaning.

And, if we're going to post this video, we should probably post the one that actually won, a dramatic romp with four members of the Brown swim team. Yes, they wear speedos. Yes, there are Monty Python references. And yes, in spite of our best attempts to maintain a hardened, bitter 'tude (Team Gilles forever!) we must admit, it's pretty damn cute. After the jump.

Continue reading "Brown Housing Lotto Contest Produces Many Amusing Videos" »

February 29, 2008 11:29 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Brown , YouTube

• Harvard: Harvard bans chalk, sets sights on Yahtzee, Play-dough.
• Princeton: Michelle Obama's classified thesis leaked.
• Dartmouth: "Keep your wits about you, carry pepper spray, and above all don't make eye contact, and you, too, can make it through the fraternity dance party in one piece."
• Yale: Yale woos prospective students with lies.
• Brown: "I don't like the system because it does not favor my team," says jock.
• Columbia: A harrowing journey through New York City's shadowy underworld.

 -- Compiled by Ben O'Donnell
.

February 29, 2008 9:51 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (4) | Read more:

It’s official: the administrators in charge of Princeton’s spanking-new Whitman College are on crack. Following up on the Great Mug Emergency of 2008, these fine folks have decided to transform Princeton’s first four-year residential college into a fraternity. For serious.

Taking a cue from the university’s existing frats, Whitman College is asking impressionable freshman to volunteer to become thesis slaves for graduating seniors. It’s like being a pledge but with none of the benefits! The seniors get to force the freshmen to do laundry and fetch them snacks and drop off library books! What do the freshmen get in return? Why, the pleasure of the seniors’ company!

Each participating Whitman senior will be assigned 2 underclassmen who will be “on call” during the final thesis push.  If you are working away in your room and feel like you need a midnight snack all you have to do is contact your thesis buddy and he/she will bring you a hot dog and a red bull or whatever else you need to burn the midnight oil.

Obviously, the idea isn’t to take advantage of your buddy, but to have him or her help out in a pinch.  Other examples of acceptable duties include:  taking care of a load of laundry, picking up/dropping off some library books, or proofreading a chapter for typos.

Continue reading "Princeton's Totally Frat-tastic Residential College" »

February 28, 2008 12:38 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (23) | Read more:

Give Yalies Christmas lights or snow any vaguely ephemeral construction material and they go crazy! It's like, so artistic of them! They make penises out of Christmas lights, penises out of snow, swastikas out of snow...

Swastikas? Yep. Following last week's snowstorm, a gigantic snow penis as well as a snowstika appeared on campus. The culprits? No one knows. Are they somehow connected? Probably not. But could some gay neo-Nazis be behind the whole thing? Regardless, the Yale Administration didn't mind the penis so much; the snowstika, however,is another story.

But maybe, just maybe, there's a political point: maybe they're comparing swastikas to penises. Or maybe they're just insensitive, anti-Semitic jerks. By the time these master snow craftsmen graduate, they'll be creating ice sculptures of Hitler with Himmler's penis in his mouth! It's so phallic!

After the jump: the Yale Hillel isn't so amused. And a picture of the gigantic snow penis.

Continue reading "Yalies Make Penises, Swastikas, Out of Snow" »

February 27, 2008 2:08 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (19) | Read more:

Today marks day 5 of Columbia Engineer Student Council's 184-person game of assassins, and, as expected from a large group of mathematically-minded folk fluent in JAVA and the Tolkien, wielding waterguns and "death" lists, it's been a frag-tastic celebration of nerditude. Bwog directs us to ESC's Kill Reports, which log successful assassinations with the deceased's photo, alias, and a description of his or her demise.

With 184 "agents" and 113 dead at press time, the Kill Reports are extensive and thoroughly entertaining. A selection of the more poetic/hilarious/creepily violent of the Kill Reports after the jump.

Continue reading "CU Engineers' Assassins Game Sensationally Nerdy" »

February 27, 2008 1:50 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Columbia

• Brown: White people going where no white people have gone before.
  
• Columbia: When are you finally going to beef up your financial aid, Columbia? You're lagging behind in the Ivy League arms race!
  
