March 31, 2008

We did a mini-post yesterday on the NYT article "Students of Virginity" featuring Harvard's True Love Revolution, Lena Chen stuffing her face with ginger cake, and our own esteemed IvyGate commenters. Today we considered writing a lengthier post deconstructing the article blow-by-(not that kind of)-blow, but then we thought, why rush this? If we've learned one thing from TLR it's the value of "taking it slow." So instead we will deal with this in painstakingly small increments, gradually, pleasurably, one baby-sized scrap of hilarity at a time. Now presenting hilarious scrap #1: TLR co-president Leo Keliher ('09) in one of the more glorious photo/caption combos of our time:
 

Is that even a dorm room, or did he import a 12C monastery to sleep in? Leo's 15 minutes of rather embarassing fame after the jump.

Continue reading ""Students of Virginity" Actually Pretty Horny" »

March 31, 2008 4:40 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (67) | Read more: Harvard , Sex , new york times , true love revolution

Madonna Constantine is having a pretty bad semester. First someone hangs a noose on her doorknob, then she gets in trouble for plagiarism, then she suspects the whole thing is part of some university-wide institutionally racist conspiracy. And now a grand jury has authorized investigation into whether Constantine hung the noose herself or maybe with a li'l help from her friends. This is because symbolic nooses are basically Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards, the "quack quack seat back" of intellectual crime. I'm surprised James Frey hasn't tried it, yet! The New York Post reports:

The revelation that Constantine had been under university review provides a possible motive for a sympathetic friend to consider placing a noose on her door - thinking it could whip up support for her, sources said.

"Sympathetic friend"? Hmm... does Anthony Kelley have an alibi?

March 31, 2008 3:57 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (7) | Read more: Columbia , madonna constantine , plagiarism , racism

March 29, 2008

From the New York Times Sunday Magazine article about Ivy League abstienence societies:

Chen’s perspective on society, and Fredell’s, was borne out in the aftermath, as people wrote in to Ivygate, calling Lena Chen a “slut,” a “whore,” a “total whore,” a “whore whore slut.” And then someone by the screen name of Sex v. Marriage wrote in to say that “most guys out there would rather end up with a girl like Janie.”

My favorite? "Whore whore slut." We love you guys. Even if you are real bastards sometimes.

More BREAKING NEWS on the New York Times' far too generous approach to True Love Revolution to come.

March 29, 2008 3:23 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (32) | Read more: Sex , abstinence , anscombe , lena chen , new york times , true love revolution

March 28, 2008

Among the more bizarre institutions of daily newspapers is the idiosyncratic world of op-art, where people and objects frequently wear labels and the metaphors are thick. The Ivy dailies are, of course, no exception, their readerships gathering 'round the lunch table to marvel at the incomprehensible images produced daily in their pages. To mitigate the task of tracking down the week's worst in cartoons, IvyGate introduces a new weekly feature in which we handpick and deliver this week's ripest.

Princeton correspondent Donny Dietz ('09) breaks it down, after the jump.

Continue reading "Toon In, Drop Out: JuicyCampus as Oozing Gremlin" »

March 28, 2008 1:43 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (18) | Read more: Toon In, Drop Out

March 28, 2008 12:26 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comment | Read more:

March 27, 2008

So, the probably-psychotic Penn guy who tried to break into a classmate's room while sputtering jibberish on the nature of "reality"? Rodin House residents are now saying the ordeal was even scarier and stranger than the DP reported. A Rodin resident with ties both to victims and attacker writes in,

He injured 3 police officers, smashed the glass of a fire extinguisher case and tried to fight them off with the shards. He [put up a] fight until the end, and they had to strap him to a guerney and carry him out because he wouldn't leave. He punched 2 officers in the face, had one in a headlock and busted that one's knee.

The student in question has since made bail, though nobody seems to know where he is or what he is doing. His parents were witnessed moving their son's personal effects from his dorm yesterday. At press time, the conditions of the attacker's bail (psychiatric care? restraining order?) and university status (leave of absence? expulsion?) are unknown.

Continue reading "Penn Break-In Scarier Than Previously Thought" »

March 27, 2008 6:01 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (5) | Read more: Penn , crime

March 27, 2008 10:04 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

March 26, 2008

From The Dartmouth's annual "Hey, spring break just happened, think we can squeeze 500 words out of it?" newsstory, "Spring Breaks Run the Gamut":

For some students life at Dartmouth is raucous enough and already resembles the revelry that students at other schools seek during their spring breaks.

