Merry Summer Vacation, Ivy Leaguers

Merry Summer Vacation, Ivy LeaguersWe’re on hiatus. Do as you please on the comment board and look for summer editors starting June 16. If you’d like to be a summer editor - or maybe you are lonely without your daily IvyGate and would like to share A/S/L + sexi pic? - drop us a line before May 16.

Also, how rad is this baby portrait? Will some Whartonite please use it for a senior yearbook portrait? Please?

PS: Saw this one coming a mile away.

One Last Bonesmen Bash

One Last Bonesmen BashWe didn’t want you to go on summer break without first knowing which Yalies got into those fantabulous secret societies! Like, your entire summer would be ruined! Sure, that first Skull and Bones list we posted was a total fake-out (only one correct name in the end!) - but who really cared? Here are the society lists, forealz.

We wish these kids the best. As long as the new members of Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones and Wolf’s Head don’t paint their theses with the blood of aborted fetuses, or make giant swastikas out of snow, or construct giant penises out of Christmas lights, or have enormous flame-wars with their gay lovers on our comment boards, or go to war in Iraq because they’re “deciders,” they’re fine by us.

After the jump: the not-so-secret society lists in full.

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Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/Yalie

Ivy Leaguers Big Fat Meanie-Poos, Says Princetonian/YalieSound the alarm! A break in the ranks! Princeton grad and Yale 1L Amelia Rawls defies the Ivy tribe this week in a column for the Washington Post, “Best and Brightest, but Not the Nicest,” where she reveals the most closely guarded of our cabal’s secrets: We are not bionic superheroes. We are not Mother Teresa. In fact, some of us aren’t even nice.

I mean the kind of “nice” that involves showing compassion not merely because membership in community service groups demands it. The kind of “nice” that involves sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn’t have one.

…these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to “do what is right.”

What kind of horrible people was Amelia friends with in college, that she thinks thwarting sick people and teasing the homeless is normal among her peers? As for taking out the trash — well, seriously, do you know any 18-year-olds who do that voluntarily?

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To the Summit of Mt. Resume, and Beyond

Hello, it’s your negligent overlords checking in again. We just want to remind everyone of a post that went up last week, in case you missed it: We’re hiring for the summer.

The valiant Maureen O’Connor and Jacob Savage (also Hal Parker!) — of whom we are much enamored, to whom we are much indebted — have been helming the HMS IvyGate since September, and their final post of the semester goes up May 2. Then the site goes dark till June 16, when we return with a new summer slate of guest editors.

We want you to apply. ‘Cause it’s summer, we’re desperate excited to take a look at all comers. Maybe you’re a newspaper geek who wants to enlarge her patrol to all eight campuses; maybe you’re an anthro major with well-penned takes on the tribes and customs of these parts; maybe you’re an inveterate gossip who wants to crown a real-life Blair and Serena.

Maybe you know better. But let’s face it, you attend an Ivy, which means you’ve bit hook, line and sinker on a bad sales pitch before. Make that mistake again! Be an IvyGate editor! The pay is nonexistent, the commenters pustulent. And yet writing this stuff is fun — witness our inability to take the blog out behind the lean-to and shoot it in the back of the head — and there can be rewards. Why, just look at our recent alumni. We promise either a wildly lucrative promotion to the blogging bigs, or a nervy b.

To apply, email ivygate@gmail.com by May 16. 

Cheers,

Nick and Chris 

P.S. Disproving the existence of karma, we have been blessed recently with the talents of Zach Ozer, one of those ridiculously impressive tech guys from MIT. He’s overseeing a big upgrade of the blog that will yield a prettier (shut up) and faster site. Leave your ideas and requests in the comments, where they will be rounded up and shot.

Venkatesan Speaks! …and speaks, and speaks…

Venkatesan Speaks! ...and speaks, and speaks...Talk about long-winded. The Dartmouth Review interviewed Priya Venkatesan, who babbled for two days straight. (Literally. The interviewer ran out of tape.) She flip-flops on whether or not she’ll sue and explains how Writing Program Director Tom Cormen used top-secret alphanumeric codes for covert intimidation:

PV:One time Tom Cormen was sitting in the class, and she [a student] asked me, how many T’s are in Gattaca. This was the kind of question she was asking, “how many T’s are in Gattaca?,” and I was about to answer her and Tom Cormen pre-empted me, “two t’s.” I’ll leave you to interpret it.
TDR: No. No, I don’t understand that.
PV: I have to tell you: it means tenure track.
TDR: Oh, okay.
PV: Because I wasn’t tenured track.
TDR: Oh, okay, yes.
PV: They were trying to intimate that I wasn’t ready for tenure track.
TDR: Yes, okay, I didn’t realize that’s what that meant.
PV: I’m kind of making this leap because this is the kind of subversiveness that was going on in that environment. That [girl x] would ask how many t’s are in Gattaca and that Tom Cormen would respond, “two T’s” as if I had no grasp on tenure track. ..but with [girl x], something’s going on with her. I’m not a doctor, but she’s not all there.

This interview is so bizarre, it’s breathtaking. Venkatesan repeats every sentence at least five times, which explains why she never had time to answer questions during lecture. I tried really hard to imagine a context in which such loquaciousness would make sense-Dartlog is holding her captive? She is Scheherzade and silence is punishable by death?-but it’s hard. The interview is nearly 8000 words long (that’s 30 double-spaced essay-pages). And since you probably don’t want to read all that, we’ve got the Cliff’s Notes version after the jump.

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Ragtime May 1, 2008: In which the Daily Prince gets a little schizo