• Cornell: "A generation of I-Bankers are we." A generation of I-Bankers that inverts regular sentence structure, indeed!
  
• Dartmouth: No news today.
• Harvard: U.S. Senate still getting up in our grill!
• Penn: "I have a stalking problem."
  
• Princeton: Princeton Borough is extra-proud of itself for the latest measures in the War on Fun.
  

February 27, 2008 1:00 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (3) | Read more:

• Columbia: I wanted to make fun of this article, but I was won over while reading it.
• Cornell: The debased Marxism of the Ivy League.
• Dartmouth: “Hey, I’m not interested in you in a romantic way, but I also don’t want to treat you purely as a sexual object at my beck and call.”
  
• Princeton: Great letter, LBJ, but why are you still reading the Prince?
  
• Yale: Snowstikas!
  

February 26, 2008 2:17 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: RagTime

Breaking! Penn's Social Planning and Events Committee sent us an email announcing their Spring Fling band today and it's... Limp Bizkit! This must be the apotheosis of Ivy League spring concerts, so intensely "irony-hungry" that I was totally speechless until our Thursday Ragtime guy and resident Pennian, James Yu, pointed out that SPEC's email address was in Gmail, so maybe it's a prank? If so, it is an idea so perfect in concept, so elegant in detail and design (press embargo! exclamation points!) that we'll have to bow down to whoever came up with it. We had James write a Bizkit bio:

Last seen toying with the angst-ridden hearts of suburban high schoolers eight or so years ago, Limp Bizkit is headlining Penn's Spring Fling this April. Fred Durst, Limp's limp 37-year old frontman, has been best known in recent years for sexing batshit crazy Britney Spears before she was crazy and for allegedly leaking a sex tape online in 2005 to gain publicity.

See SPEC's embargoed email and multi-exclamation-pointed flyer after the jump.

Continue reading "Limp with Anticipation! Penn (or impeccable poseur) Announces Spring Fling" »

February 26, 2008 1:00 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (37) | Read more: Penn , spring concerts

Noting our coverage of November's "incrediblyyyyyyyyyy sexual" Cornell Craigslist orgy planner, the Cornell Daily Sun played To Catch a Predator last Friday, publishing a story in which a team of intrepid reporters pose as an NSA-seeking female on Craigslist, and then giggle wildly when they receive "over 50 responses in two days." Always the tease, Sun kept its unwitting subjects anonymous, but we have no doubt they facebooked every single entry, because seriously, how could you not? Somewhere, a "36-year-old professor" is super red-faced.

The article, entitled "Everybody's Doing It," features the sage advice of columnist Jenna B. and extended quotations from their responses. Our favorite:

So you say you’re looking to experiment eh? As an engineer I know how to experiment.

Given the Sun's fascination with "homosexual and bi-sexual men" who want to "explore... without having to come out," we wonder if there is an alternate version of this article where the Sun's tricky staff writes an m4m listing. They can call it "Everybody's Doing It, Part II: Panic Attacks Sweep Closeted Gay Population." Ithaca's "Casual Encounters" is about to suffer a loss of activity... or a huge spike, depending on how much anonymous sex-seekers enjoy exhibitionism.

February 25, 2008 8:03 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (9) | Read more: Cornell Daily Sun , Sex , jenn b.

Harrison Zolnierczyk, a Brown freshman from Canada and member of the Bears' glorious hockey team, is having some legal troubles back in the old country. While most students were busy watching Hillary Clinton jazz it up at a Providence rally Sunday, Zolnierczyk was "facing charges of voyeurism and production, possession and distribution of child pornography" from something called the "Port Alberni Provincial Court in British Columbia," also in Canada. Will Harrison Zolnierczyk survive this terrible smear campaign against his hockey career? Or is he really a voyeur who produced, possessed and distributed tapes of horrible child sex? Well, the Mounties are on the case now, so it's only a matter of seconds before the they figure out this would-be perp's deal.

Continue reading "Brown Freshman Plays Hockey, Distributes Kiddie Porn" »

February 25, 2008 6:54 PM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (5) | Read more: Brown , Sex , canada , harrison zolnierczyk , mounties

The race to be Tyra Banks' Favorite Sex Toy -- occasionally known as "America's Next Top Model" -- includes its third Ivy Leaguer this season, Cornell grad Katarzyna. I'd tell you more, but after last semester's intense reality tv coverage, I'm incapable of witnessing a video confessional without breaking into hives.