"It’s like a perpetual spring break at Dartmouth," Scott McKnight '11 said.

We always suspected Dartmouth was the odd Ivy out. A proposal: Instead of those latently classist "State Night" parties Ivy Leaguers like to throw (you know, party like a state school kid, drink beer through funnels, pretend you care about sports?) let's switch to "Dartmouth Night." It'll be less classist but way more elitist, if the rank-counting hairsplitters on our comment boards have anything to say about it.

More on the Beer Bong of the Ivy League, after the jump.

Continue reading ""It's like a perpetual spring break at Dartmouth"" »

March 26, 2008 6:55 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (18) | Read more: Dartmouth , keggy the keg , spring break

 

The Daily Prince reports in "Quidditch sweeps into Princeton":

Monday afternoon, the Middlebury Quidditch team stopped at Princeton University as part of its annual spring break Quidditch tour in an attempt to promote its ground-bound version of the sport at other American universities. So far this year, Middlebury has visited Bard and Penn and has games scheduled against Columbia and Vassar.

The role of the snitch is filled, not by an enchanted, plum-sized, golden-feathered ball, but by a hyperactive college student dressed in yellow with a penchant for running and wrestling. To capture the snitch, one of the seekers must grab a black sock hanging from the snitch’s shorts.

No word on Dean Dolores Umbridge's (Nancy Malkiel) take on the game.

March 26, 2008 6:05 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (8) | Read more: Princeton , Sports

I like cursing in print – or in blog form –  as much as the next guy. But as for the shitass Ivy League Dailies who look to the Grey Lady for guidance and inspiration, why on Earth do they like cursing so much? And more importantly, to what effect?

To no effect, friends. A brief search-and-survey of the dailies reveals language that your parents might find, well, a bit uncomfortable. The dailies print “fuck” and “shit” for no good or extenuating reason, sometimes in the form of short pornographic stories. Most of the time they use these words without even the saving grace of direct quotation. Read these brief excerpts and you’ll be soon asking yourself what the fuck has happened to our storied dailies.

Our friend Anthony Kelley at The Spec:
     "Some folks were ready to fuck him up."

From The Cornell Daily Sun:
    “I've evolved to fuck, shit, and eat, but it's odd that
     while I'm doing these basic things I have the ability
     to think.”

The Daily Pennsylvanian (taking the cursing cake!):
    You want to fuck the shit out of a group of high     
    schoolers touring the campus.

From The Yale Daily News:
    “Why won’t straight black guys leave me the fuck alone?”

After the jump: More newspapers, more cursing. Fuck yeah!

Continue reading "What the Fuck Happened to Decency Standards at Ivy League Dailies?" »

March 26, 2008 1:53 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (14) | Read more: cursing , ivy league dailies

Note: Sorry for our brief black-out, readers! Turns out the internet is a "privilege" at Princeton, one easily lost by those watching inordinate amounts of porn-- or, you know, attempting to use two computers on a single WiFi account. Word to the wise: Register your devices. PU's personal-computing Panopticon demands full disclosure.

March 26, 2008 10:22 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (4) | Read more: RagTime

March 21, 2008

First things first: Jacob extends a half-hearted apology to the dude Angela Rasmussen (C'GS) screwed figuratively but not literally. Ryan Subaran, you might be a totally cool guy; or, you might suck. We really have no idea, because we recently discovered that Angela is batshit crazy.

But at least her blog is fun! 

In an email sent yesterday, Razzy thanks us for posting about her and notes,

Just one thing, though.  I HATE that picture of me. ... I would simply like to humbly propose some alternatives.  They are equally ridiculous and certainly don't qualify as a glamour shot, but I don't wince every time I look at one of them like my lab photo.  Considering I'm totally in love with myself, that says a LOT.

And then she attaches five pictures of herself, three of which feature nudity. Um, hello, strange woman who posts topless pictures of herself on her blog and claims "most men are intimidated by me." Are you aware that embarrassing nudie pics are usually sent to us by the crazed member of a relationship, not the one claiming righteous indignation? And girl, if there is anything worse than a puple wig, it's a matching purple mini-toga that reveals your entire right breast. And if there's anything worse than that? It's taking a picture of the ensemble, then emailing it to us.

After the jump: Razzy's five preferred photos and all the rest of the crazy that Jacob somehow missed, probably because he is a man, and for some reason men don't catch these things until way too late, like when they are lying naked in bed with one and suddenly realize, oh shit. I can't go down on this girl. She is crazy.

Continue reading "So, the Columbia GS who wanted the dude to go down on her? Not very shy." »

March 21, 2008 12:54 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (45) | Read more: Columbia , Sex , razzy

New Jersey prosecutors have subpoenaed records from JuicyCampus. Since Princeton is the only New Jersey school currently enjoying Juicy's services, this is definitely about you, Princeton person who posted about the girl whose "vagine hang like sleeve of wizard."

New Jersey Attorney General Ann Milgram is going after the beleaguered but wildly popular gossip site for violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act because, according to the Associated Press, "it doesn't allow offensive material but provid[es] no enforcement of that rule." Which is funny, because we always thought JuicyCampus existed precisely for the promulgation of offensive material. In fact, you could say Matt Ivester is the laissez-faire Nick Summers. (That comparison is entirely nonsensical, but I like that I got to use the letter 'z,' so it stays.)

Since Milgram is going after the site, not its users, your Google caches and future employability are probably safe. But since you all have anxiety disorders anyway, feel free to grab a brown paper bag and start hyperventilating.

NJ Office of the Attorney General's press release after the jump. 

Continue reading "Princeton Gossips, Start Freaking Out" »

March 21, 2008 8:05 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (7) | Read more: Princeton , juicycampus

Salon's esteemed advice columnist, Cary Tennis, on the Ivy League:

I know what it is like to befriend the moneyed and beautiful sons and daughters of the Ivy League and to watch them drive off when the fun is over; I know the sickening flush you feel when the historic room you are standing in, where canapes are served on silver platters by obsequious caterers of unknown descent, becomes a room in which you are the very thing that does not belong -- a thing to be removed, a thing to move away from lest unpleasantries erupt. One awakens in such a room as one awaking from a dream for the first time seeing with dizzying clarity the occupants as they are: sycophants of the court, transparently hungry for a crumb, self-hating, malnourished, their gazes cold as a lizard's gaze, their winter fingertips the temperature of junkyard metal.

Apparently Mr. Tennis has never heard of financial aid. Or irony, given that the advice-seeker goes by "J.A.P." and the address suffix is "slave_narrative."

March 21, 2008 7:49 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (12) | Read more: outsiders

March 21, 2008 7:30 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

March 20, 2008

Looks like our frienemy Lena Chen isn't the only one with ex-boyfriend grad student stalker issues. We now bring you the sad saga of Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia GS, who, in her words, is "tired of Columbia dicking me around and telling me they're going to handle it, when it has come to my attention that my department's administrators have been lying to us both to avoid creating a big scene."

Basically, on her blog, Angela called out a certain Ryan Subaran"for refusing to perform oral sex on her and demanding it for himself nevertheless, insisting his "culture" forbade his going down on her. Saying he went apeshit is a bit of an understatement. Here's Angie's account of the story.

We went to my hotel room and proceeded to strip down, when things went awry. Since we didn't buy any condoms, he refused to have sex with me. I was like, "No problem, we can do other things."

He responded that on account of his being Jamaican, he doesn't "do that." When I established that "that" referred to performing cunnilingus, I informed him that he wasn't getting a free blow job from me. Actually, I don't think I specifically said that, but I somehow put the brakes on our hooking up. I am not stingy with the fellatio, but in the words of the inimitable Robert Sylvester Kelly, "I ain't goin' down on you if you ain't goin' down on me." Blow jobs are challenging! They really hurt your jaw and you don't know the meaning of "epic struggle" until you've had one with your own gag reflex. Giving a solid blow job is hard work, and I don't just hand them out to any asshole who wants one, especially someone I might never see again who I don't know and don't really care to impress.

After reading the post, Subaran - who at this point hadn't been called out by name - went nuts.

Several days later, Ryan apparently decided to check out my website, and discovered the entry. He marched right into my lab's tissue culture room to unleash hell. One minute I was loading mouse cells into a MACS column in the hood, and the next, Ryan was inches from me screaming, "YOU FUCKING CUNT! HOW DARE YOU SMEAR MY NAME? YOU WHORE, YOU CAN'T FUCK WITH MY CAREER!"

Subaran then posted an insane, insane diatribe on Razzy's blog. Angela then tried to get the Columbia administration to intervene, but to little avail.

After the jump: Ryan's JUICY response. 