Luckily, we have a new reality tv correspondent this semester: Victoria Marshman, Yale '09 and Top Model contestant of yore! That's right, after being the object of our obsessive scrutiny last fall, Tory is crossing over to the blog side so she can obsessively scrutinize ANTM's newest Token Smart Girl. Or, as Tory says, "have an excuse to throw things at the TV again on Wednesday nights." And that, children, is the circle of life.

So check back on Thursday morning for our first Model vs. Model recap. As far as we know, this is the first time a Top Model has aimed the mighty pen back at the show! Then again, not too many ANTM contestants have been literate before.

UPDATE: Frowns all around. The CW put the kibosh on our dastardly plans, perhaps because last time Tory talked to us, we uncovered Tyra Banks' controlling side and the purposeful physical deprivation of Top Model contestants. Our Girl Tory apologizes, and so do we.

February 25, 2008 4:56 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (29) | Read more: america's next top model , reality tv

It's the #1 time to break out your adorable flowered pastel sundress, get doused in beer, and get down with your bad, white self. That's right -- spring concert season is just around the corner, and Ben O'Donnell has the scoop.

What do Ben Folds, Third Eye Blind, and Sister Hazel have in common?  They’re all musicians no one listens to anymore who were sacrificed to irony-hungry Ivy Leaguers last spring during the Ancient Eight’s spring party or concert weekends.

As spring is a season traditionally associated with graduation and, by association, with a lifetime of thankless toil capped off by cold, empty death, it is especially important for the various committees of people who do stuff with their lives at our schools to choose upbeat, crowd-pleasing concert acts.  In this way, we may all forget, however briefly, this season/lifetime of soul-crushing meaninglessness in which we are mired.

With that in mind, said committees at Brown and Cornell have already announced their picks for their major spring concerts, while those at Yale and Dartmouth have tossed around and parried rumors about theirs.

After the jump, who the artists are, obviously.

Continue reading "Proud Ivy League Tradition of Bringing Mediocre Live Music to Hammered Students During Spring Weekends to Continue in 2008" »

February 22, 2008 2:32 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (39) | Read more: spring concerts

• Dartmouth: "If you want to play the petty theft game, take your antics to hardened Columbia, where they are prepared for crime. At Dartmouth, we're supposed to be kicking it Lockian-style — there's an unspoken social contract against this kind of nonsense."
• Penn: "...the college years are also the ideal time for getting plastic surgery."
• Princeton: Juicy campus. Yawn.
• Harvard: "Sex at Harvard is a year-round activity. At Yale, it lasts a week."
• Brown: "After donning Speedos and chain mail... eight freshmen won the first pick in this year's housing lottery."

February 22, 2008 1:23 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: RagTime

Plagiarist professor and symbolic-noose victim Madonna Constantine released a statement yesterday calling Columbia's discplinary action against her "premature, vindictive, and mean-spirited," the product of "institutional racism," "a conspiracy and witch-hunt." She writes,

I am left to wonder whether a White faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner.

It is my opinion that this investigation, along with other incidents that have happened to me at Teachers College in recent months, point to a conspiracy and witch-hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community. I believe that nothing that has happened to me this year is coincidental, particularly when I reflect upon the hate crime I experienced last semester involving a noose on my office door. As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.

Now, we love damning the man as much as the next 20-something pipsqueak, but when Columbia takes a fine-toothed comb to your oeuvre and finds five years' worth of academic dishonesty? Might be time to cut your losses, maybe update your resume and check out the listings on monster.com.

Continue reading "It Ain't Over Till the Accused Lady Cries "Conspiracy"" »

February 21, 2008 1:47 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (32) | Read more: Columbia , madonna constantine , plagiarism , racism

The Harvard Police Log steps into the ring today for a bout with the reigning champ of dramatic renditions of campus crime, the Dartmouth Police Blotter. We open with a quick one-two punch in the mean aisles of Cambridge's Au Bon Pain:

February 6
4:43 p.m.—Officers were dispatched to Au Bon Pain to a report of an assault in progress. Officers arrived and spoke to the reporting party who stated that when they attempted to sit down at a table they were threatened by another individual. The reporting party states that the individual then kicked them and struck them in the knee.