Continue reading "Who Though Refusing To Perform Oral Could Get This Bad?" »

March 20, 2008 1:30 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (20) | Read more:

March 19, 2008

Gawker's already linked to this video of Harvard students "debating" sex on World Savior Al Gore's start-up cable channel Current, and we thought it's particularly relevant, as many of you are now on spring break thinking: are Harvard students having sex? The answer: probably not, and if they are, it's gross, disgusting sex. There's so much nerdiness here it's adorable/frightening.

 

Watch closely: there's Katarina Cieplak-von Baldegg (is this seriously even a name? Remind me not to marry her so my children can avoid the curse of having twenty-seven hyphens in their name), the founding editor of the Harvard sex magazine H-bomb  talking disengenuously about how the magazine is as much "not about sex" as it is about it (the real reason for the magazine? As this is Ivy League, it's probably just a resume-builder - according to Gawker, Cieplak-von Baldegg has since been hired at Current).

And then there are the Weirds at True Love Revolution: notice out the way green-shirted guy is rubbing his girlfriend's hand! He literally can't let go. I mean, it's so rhythmic, it's practically like sex! Who needs sex, especially when you can hold and caress your girlfriend's arm in a super-creepy way like all day long!

Only at Harvard. Right? 

March 19, 2008 10:26 AM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (4) | Read more:

March 19, 2008 9:03 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (5) | Read more: RagTime

March 18, 2008

Some backstory: Will Scharf '08, the former President of one of Princeton's eating clubs, was charged last December with providing alcohol to minors and maintaining a nuisance. The charges grew out of an unrelated investigation into a brawl between two girls. One girl poured beer on another, and the first struck the second.

But the Borough attempted to coerce these students into testifying against the eating-club as a way of avoiding the law themselves. So instead of charging the two female malefactors, the Borough charged Scharf even though the club had bodyguards and a working wrist-band system in place that night.

In a press-release provided in advance to IvyGate, Scharf's tough-named lawyer Rocco Cipparone breaks it all down:

Cipparone noted that apparently it has been a pattern of the Borough Police to charge an individual officer of an eating club, only to later dismiss the charges when the eating club itself agrees to take responsibility and admit liability for the charges originally levied against the individual.
It's an old game and a dirty one. But Scharf, however, declined to play. Rocco declares that Scharf, "was not willing to be used by the Borough Police as leverage against his Club, in derogation of his individual rights and civil liberties." Bravo!

After the jump -- "false arrest, malicious prosecution, and federal civil rights violations."

UPDATE: The Prince just picked the story up. There's additional legal info and commentary from Cipparone to be found, if you're interested.

Continue reading "BREAKING: All Charges Against Scharf P '08 Dropped; Civil Suit in Works" »

March 18, 2008 10:49 AM by Hal Parker | | Comments (5) | Read more: Princeton , borough , eating clubs

A confession: The current editors of IvyGate are an effete crew of muscle-atrophied weaklings. As such, we have no way of evaluating the content and/or accuracy of the Sun's NCAA basketball blog, though we find the graphic design on the top banner quite nice. (If any of your more robust Ivy Leaguers are interested in sportswriting, do drop us a line!)

Luckily, Insider Higher Ed has created the only March Madness bracket we are capable of understanding, one that pits brains vs. brains and forgets the brawn! In "A Bracket Not to Bet On" IHE crunches each team's academic stats via some complicated voodoo known as "math" (yeah, we're not too good at that, either -- thank god for the Humanities) and finds that Cornell would make it to the Final Four, if only smart points could be swapped for athlete points. And oh, what a voodoo that would be, one that I wished for daily in middle school gym class but, alas, never arrived.

A few surprises: Due to the team's (not the school's) smart points, Cornell beats Stanford straightaway, then trounces Marquette. Davidson goes further than anyone expects, and Vanderbilt drops out early.

IHE's complete academic bracket is downloadable on their website, or visible on our website, after the jump.

Continue reading "If brains were brawn, we'd be champs. We'd also get more dates." »

March 18, 2008 8:31 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (4) | Read more: Cornell , Sports , basketball

March 18, 2008 8:14 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

March 17, 2008

After this post on the twisted lives of Ivy League power couples, we realized we had a situation on our hands. An L-Word "The Chart" sort of situation, revealing for the first time exactly how close Anne-Marie Slaughter is to Heidi Fleiss, connecting the dots all the way from Larry Summers to Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon, people! That means we win. ivyleaguelovechart.jpg

March 17, 2008 6:05 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (14) | Read more: Larry Summers , Sex , eliot spitzer

Harvard alum mag 02138 is likely clocking record-breaking traffic this week, now that their profile of Harvard "power couple" Eliot Spitzer and Silda Wall (where Wall admits to never spending time with her husband, and Spitzer pretends he's never worn makeup before) has become one long, foregone punchline. From power couple to criminally perverse politico -- oh, what a difference two years can make!

Though all eight of 02138's "power couples" are technically still intact, Eliot and Silda are far from alone in their publicly cuckolded humiliation. Being labeled a "power couple," it seems, is the latest relationship kiss of death, on par with 20-something hipsters getting matching tattoos, or meeting your mate on "The Bachelor." And if you expand the "power couple" list to include 02138's "power exes," a sordid soap opera unfolds, featuring closeted football players, heroin-addled artists, even a contestant from America's Next Top Model!

After the jump: Your guide to the Ivy League's most doomed.

Continue reading ""See what happens when Harvard meets Harvard"" »

March 17, 2008 5:55 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (3) | Read more: Harvard , Sex , eliot spitzer

Have you ever been reading Drudge Report and been like, well this is great, but why can't I read a similar version of this site for dogs? Thanks to a couple Princeton Seniors....now you can.

The idea behind Dog Report is simple, so simple it's brilliant: exactly like Drudge Report, but for dogs. All the headlines have been modified to read from a dog's-eye point-of-view. Why am I even explaining this? Read it, click that link, I double-dog dare you.

The site's authors, Theo Ellis '08 and Katy Brandes '08, gave us the full backstory on Dog Report: "We thought of it on friday, the site was up and running by friday night." Because the URL "dogreport.com" was apparently taken, they settled for "dogreportdotcom.com" The next, and presumably ultimate, step is to get Dog Report linked by Drudge Report. 

What is the best headline on Dog Report? Personally I'm partial to "Hundreds of would-be dog-owners dead," but I guess "Dogs still uninterested in monetary policy," could give that one a run for its money.

Good luck with the thesis, guys. 

March 17, 2008 3:47 PM by Hal Parker | | Comments (3) | Read more: Princeton , dog report


March 17, 2008 11:38 AM by Jacob Savage | | Comment | Read more:

...and we're back from spring break, a little sad to have missed the big news on Eliot Spitzer (P'81, HLS'84), if only so I could use that "Princeton in the Nation's Cervix" headline I've been sitting on for months. Since Spitzer's scandal and resignation have been very small stories, completely overlooked by the media, and we'll thus never have cause to revisit it, here's Eliot and Silda's 02138 cover now. The subheadline reads "See What Happens When Harvard Meets Harvard."

Other cute items worth noting:

Whew. Keep the tips coming, people. We'll be here all week.

March 17, 2008 8:22 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (2) | Read more: Beauty and the Geek , Columbia , Harvard , Yale , bwog , eliot spitzer , juicycampus , reality tv , spring break , tony blair

March 10, 2008

Jacob is going on spring break (the laws of college applying not only to current students, but also to our super-sophomore graduate editor) so we decided we'd all go. These pasty white pages could use a tan.

Send us a postcard from your travels. Better yet, send us videos, drinking games, and names! Tips, titillation, and musings on the tonic powers of tequila are, as always, welcome. We'll resume a regular posting schedule next week, and if there isn't at least one video of some politician's kid smoking hash on a Mexican beach by then, well, shucks. At least you'll have an even tan.

March 10, 2008 6:05 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (29) | Read more: spring break

March 8, 2008

Just when we thought Lee Bollinger hadn’t done anything in the past month or two to inflame various Columbia constituencies, here comes a reminder that all is not well in Columbia-land.

In honor of the Jewish Festival of Purim – in which my people get drunk and dress up in costumes to celebrate their deliverance from annihilation in ancient Persia - the advocacy group Bnei Haman, founded to protest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s September visit to  campus, is distributing masks of President Bollinger and President Ahmadinejad (“Bnei Haman" is literally translated as “children of Haman” – Haman being the villain of the Purim story, the man who sought to destroy the Jewish people).  According to Bnei Haman – who are planning an extensive Purim masquerade ball, mainly involving effigies of Bollinger –  the organization has received over 2,000 requests for Bollinger masks from around the world, from places as far-flung as Kazakhstan (is this another joke? Borat maks?). A spokesman declared:
The Ahmadinejad-Bollinger speech was broadcast around the globe and its lasting impact can't be overstated. The fact that individuals in the former Soviet East Block want to share in our Purim festivities demonstrates that the fight against evil knows no boundaries."
Sure, the fight against evil might no know boundaries, but your sense of boundaries knows no sense of proportion.