February 18
7:01 a.m.—Officers dispatched to Au Bon Pain to a report that an individual reported threw a chair at another individual. Officers arrived and searched the area for the individual with negative results.

Continue reading "Tales from the Police Blotter: Cagefight at Au Bon Pain" »

February 21, 2008 12:01 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Harvard , crime , tales from the blotter

• Brown: Brown's JuicyCampus page mostly innocent, but freaks everyone out nonetheless
• Columbia: This is going to get ugly
  
• Cornell: ex-Student Assembly President "clears the air" three months after stepping down, mostly because he's sick of getting trashed on JuicyCampus
• Cornell: Ithaca strip clubs are pretty damn awkward. Or is that just strip clubs, in general?
  
• Dartmouth: Is Hanover really so boring that this is today's top story?
• Penn: How many JuicyCampus references can occur in a single day, you ask?
• Princeton: At least one more!

February 21, 2008 11:12 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: RagTime

An outside investigation has found Columbia / Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine guilty of numerous instances of plagiarism, says The Spec. You might be wondering: why is this important, except as yet another footnote to the Ivy League’s plagiarism epidemic?

Well, as always, there’s a twist: this is the selfsame Professor Constantine who found a noose – a very racist noose - on her door back in October, sparking all sorts of protests and recriminations about Columbia’s racial insensitivity. It was a pretty big deal.

According to a Teachers College memo, Constantine is guilty of more than an isolated instance of plagiarism:

The investigation, which began in 2006, was prompted by complaints from students and one former faculty member who said language from materials they wrote was included without attribution in the articles…[We] found numerous instances in which she [Constantine] used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years.”

As insensitive jerks, we’ve got to ask the question: did Constantine hang her own noose (literally and figuratively) to take the heat off the plagiarism charges? Might we be seeing a redux of the Francisco Nava affair, except this time by someone on the Left?

February 20, 2008 2:00 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Columbia , madonna constantine , plagiarism

• 
• Brown: We always though Hanover was the sleepiest Ivy town
• Columbia: Columnist airs intellectual insecurities, offers to lead PostSecret-style insecurity revolution
• Brown: Most Amazing/Baffling Stand Alone Image of the Day
• Cornell: Most Amazing/Baffling Lede of the Day
  
• Dartmouth: Spam Clamantis
• Princeton: Meg Whitman, Governator 2.0
• Princeton: Most notorious eating club to reopen. Oreo-beer mountain negotiable.
  

February 20, 2008 12:49 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: RagTime

Yesterday, an internet rogue calling himself "kaboom73" (and let's be honest, it's pretty much always a "him") hacked the website of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. First reported on Torrent Freak, then picked up by the Crimson, the security breach has been known since at least 8PM yesterday. And the GSAS website is still down! Now begins the waiting game as America's Bestest University scrambles to recover from the single-handed hack of some random dude on a laptop somewhere. Just how long will it take 1000 monkeys at 1000 computers to churn out a new GSAS website, you ask? Well, here's your handy-dandy Harvard Hack Repair Clock, measuring time elapsed the earliest public knowledge of the breach:

Feel free to play the Jeopardy theme song in your head while you wait.

February 19, 2008 9:00 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: Harvard

The batteries are out of the vibrators and back in the graphing calculators at Yale, where Sex Week reached its anticlimactic end yesterday. After the much-hyped Great Porn Debate featuring luminaries like Ron Jeremy and Monique Alexander on Friday, we imagine the celebrity-less "safe sex" Monday must've been a little boring.

Naturally, Saturday's Vivid Girls film-screening and "Skull and Boned" party at the Toad's prompted a flood of "omg so-and-so totally went home with Monique!" tips. Since adult film stars are a special breed of human that communicate solely through sexual acts (How else would those totally normal situations caught on film turn so quickly into raunchy hair-pulling and screaming?), we humored our tipsters and followed up on a few of their stories. Our guide to various porn stars' supposed sex lives at Yale, after the jump.

Continue reading "Sex Week Wrap-Up: In which everyone claims to know who slept with the Vivid Girls" »

February 19, 2008 5:32 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Sex , Yale

Joe’s Dartblog has some very interesting statistics posted about alcohol and drug infractions across the Ivy League. We don’t know where on Earth these stats came from, but we’re going to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. And so we can finally answer the perennial question: do Dartmouth students really party harder? Or is the Dartmouth administration just better at prosecuting their draconian and never-ending War on Fun?

Between 2004 and 2006, Dartmouth students were about fifteen times more likely to get caught with alcohol than their peers at Penn. With an average of 52 infractions per thousand students, the average Dartmouth beer-guzzler has an over 5% chance of getting written up in a given year.  Dartmouth students were also two and a half times more likely to get an alcohol infraction than those who attended the school with the second highest infraction rate –  Cornell.

Brown students were cited at a rate of 14.7 per 1,000, Harvard at 12.3, Yale at 8.8, Princeton at 4.4, and Columbia at 3.7.

Joe astutely recognizes two possible scenarios that might explain the numbers:

1. Dartmouth students drink radically more than the Ivy League average; or,

2. The Dartmouth administration is at war with its students and enforces the alcohol laws with incomparable harshness.”

After the jump: drug infractions by school.

Continue reading "The War on Fun: Which Ivy Parties Hardest? And Which Ivy Gets Caught Partying Hardest?" »

February 19, 2008 3:21 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (49) | Read more: Dartmouth , war on fun

• Harvard: Hackerzzz!
  
• Penn: Penn Police assaulted!
  
• Princeton: Hackers choose target poorly, attack unused Undergraduate Film Organization website.
  
• Cornell: "Anyone who’s spent a good amount of time around wrestlers knows what it is." Three sentences later, we still haven't been told what "it" is.
  
• Yale: What's an Ivy League University without never-ending plans to expand?
  
• Columbia: "I want to discuss my self-doubt and insecurity as an intellectual, feelings I am convinced that most of us at some point experience."

February 19, 2008 12:36 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (4) | Read more:

The notorious Julia Allison -- dating columnist, sex columnist, "media kryptonite" -- will be in Princeton this Friday, and she's looking for a man after midnight. Or, you know, after her dad's Alumni Weekend dinner. Papa Allison is class of '70, but we digress. What matters is that Julia Allison is coming, and she's single, and really hot!

Send a picture and briefly explain why you, Mr. Eligible Princeton Hetero and/or Closeted Gay Male, should get a date with the Tila Tequila of Manhattan journos. Seriously, keep it brief. The kid who asks "is single-spacing an option?" every time he turns in a term paper need not apply. Skillful self-portrayal is, however, part of Julia's philosophy:

One of the most difficult parts of dating in New York is standing out. That’s why as a single person these days—male or female—marketing yourself outright is a necessary skill.

This is a big deal because a date with Julia Allison = Instant fame and fortune. See that magazine cover? It's like Carrie Bradshaw's "Single and Fabulous?" cover, but without the question mark. That means our winner will be Mr. Big, an epithet you can probably put on your resume, redeemable for infinite NYC ass later in life.

We'll run a "Who Gets to Date Julia?" election on Thursday so the candidate with the most ambitious set of computer-savvy ballot-stuffing friends wins. Applicants must write to ivygate@gmail.com by (hang on while I make up an arbitrary time here) Thursday at 9AM!

February 18, 2008 1:46 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (17) | Read more: Princeton , dating

Uh... uh... that sucks! Somehow!

Indeed, Penn appears to have chosen NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak at its 2008 Commencement Exercises For Young Princes, according to a release from University Secretary Leslie Laird Kruhly. Maybe he'll take the occasion to finally announce his bid for the presidency as an independent. Because a foreign policy hawk who cares about trans fats is just what America needs for Unity! Hillel must be so excited.

Full statement, including honorary degree recipients -- that FAUST from Harvard is one! -- after the jump.

Continue reading "Penn's Latest 2008 Commencement Speaker: Michael Bloomberg" »

February 18, 2008 1:14 PM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Penn , commencement speakers , michael bloomberg

• 
• Harvard: Lucy Caldwell, erstwhile defender of misogny, is incredibly offended by a "misguided accommodationist policy." What sort of policy? Why, the rec center being open to women-only for six hours a week? Ring them bells!
  
• Columbia: There was nothing to write about today.
  
• Princeton: "I know a few students at NIU,” Chicago resident Liz Dengel ’10 said. “But what drives it home for me is that it’s my little brother’s safety school for next year. Though I don’t think he’ll be going, it’s definitely too close for comfort." Shootings only happen at safety schools! Ring them bells!
• Cornell: "Yes, we are in danger. While our attention is attracted by a kaleidoscope of initiatives and beautiful slogans, our basis as a top research university has been eroded year by year." Safety school, ring them bells!
  
• Yale: "I really came to see Ron Jeremy."
• Brown: Campaign spin, the college years.
• Penn: "With an ocean, a twenty-four-hour plane ride and a closet door separating him from his family and friends in Australia, College freshman Alec Webley was facing the frightening prospect of coming out without a clear support system."

February 18, 2008 12:20 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (11) | Read more:

• Harvard: Women-only hours at the gym. Sexist?
• Princeton: Cool: green toothpaste. Not cool: anti-gay slur on bathroom stall.
• Cornell: "The Sun's top columnists tackle that holiest of topics: breakfast cereal." - double yew tee eff?
• Yale: "Chlamydia. Gonorrhea. HIV. Teen pregnancy."
• Dartmouth: "In honor of Valentine's Day, it would only be appropriate to talk about a musical style that Valentine's Day brings out the best in, and that, of course, is emo."
• Brown: "Rejecting a slew of cards - one was "too heteronormative," another "just whack" - Greene finally settles on a pink and purple card festooned with moving hearts..."

February 15, 2008 11:28 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comment | Read more: RagTime

Penn Pro-Choice's V-day guest speaker electrocuted herself with a vibrator. For serious:

From: [name redacted]
Date: Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Subject: Sex Toy Accidents
To: P4CMEM@lists.upenn.edu

Hey everyone,

I'm so sorry to have to inform you that we will no longer be able to have a sex toy demonstration today. The woman who was going to do it took her vibrator into the bath without realizing it wasn't water-proof. Her prognosis is good, but she won't be able to share sex toy joy with the world for a while. In lieu of a demonstration, come to the Penn Women's Center today at 7 PM where we will still be screening a movie, eating junk food, and engaging in general Valentine's Day merriment. Obviously, the admission price is no longer $7, but donations to the Women's Medical Fund are still welcome. Also, we will be signing a petition to have all battery operated sex toys come with a warning about water usage like the ones found on blow-dryers. Sorry again but I hope to see you tomorrow anyway!

Much V-Day Love,

Penn for Choice

Is this a joke? It has to be. But maybe it's not? This reminds me of the sage piece of advice my father gave me when I was 12: never bring your vibrator into the bathtub. Also, this guest speaker won't be able to "share sex toy joy with the world for a while"? How about: never again! The woman almost killed herself with a vibrator! This has to be a joke.

Could the pro-abortion movement get any stupider? Instead of talking about protecting a woman's right to choose, they're protecting a woman's right not to get electrocuted by her vibrator in the bathtub?

February 14, 2008 4:00 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (69) | Read more: Penn , Sex

Proving that it can print a puff-piece about anything in the world, no matter how insane, today’s Daily Princetonian brings us into the lives of several married students. Some of their stories are incredibly strange. But like, no judgments! Right, Prince?

Whenever Celene Lizzio '08 isn't doing coursework, her mind isn't focused on partying, but on being a wife and a mother. Lizzio met her husband "by complete chance" when she was wandering through an unfamiliar part of Cairo, Egypt, where she was traveling a few years ago. Noticing that she looked lost, a young Egyptian man stopped and asked her if she needed directions. The two started talking, and a few weeks later they were married."

Lizzio, who is a practicing Muslim, said that traditional Islamic religious views frown upon dating before marriage, which is why the two were married so quickly. Lizzio emphasized the value that Islam places on "inter-human bonds that arise from the family unit," adding that such a mentality contributed to her decision to get married and continues to shape the way she envisions herself as a wife and a mother."

February 14, 2008 1:59 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (18) | Read more:

• Harvard: Columnist opines V-Day datelessness, announces she is ready to "settle."
• Columbia: Hey, at least our teachers are getting some.
• Cornell: At least we're hotter than 12-year-olds?
• Cornell: "Courtship Rituals of Cornellians: An Ethnography"
  
• Penn: "What is love at Penn? Hard to define, if anything."
  
• Penn: Mostly, we just don't want to get raped,
• Penn: ...which is why we're glad this guy is in jail
• Princeton: "The first thing that struck her as strange arose as soon as she met up with her date: He wasn't alone. His parents, who live in a neighboring town, had decided to join them."
• Princeton: "Dating here sucks."
• Yale: Whatever. It's Sex Week. We're too busy having an orgy to be bothered with this stuff.
  

February 14, 2008 1:40 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comment | Read more: RagTime

In another sign of the coming apocalypse, last night students at Barnard's Sulzberger Hall were forced to evacuate their dorm following a series of pipe and heater explosions. From The Spec:

Near the TV lounge, there was just a small pool of water and there was fog in the windows,” said Jill Ross, BC ’11 and a resident of the fifth floor of Sulzberger. “I saw this brown water beneath my feet [in the stairwell] and thought, ‘I really hope this wasn’t a sewer.’”

According to The Spec, "Many Barnard students compared the experience of being evacuated down stairwells amid flooding, to the Titanic." At least, you know, they have a proper sense of perspective. But where's Leo when you need him?

February 14, 2008 12:34 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (20) | Read more:

It looks like this fine rag is good for something after all. An email sent to us yesterday begs us to contact Jennifer on behalf of the United States Army. As patriots, we obviously do everything in our power to help the government of this great country. We've therefore decided to post the email so that Jennifer can use her stellar resume to go forth and save the world: 

[name redacted], CIV USA HRC

Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: FOUO

We'd like to get in touch with Jennifer.  Please send her this note, if you can.  Thank you.

[name redacted]
Mgmt Svc Spec (Human Resources/Civ)
Management Support Branch
Officer Personnel Mgmt Directorate
U.S. Army Human Resources Command

In a follow-up, the Army explained:

Just pass it on to Jennifer, if you can...  Yes, there are positions within the Army Human Resources Command that we are recruiting for.  I cannot offer her a position, but can let her know what is available and how to apply.  The jobs are posted on www.cpol.army.mil. Again, thank you!

Contact us, Jen. We can totally help you, if a position as a secretary or whatever at the Army Human Resources Command isn't like, beneath you.

February 13, 2008 3:07 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (12) | Read more:

• 
• Brown: "The best V-Day gift for guys? Sex, prof. says."
  
• Columbia: Still trying to kick the poor people out of their homes.
• Cornell: Hating on Qatar.
  
• Dartmouth: Some more charter-related hijinks.
• Harvard: "Beverage Authorization Teams" and other alcohol-related jargon you won't understand!
• Princeton: The Prince "localizes" a New York Times story to incredible ill-effect.
• Yale: Women's Center still on the whole slutsgate thing.
  

February 13, 2008 1:28 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (3) | Read more:

How many scandals have to unfold before college publications realize their Borat-aspiring ditties on yellow fever and Indian givers are seldom well received?

Meet the newest inductee to that infamous coterie of College Publications With Dubious Taste: The Pennsylvania Punch Bowl, whose "Diversity Issue" features a theme so broad as to offend not just one or two minorities, but all maligned groups. Word is that the Asian Pacific Student Coalition called a meeting to discuss the Bowl's heavy hand with Asian jokes, including a photo spread depicting "Where Asians Don't Belong." Locations of non-belonging include "at a frat party," "participating in a drinking game," and specific buildings and classes at Penn. Highlights include a "Great Moments in Diversity History" timeline:

Ah, the fine line between making jokes about stereotypes and, uh, listing them one by one for 14 pages straight? Punch Bowl's website offers the magazine for PDF download, but since you probably don't want smut like that on your hard drive, we've got it after the jump. Looks like the Bowl didn't appreciate our attempt to improve their internet availability. So we've reduced after-the-jump to just a few excerpts (only some of your shit, Punch!) and one of the stranger cease-and-desists we've received, featuring ruminations on "this modern life" and metaphors about fire and light and stuff.

Continue reading "Punch Bowl "Diversity Issue" a Paragon of Subtlety and Restraint" »

February 12, 2008 8:37 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (68) | Read more: Dartmouth , punch bowl , racism

• Brown: Students and residents fight violently, work 18-hour days to make each others' lives hell. Just kidding! They are "trying to get along."
• Columbia: Panopticon is the new black
• Dartmouth: Even Ensler at Dartmouth: "I was surprised more people weren't here."
• Penn: Panopticon is my new boyfriend
• Penn: Wait, didn't this happen at Princeton?
• Princeton: Yes, and now we're trading sports pages, too.
• Yale: Right up there with "What is the meaning of life?" and "Is there a God?"
  

February 12, 2008 11:21 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

Response and correction appended

Their employment rate may not be perfect, but the girls of Sigma Delta's Dartmouth chapter have a 100% success rate at watching each other's backs. In response to our story on Dartmouth Sig Delt Jennifer Krimm's sad story of unemployment, a younger sister sent us an email entitled "better jen krimm pics."

this is what she really looks like- you guys found a horrible pic of her!!!!

she didn;t look like that in school and she doesn't look like that now.. maybe she did for like 5 seconds last year in Kuwait?

shallow @ D...

* Krimm was in Qatar last year, not Kuwait. To her sister's credit, she spent time in Kuwait a few years ago, too.

Continue reading "BREAKING x2: Unemployed Girl Actually Really Pretty, Says Her Sorority Sister" »

February 11, 2008 6:07 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (64) | Read more: Dartmouth , sororities

Stop the presses! Dartmouth grad Jennifer Krimm ('06) has a killer resume, knows Arabic, and was president of her senior class. And she's unemployed! And, since such a tragic turn of events -- 20-something between jobs, craving tasteful work in non-profit sector -- has never happened before, the Washington Post saw fit to publish Ms. Krimm's MySpace blog rant eloquent musings. From "Want Fries With That Frustration?":

When I was turned down for a purely administrative job at a nonprofit because the other candidate had a master's degree, I knew that there was something very wrong with the economy.

I am waiting to see whether Borders thinks I'm qualified to work as a cashier.

Humiliating. Everyone knows it's only okay if it's an indie bookstore. Otherwise you're forced to interact with icky normal people who drink wine out of boxes and don't even know who Proust is, when you are a quarter of the way through the first book of Remembrance of Things Past, and even though it's slow and kinda boring, you totally like it, because you are totally smart, and spent enough money on your education to own, like, several small houses in a shitty part of town.

But wait. It gets worse. She's so poor, she's riding the subway!

Continue reading "BREAKING: Dartmouth Chick With Killer Resume Fails to Get Job" »

February 11, 2008 1:18 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (107) | Read more: Dartmouth

• Brown: Dancing days are here again.
  
• Columbia: "For Crystal, intimacy was a set of rules. She fucked only under certain conditions: heels on, hair down, eyes closed, dress up. Sex was like clockwork and she loved having good timing. And there was no better time to get laid in the stacks than the week before winter break. Or so she heard."
• Cornell: "We recognize the need to adapt in the game of college recruitment, but we’re not about to downplay the diversity of Cornell’s undergraduate colleges to attract a few more satisfied applicants. Maybe we’re just grumpy in our old age." Right: you juniors and seniors are like so old.
  
• Dartmouth: "A relative drop" in arrests at Winter Carnival. 3 is less than 3 dozen, right?
• Harvard: "Barackula."
• Princeton: "It was terrible to have to hose as many as we did.” The Prince's self-serving, sickening ode to the Tower Club. 
• Penn: Let's just say Amy will not be Baracking the vote.
  
• Yale: JuicyCampus tearing Yalies apart!
  

February 11, 2008 12:11 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comment | Read more: Columbia , RagTime , porn