After the jump: some very weird stuff from the Bnei Haman blog.

Continue reading "Bollinger Effigies Go Global" »

March 8, 2008 8:57 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (9) | Read more: Columbia , ahmadinejad , lee bollinger

March 7, 2008

--Compiled by James Yu

March 7, 2008 8:28 AM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (12) | Read more: RagTime

March 6, 2008

WARNING: The links in this post are NSFW. Some go to a site you are supposed to be 21 years old to view.

The entire concept of irony bursts into flames and ceases to exist today. If the internets are to be believed, a real live Wharton student is whoring herself out. No, this is not another post about douchebags at McKinsey. Not about the shitty job market, or annoying sex columnists, or degrading internships fetching coffee for rich guys in pinstripe suits. We are talking about a literal prostitute, the kind that charges money for admission to her vagina. And if the so-called Eva and her madame Solana Jewel have anything to say about it, the little hussy goes to Penn:

Eva is a new addition to the Philadelphia scene! A hot Italian spinner! She is currently a finance major at a Ivy League university. I can assure you she is 100% GFE!

Rate is $300/hr, $450/1.5 hrs, $600/2hrs. Couples are $450/hr. Inquire for longer hours. She is also available for outcalls.

Miss Eva and Mama Lana were unavailable for comment ("press request" being outside the standard sex-for-money dialogue). But we are pretty sure the above blonde woman exists. Whether she actually attends Wharton, however, is another story. After the jump: We break down the knowns; the unknowns; and the many things that, in the course of investigating this story, we have come to know but really wish we didn't.

Come! Enter the sordid world of Prostitution at Penn...

Continue reading "Is the job market really this bad?" »

March 6, 2008 1:56 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (38) | Read more: Penn , Sex , Wharton

The Princeton Tory – these days involved in excessive rumor-mongering, even by our lax standards – is throwing a round a bit of the Juice about Princeton Professor Paul Muldoon, the nicest man / poet / rock star in the world:

From this month’s issue:
Rumors are circulating that Professor Paul Muldoon, head of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts has given support and his stamp of approval to a group called ‘Taft’s Tub’, an exclusionary society dedicated to the arts. His involvement raises questions of fairness, as students try to discern if this is a secret society or just the newest student group. The facts are fuzzy, but what is least clear is why this group’s formation has occurred in the shadows. If it really is exclusionary, Muldoon should disassociate himself and apologize to the students he serves. We’ll see if and how he extricates himself from this basin.”
A bizarre charge, no?  Especially from a group that prides itself on its close, secretive ties with Spawn of Satan / Francisco Nava bff Professor Robert George.

After the jump: Muldoon’s response.

Continue reading "Princeton Professor Paul Muldoon Creates (un) Secret Society" »

March 6, 2008 1:50 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (6) | Read more: Princeton


March 6, 2008 12:53 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (4) | Read more:

March 5, 2008


March 5, 2008 3:32 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (3) | Read more:

March 4, 2008

Is it just us, or is it kind of strange that Cornell sophomore Alex Cain's school-sponsored "Life On the Hill" blog (part of a university-wide effort to make student life seem friendlier), "Over the Top," contains a joke about the school's gorge-related suicide problem in the top banner?

 

In case you can't see it, Alex's rendition of Amy Winehouse reads "They tried to make me go to the gorges but I said no no no." And yes, "WE ARE THE CHAMPPPPIIIIIOOOONNNSSSS OOFFF THEEE IVY LEAGUE" is the top headline right now. Something about basketball.

March 4, 2008 11:08 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (14) | Read more: Cornell

The weirdest thing about the most high-profile plagiarism scandal of the year is that copycat White House staffer Timothy Goeglein chose the Dartmouth Review to knock off. Dartmouth? sniffed incredulous student writers at the holy elitist trinity of HYP. If the White House is stealing from Dartmouth, surely somebody more important is stealing from us!

And since everyone knows the only American institution more revered than the White House is the New York Times, a tipster has connected the dots between NYT and the Yale Daily News. Specifically, NYT's article on "drunkorexia" (helpfully placed in the Fashion & Style section, lest we believe this is actually a disease or serious addictive problem) and a recent YDN article on sexually transmitted diseases. Besides the fact that long nights of drunk puking often lead to STDs, our tipster points us to the "lede/nutgraf similarities."

Now, we can never truly know who copied what, for what reasons, and how many chakras it will take to exorcise the plagiaristic demons. But you can judge the YDN-NYT "similarities" for yourelf after the jump.

Continue reading "NYT Plagiarizes YDN? And other wishful thinking." »

March 4, 2008 3:41 PM by Maureen O'Connor | | Comments (9) | Read more: Yale Daily News , plagiarism

Remember Columbia / Teachers Colllege Professor Madonna Constantine, she of the noose-hanging fame and plagiarism charges? Well, did she really do it? As for the noose, we're not so sure. But what about the plagiarism? Yes, yes, yes she did! According to an outside report, Constantine stole work from no less than three different people in the past five years and did so in "numerous instances."

Not so fast, says a truly insane column in today's Spectator. According to a certain Anthony Kelley we can never really be sure:

No one aside from Teachers College Professor Madonna Constantine will ever know whether or not she actually committed plagiarism.The ultimate truth of a situation cannot be attained through investigations, especially when they are clouded with accusations of bias and prejudice."

But can we ever even know that your name is Anthony Kelley, Anthony Kelley? What is truth, after all? 

Kelley is "drawn to" the view that "these allegations of plagiarism... are continuations of the historical devaluation of black womanhood and should be recognized as such."

Still, we've got to give Kelley some credit here. He is so academically open-minded that he's willing to play devil's advocate:

Let us assume for a moment that Professor Constantine plagiarized the work of others. Instead of punishing (or “sanctioning”) her, we should be making special efforts to extend compassion to her and those who feel wounded as a result of her actions. We should be having community dialogues to emphasize the importance of academic honesty."

In this perfect world Kelley imagines, you can steal your friends' academic work so long as you're willing to sit around a campfire and "talk" about it at some later point.

After the jump: more insanity.

Continue reading "The Batshittiest Columbia Spectator Column You Will Ever Read" »

March 4, 2008 1:41 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (38) | Read more: Columbia , madonna constantine , plagiarism , racism

Do you know who -- administration figure, trustee, or professor -- lied to the Tory about Malkiel's departure? Please contact ivygate@gmail immediately if so. We don't mind listening to theories as well.

March 4, 2008 8:15 AM by Hal Parker | | Comments (3) | Read more: RagTime

March 3, 2008

Princeton Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel – the original Spawn of Satan, long before Drew Faust arrived on the scene – will not be coming back. The University has declined to renew her contract.

As a Princeton alum, this post is going to be rather personal.  My only thought: thank God.

This is an excerpt from an interview I conducted with her several years ago in the Nassau Weekly. Malkiel reveals herself to be a true enemy of academic discourse.

DM: I wouldn’t measure success by who has or hasn’t read “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

JS: Don’t you think there are certain things that everyone should ---

DM:  I don’t believe in a canon, I don’t believe any of our departments believe in a canon. Due to the explosion of knowledge in all of these fields it is such that they no longer operate that way. You should have a familiarity with, if you are an English major, different periods, different genres. It’s the same if you’re a history major. But it has long since passed since a department was willing to say confidently: “Here are the big books and you must’ve read those books.” Knowledge is too diverse and complicated in most fields to be able to do that anymore. I think that the biggest challenge is getting students better distributed among the departments. We have different levels of quality in education that our students receive while here because of the imbalance.

JS: What books have you read lately?  What movies have you seen lately?

DM: I really enjoyed The Rule of Four this summer.  I thought that was a good read, and I read it against the Da Vinci Code.  That was interesting…

Malkiel is a woman who decried anti-intellectualism on campus but who rejected the idea of any sort of canon out of hand, whose own personal canon and primary reading list included “The Rule of Four” and “The Da Vinci Code,” who never left her office without her goddamn dog (which was itself a symbol of her husband’s conspicuous wealth and of her own conspicuous consumption), and who unilaterally launched a disastrous grade-deflation policy without engaging the student body in any debate over its course or its consequences.

Good riddance.

Update: Might we have jumped the gun? According to the Prince, the rumors of Malkiel's imminent demise are greatly exaggerated... We trust and pray that the Tory, not the Prince, is right...

March 3, 2008 3:42 PM by Jacob Savage | | Comments (37) | Read more: