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.

Continue reading "Venkatesan Speaks! ...and speaks, and speaks..." »

May 1, 2008 1:57 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (44) | Read more: Dartmouth , Priya Venkatesan

Breaking news: it looks as though unhinged post-modernist and writing professor Priya Venkatesan will or will not be pursuing legal action against Dartmouth College. Trying to stay in the news despite her rapidly fading 15 minutes, Venkatesan contacted Dartblog and The D yesterday to say that she was dropping the suit. Never mind, though. Within 24 hours she re-contacted them to say that she will indeed be pursuing legal action. What seems most likely, however, is that Venkatesan, despite her claims to the contrary, has not seen a lawyer.

The D has one pithy student's take on the whole matter:

If Venkatesan followed through with her lawsuit the same way she followed through with grading our papers, no one would have had anything to worry about,”

Meanwhile, the Dartmouth Administration seems more bemused than angry, exasperated that Dartmouth's spam-blockers can't shoo Venkatesan away. Here Gail M. Zimmerman, the Dean of First-Year students, pretends to care about Venkatesan's legal action:

Robert Donin, Dartmouth's General Counsel, was present at yesterday's meeting. He advises that we do not believe there is any merit to a potential lawsuit and he does not feel it necessary for students to retain their own legal counsel at this time...

Questions arose as to our ability to block Prof. Venkatesan's emails. Whether that ability exists or not, it would not likely stop her emails from reaching your inbox given the dearth and ready availability of other free email systems such as hotmail, gmail, and yahoo. If these emails are distressing, please don't hesitate to forward them to me unopened. I would request you to forward any emails to me regardless of whether you read them or not so that I can be apprised of and assess how best to respond and support you.

After the jump: we analyze Venkatesan's academic work.

Continue reading "Update: In Ultimate Po-Mo Move, Unhinged Dartmouth Prof Drops Lawsuit, Pick Lawsuit Up Again, Leaves Everyone Unsure of Everything" »

April 30, 2008 11:25 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Dartmouth , Priya Venkatesan

The D reported yesterday on lecturer Priya Venkatesan (also undergrad '90 and a Med School researcher) who, in a series of strangely passive-aggressive group emails, announced a plan to sue her students for workplace harassment based on "intolerance of ideas." The emails—reported first in Dartlog and forwarded to a zillion email lists within seconds—also contain info on Venkatesan's upcoming Academy X rip-off where she plans to "name names." Venkatesan tapped into the email list from her Winter 2008 Writing 5 class:

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35
From: Priya Venkatesan
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my eperiences as your instructor, which will "name names" so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day. 

Few of Venkatesan's students deny disliking her; they just say it had nothing to do with race, gender, or any other federally-protected characteristic. Rather, the lecturer embodied that special brand of neurotic pedagogical tyranny that includes making rules against questions, refusing to interact with students, and, according to the D,

cancelation of class for a week after the class applauded a student who contradicted Venkatesan’s opinions about post-modernism

Spontaneous applause during a class on literary criticism? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture, so outrageously shocking as to shake Venkatesan to her very core: In a class at an Ivy League university, students were paying attention. Worse: They were engaged, and they cared.

"I was horrified," Venkatesan said. "My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line ... I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression." ...She canceled class because the incident caused her "intellectual and emotional distress," she said.

Then again, being outsmarted by a room full of eighteen-year-olds must be pretty humiliating. A kinder choice would have been emitting a spontaneous snore or two, then preoccupying themselves with a more innocuous form of disrespect, like text messaging during class or ostentatious yawning.

Possibly awesome turn of logic: If the students' crime was "intolerance of ideas," and the idea in question was post-modernism, does that mean post-modernism is Venkatesan's religion? In which case academia has finally curled so far inward as to truly out-po-mo itself. "Where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain," indeed!

After the jump: More emails from Venkatesan and Dartmouth authorities, and a sample of Venkatesan's evaluations.

Continue reading "Putting the "Class" in Class Action. Also, the "Ligitious and Passive-Aggressive Book-Peddler" in Professor." »

April 29, 2008 1:19 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (78) | Read more: Dartmouth , Priya Venkatesan

ivyTunes is back! This week, Penn audiophile James Yu checks in with Filligar. If you are in or know of a band worth covering, send links and/or MP3s to tips@ivygateblog.com.

A somewhat telling admission: since November 27, 2006 – the date Filligar appeared on our very first installation of ivyTunes – "Venice World's Fair (c. 2138 AD)," a catchy, deliberately nonsensical song off their earlier album, has played a whopping 61 times on my computer. That puts it easily within the top twenty of my most played tracks.

And with good reason. Filligar, composed of Dartmouthian brothers Johnny ('11), Teddy ('09), and Pete Mathias ('09), and childhood friend Casey Gibson (Hamilton '09), is fun and clever, but never nauseatingly so. Like Vampire Weekend, the Columbia band that rode the blogosphere to become the indie rock darlings of 2008, Filligar has the chops to explode into the next big thing.

The amount of positive exposure these four Chicagoans have received is impressive, especially in light of the fact that they are all full-time students in the wilds of New York and New Hampshire. They've been reviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times, have seen airtime on major radio stations such as WXRT Chicago and WFNX 101.7 Boston, and have had their song "Big Things" play on this season's premiere of MTV's The Real World.

All the Same - Filligar

After the jump: More review, and two more tracks. 

Continue reading "Return of ivyTunes, Return of Filligar" »

April 24, 2008 3:29 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Dartmouth , filligar , ivyTunes

Ain't it always the case that when something seems too good to be true, it is? So it was for The Dartmouth's April 16 cartoon from Bora Kem '08, which defied the low standard we usually set for college toons (click for enlargement):
That is until it was brought to our attention that the entire things was ripped off from a piece by the Investor's Business Daily Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Michael Ramirez:
 
All ya gotta do is take the clothes off the character and put the on the rack and nobody will ever know!

Except us. Which might explain why, despite being published in The Dartmouth last Wednesday, the comic hasn't been uploaded to The Dartmouth's comics page. In fact, one student claims to have e-mailed the EIC about these uh... similarities and received no response.

April 21, 2008 11:20 AM by Donny Dietz | Link | Comments (16) | Read more: Dartmouth , plagiarism

A memo sent from Dartmouth Assistant Director of Admissions to student tour guides:

Date: 04 Apr 2008
From: Sarah M. Damerville
Subject: Tour Streaking - Please Read

Hi Everyone,

It has come to our attention that a few of you have had your tours "streaked" in the past few weeks. Yesterday, one of our admissions officers watched as a group of young men streaked through our 11:15 am tour at very close proximity. If this has happened to you, or if you know the students who are streaking our tours, please let me know so we can contact them.

While I am sure the streakers don't intend to offend or harm anyone, they need to remember that we have a wide range of visitors to our campus, and prospective families (which often include both parents and significantly younger siblings) may be intimidated or offended by this behavior. 

After the jump: The rest of the email, and Dartmouth embed Daniel Belkin ('08) takes an in-depth look Damerville's dilemma and at his school's storied traditions of public nudity and prank-ery.

Continue reading "Naked Dartmothians Scare Away All The Prospies" »

April 10, 2008 9:10 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: Dartmouth , pranks

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 | Link | Comments (18) | Read more: Dartmouth , keggy the keg , spring break

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

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

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

Dartmouth's Jack-O-Lantern -- the humor group genius behind "Drinkin' Time" -- takes a stab at the creepiest of do-gooder stand-bys, blood donation. The result is clever and silly in a sweet, "aww, anthropomorphized blood is so lovable!" kind of way, but we're still waiting for Jack-O to give us another large-scale stunt worthy of college prank canonization.

February 7, 2008 1:29 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (13) | Read more: Dartmouth , YouTube

Every time we publish an article about Dartmouth, we remember how totally foreign and strange the nothernmost Ivy is. Luckily, our resident Dartmouthian Ben O'Donnell is here to translate and elucidate -- this time, on "blitzing," which is Dartmouth for "email."

When Dartmouth was founded in whenever, most people were not using email yet, but the technology was gradually becoming familiar, especially amongst teen-agers and other ne’er-do-wells. But when the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, our well-intentioned-but-emotionally-distant father, was laying the foundations for Dartmouth’s communications infrastructure, he thought the term “email” didn’t have enough of what they called in the ad industry “zazzmatazz” (he was formerly in the ad industry).  

And thus, with the 18-22 demographic in mind, he created the more marketable (until WWII) BlitzMail, Dartmouth’s beloved email client.

How is it different than regular email, skeptics wonder. It’s just better! we respond, red in the face. Indeed, it is less the program itself than its entrenchment in our culture that is remarkable. Many students use BlitzMail like Instant Messenger, sending “blitzes” back and forth in seconds. Most students rarely communicate via cell phone, at least not with other members of the Dartmouth community—until quite recently, it was even stigmatized.  

And perhaps most importantly, with BlitzMail, those uncomfortable “sober interactions” between students, which plague most college campuses, are all but eliminated at Dartmouth.

After the jump, just a few of the ways in which Blitz reduces people to types.

Continue reading "Blitz Clamantis: Dartmouth Confines Love, Angst, Grief to Online Communication" »

February 6, 2008 4:39 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (41) | Read more: Dartmouth

After a tempestuous reign as 16th King of Dartmouth, James Wright announces his retirement with a "profound sense of humility." This is probably because he's main claim to fame is being the fuddy dud who tried to expel the frats -- and failed.
Daniel Belkin '08 explains all.

Amid intense anticipation within alumni circles and enough student apathy to match, President Jim Wright gave the Dartmouth Board of Trustees his two week — er, 16 month — notice. After 11 years as the College’s Main Man, President Wright has decided that he is no longer Mr. Right to steer the Big Green into the next decade. "As much as I enjoy serving Dartmouth in my current role, I believe that every institution can benefit from periodic new leadership and fresh ideas," he commented on Monday.

His tenure in Hanover has been peppered with Clinton-level controversies (only with much less sexual innuendo). In 1999, taking a page out of Dean Wormer's playbook, the Administration unveiled the "Student Life Initiative" — a.k.a. the War on Fun — that aimed to close down Frat Row. Obviously, this threw the College into a tizzy. The joint retaliating forces of undergrad boozehounds and alumni with deep pockets carried the day in the end. Recently, Wright became the human punching bag-of-choice for shadowy cabals of alarmist alumni hollering that their beloved "College on the Hill" had devolved into a cold and heartless Harvard-on-the-Connecticut-River. And the brouhaha following the Board’s September decision to expand itself by eight-seats (and dilute the power of alumni-elected trustees) spilled onto the broadsheets of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading "Dartmouth Prez James Wright, Oldest Dude in the Ivy League, Steps Down" »

February 5, 2008 1:38 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (36) | Read more: Dartmouth , james wright , presidents

Last Friday night, Kevin Bacon, good sport that he is, went up to Hanover to receive the Dartmouth Film Award following a tongue-in-cheek retrospective of his work.

According to The Dartmouth, Bacon took the whole thing in stride. “To make fun of yourself is a great honor,” he told a full crowd at Spaulding Auditorium. What's better (or best!) is that Bacon then returned to Alpha Delta, the frat he memorialized so many years ago in Animal House. And then he played pong. And people took pictures.

We know we're super-late late on this one (the HuffPo beat us by a like a zillion blog-years), but sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words (or at least a post). 

After the jump: another picture! This time K-Bake has a beer in his hand!

Continue reading "Kevin Bacon Plays Pong; Dartmouth Students Play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"" »

February 1, 2008 1:01 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (24) | Read more: Dartmouth , bacon , kevin , pong

Enraged estrogen came to a boil yesterday when 200 angry Dartmouth ladies took to the streets of Hanover to protest sorority Alpha Xi Delta's eviction at the hands of rowdy frat Beta Theta Pi. Following decampment in 1996 for racist, homophobic, and criminally violent behavior, the Betas' history gets complicated and all, you know, Greek to me, so here's Dartmouth correspondent Ben O'Donnell with all the tawdry deets.

As any red-blooded administration-hater at Dartmouth will tell you, nine years ago the authority figures tried to take away that which is most precious to us students: our Greek houses.  The plan was jettisoned after students and alumni brought to the administration’s attention how lame ice cream socials and movie nights are, but many still harbored suspicions of an anti-Greek conspiracy.

The administration’s news a few days ago took those suspicions, poisoned them, shot them repeatedly, beat them with clubs as they attempted to stagger away in escape, and threw them into the ice-covered Neva River.  The headline in The D might have read "Awesome Frat to Return to Campus," and, indeed, some may have received the news of Beta Theta Pi’s impending reinstatement that way. 

Many students, however, have been tripping over their retro-'80s sneakers with the neon laces in their rush to condemn the administration’s decision, and I'm not just talking about the half with the two X chromosomes and sometimes questionable interpretations of the concept of "fun."  Because, of course, there's much more to this story, which has a "permanently" derecognized jock frat moving back into the house its alumni still own and kicking out the sorority that leases the house in the process.

After the jump, the Dick and Jane version of the story, in which Dick is a network of twelve hundred well-connected and deep-pocketed ex-frat boys who passed their time at Dartmouth beating up other dudes and shouting at gays, and Jane is a beleaguered sorority widely viewed on campus as pretty OK.  

Continue reading "Rowdy Dartmouth Frat Returns, Forcing Sorority's Eviction; Animal House Not Even Cited Once in This Post" »

January 18, 2008 10:07 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (45) | Read more: Dartmouth , frats , sorority

After celebrating the 22 days of Christmas like any God-fearing Christian should do, IvyGate will return to a "normal posting schedule" today, presumably until eternity. This will include regular installments of that popular roundup feature, RagTime, parts VII-MMCCLLXVI of the Anscombe Affair, some fun about self-important Dartmouth fraternities and Mark Zuckerberg showing that devilish face of his on the teevees. Oh and YES, EVERYONE AT DARTMOUTH, we know that Larry goddamn David was at your college. You can stop e-mailing about it now. But keep e-mailing other tips because those are fun too!

Happy 2008 from the riveters at IvyGate. 

January 16, 2008 11:14 AM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: 2008 , Dartmouth , grand returns

At Brown eggs aren't the only thing you might find sizzling in a dorm kitchen. And at Yale sometimes the showers aren't so clean. At Dartmouth, however, they just piss in the laundry-room.

So we learn from an email sent out to, "residents of Ripley Woodward Smith,"  containing news of a "serious health risk." Apparently someone has urinated in a wastebacket in the laundry room. "More than once."

Proietti writes, "it is difficult to believe the person doing this is one of those living in this community." Is  it? Maybe it's that quiet kid? Some kind of fraternity deal? Or could it just be drunken coincidence?

After the jump -- the email that started it all! 

Continue reading "Dartmouth Terrorized by Phantom Pisser" »

December 5, 2007 8:22 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (30) | Read more: Dartmouth , laundry room

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

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

Today the D is publishing the fourth and final installment of Alex Howe's (D '08) insane story of actually being punished for commiting real crimes. Last time we saw Alex, the other inmates were joking that they were going to rape him. Or were they just joking about joking?

In case you missed them, here are the first, second, and third installments. 

Uh-oh, prison-gossip!

One fellow seemed at least a little retarded; the law has no shelter for the kind-of handicapped. He arrived a few days after I did, accompanied by an instant rumor: that he had joined our ranks for making love to a dog. Supposedly he had an accomplice, who was also with us, who had held the unhappy animal in place. The thing was, both of these luminaries claimed to have been the spotter, an apparent defense of character which struck me as equivalent to explaining that the canine tryst was not consummated, but “we did everything else.” In jail, as in life, at least you aren’t the guy who screwed a dog.

True that. 

After the jump -- more prison-wisdom.

Continue reading ""The cultural rift between the other inmates and myself was obvious and unavoidable."" »

November 9, 2007 12:11 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Dartmouth , alex got in trouble , crime

Great news -- today The D is carrying the third installment from Alex Howe's (D '08) epic tale of irresponsible behavior and dangerous intoxication. Last week he blacked out, burglarized a grocery store, and was charged with a felony. This week he goes to jail. Here are some quotes:

Not going into a coma became even more difficult when I heard a chorus of shouts from the inmates all around me.

“Hey, it’s the new guy! We’re gonna gang-rape him!”

“It’s a new guy! I’m gonna f*ck him in the asshole!”

“Hey! A new guy! I’m gonna make him give me a blowjob!”

 

Listening to the conversations around me, I often felt like I was in Rap World: denunciations of “snitches” and “rats” were commonplace.

After the jump -- the third installment (1 2) in the series. And there's more to come!

Continue reading ""On the whole, jail was boring."" »

November 2, 2007 11:13 AM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Dartmouth , alex got in trouble , crime

(Note: we have literally nothing. Please send us something.)

I would consider this Dartmouth Halloween video a success in the sense that I am now frightened to go to Hanover.

October 31, 2007 3:45 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (11) | Read more: Dartmouth

Never one to beat around the sugarbush, The D continues its campaign of subliminal messaging via editorial error in today's web edition, where Claire Murray's column "A Conception of Contraception" contains the text of Zachary Gottlieb's "Rushing Girls," chronicling Mr. Woolfe's self-described "humiliating" love life.

This is extra-funny because Mr. Gottlieb is a bit notorious for less-than-PC humor when it comes to the womens. Today's column explains the parallels between getting chicks and rushing frats:

For a fraternity, men must charm brothers hoping to get a bid so that they can be physically and mentally abused for two months. Sound familiar, Jennifer? Kidding, kidding. But seriously, give me back my hair dryer.

Either The D made a boo-boo, or Ms. Murray has a wicked (arguably sick) sense of humor.

October 30, 2007 8:29 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Dartmouth , the dartmouth

The D is like the little Ivy Daily that could. First, there was their peerless police blotter, then the whole cunnilingus affair, and now comes this thrilling narrative of crime and redemption sans redemption.

Technically, we already linked to Alex Howe's (D '08) article in Ragtime last week, but it was so good we decided it deserved a post of its own. Here's a representative excerpt from what I am calling a tour de force of drunken travelogue:

"On my way out, I saw two things I liked and took them with me: two bottles of $9.95 red wine and the Sunday New York Times. After I found the back door and fumblingly unlocked it, I stumbled into the New Hampshire night with wine in each hand and the Times in my armpit, bleeding onto my nicest clothes."

After the jump -- the article in full.

Continue reading ""Everyone else was too drunk to know that I was too drunk to know where I was."" »

October 29, 2007 2:27 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (6) | Read more: Dartmouth , alex got in trouble , crime , the dartmouth

The "reply all" contagion that has long plagued the lovesick and food-poisoned students at Princeton spreads now to Dartmouth, where midterms come with a lesson on the danger of online rants:

Subject: Kiss my Fanny
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:28:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: [redacted] @Dartmouth.EDU
To: "ENGL.041.01-FA07"

WHAT the HELL were we supposed to get out of Fanny Fern??? Just the sentamentalist ideology?  She's really like the weakest link out of the bunch and not just becuase that reading seemed out of place but also because it's one that I know the LEAST about.  God bless him for trying to throw a woman in the mix but curse him for throwing that curve ball. Taking the 19th century woman from the kitchen to the classroom is FUCKING me all up.  So again, WHAT the HELL were we supposed to get out of Fanny Fern???  Thank you for your consideration and goodluck with the studies.

More amazing than the fact that the writer expected peer "consideration" of a triple-question-marked, profanity-laced query is the fact that he apparently forgot that the professor's e-mail address tends to be included in online class lists. Professor Michael Chaney's "reflective" and metaphor-heavy response (Michael Jackon's "We are the World" comes to mind), after the jump.

Continue reading "Kiss Dartmouth's Fern-Hating Fanny" »

October 29, 2007 9:54 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Dartmouth , email

I [also] consider myself an avid "cuntoisseur." For example, I only go down on women with a good vintage … anything from '37 or '45 has wonderful oak notes and a pleasant tannic bite.

Luckily for Mr. Gottlieb, we at IvyGate have no standards -- double or otherwise! Write it, Zach, and we will come. Pun fully intended.

But the letter-to-the-editor we really care about is from Aurora to us! After the jump, correspondence with Our Lady of the Pencil-Drawn Labia, and The D's ensuing attempt to hush it all up.

Continue reading "Cunnilingus at Dartmouth: Part II" »

October 11, 2007 11:16 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (25) | Read more: Dartmouth , the dartmouth

Perhaps The Dartmouth's editors should have thought twice before putting the following headlines in the same issue:

• Aurora's Guide to Eating Out
  

• Sugarbush Farms: A Cheese Lover's Paradise

The former is a sophomore Aurora Wells' how-to on cunnilingus. The latter is worst coincidence possible given its proximity to Ms. Wells' guide to going down on the occasionally cheesy region of a woman that I shall henceforth refer to only as "sugarbush."

Aurora begins her column with a wave of the Dartmouth banner:

Listen up, freshmen: the rumors are true. You may, in fact, actually get laid in college. And if casual, inebriated encounters are what you’re after, thank your lucky stars you were rejected from your first choice school.

One female explains that she "likes the dry feeling of latex against her clit, like a tease." If it’s a one-night deal, then it’s just plain smart. And if not, well then it’s only until you and your partner drag your asses to Dick’s House and get tested anyway, right?

I doubt the existence of said "female" because I'm pretty sure nobody in the entire history of college has ever used a dental dam. But I digress from the real gem of this paragraph, which begs the question: Do people actually call Dartmouth's sexual health center "Dick's House"? Somebody needs to cover that Run-DMC song, stat.

Ms. Wells ends her column "May you be safe, get off, and maybe even find love along the way. Welcome to my column, and welcome to Dartmouth." Look out, Lena Chen: There's a new Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe in town.

Aurora's Guide to Beating Around the Sugarbush, reprinted after the jump. 

Continue reading "Cunnilingus at Dartmouth: Not as Good as at Brown" »

October 8, 2007 9:35 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (91) | Read more: Dartmouth , Sex , the dartmouth

Did you guys know that Dartmouth has lots of frats, and that these frats like to be really fratty? OK, to a certain extent this is global knowledge, but we've allowed Dartmouth's Ben O'Donnell to describe for us the touchstone of their fratty rep: the Big Green's version of pong. Try it out this weekend. Learn from our friends in the woods.

See if you can spot the SAT analogy: CEOs: Golf. Robots: Chess. Egyptians: Egyptian Ratscrew. And Dartmouth students? Pong.

Pong. It is not “beer pong” (as if there were any other kind!) It is a game, sure, and a drinking game, more specifically. But it is  so much more. It is a skill set, a spectator sport, a study break, a snack, a kingmaker, a heartbreaker, a bonding activity, an intensity reliever, an intensity furnace, a pick-up line, a date, as much obsession as fun, bet-you-can’t-play-just-one experience.

To your typical non-Dartmouth Hard Lemonade/Smirnoff Ice aficionado, however, pong can seem counterintuitive, unsanitary and egregiously alcoholic. It forces the consumption of Keystone Light, which tastes like a higher-quality malted beverage distilled in the bowels of a homeless person. But to understand pong is to understand us, so here it is: The Sparknotes version of our most unofficial collegiate pastime.

After the jump: the rules in full. 

Continue reading "Pong Day's Journey into Night: Demystifying Dartmouth's Favorite Game" »

October 5, 2007 2:00 PM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (22) | Read more: Dartmouth , ben o'donnell , frats , pong

Even as potential messiah Robert Haines is out polishing his bad-boy resumé and exploring the "acceptable boundaries between people," darker clouds are massing on Hanover's horizon.

Remember when Dartmouth's Board of Trustees voted to pack itself, leading some journalists ("journalists") to go so far as to declare the death of Dartmouth? Well, not if some crotchety, well-heeled alumni and their lawyers have anything to say about it. According to the Dartmouth, the Association of Alumni has filed an injunction to stop the Green putsch while there's still time.

Not everyone in the Association is on board, though. For instance, there's Association President Bill Hutchinson who says:

“I think legal action against the College at this time is probably one of the worst things the Association could do,”

But Frank Gado (D '58), a member of the Association Executive Committee and liaison to the legal eagles, is so clearly raring to go:

“Honestly, everybody on our side wanted to avoid a lawsuit,” he said. “We wanted to avoid going to court, but we wanted respect for alumni rights.”

Honestly? Admit it, Gado, you live for this shit. Of course like all legit lawsuits and grassroots movements, funding is provided by anonymous, shadowy backers. Gado explains:

That is really not our concern — whose funds,” Gado said. “I have deliberately chosen not to inquire who is funding this. The Association is the client.”

Over at Save Dartmouth, Adam Rabiner (D' 88) comments: 

It smacks me as sour grapes or being a sore loser to change the rules at this point and disenfranchise all alumni because the candidates that the alumni governance committees have selected are not winning.

Yeah, sour grapes... why does that phrase seem so suddenly apt?

After the jump -- the article from the D

Continue reading "The Battle Over Hanover" »

October 3, 2007 7:38 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Dartmouth , alumni , constitution , green putsch , keggy

There are basically three types of crazy people attracted to Ivy League campuses like moths to the sign of a Wall-Mart Super Store.

• Mentally-ill people who would probably be homeless were it not for some random chain of events that has instead given them free run of the library, student center, etc. They've been here longer than you. Deal.
• Fundamentalist Christians. By far my favorite group, the typical hi-jinks of these always hilarious visitors include railing against female promiscuity while ogling the bared midriffs of the promiscuous and railing against homosexuals while soliciting freshmen. Great posters.
  
• LaRouchies. No one really knows what their deal is, but they seem to love Dick Cheney.
  

Robert Haines, however, as the D wonderfully reports, is a category unto himself. An "unconventional candidate," for President, Haines walks the steets of Hanover, unafraid to say what we're all thinking:

At this point in the interview, Haines noticed a purple Honda with Texas plates. Almost immediately, he concluded that the driver is a Democrat.

“They usually drive foreign cars,” he explained.

 Haines publishes his own newspaper, hosts his own TV-show ("I am the media"), and is always on the lookout for suspicious-looking brown people ("“I am the eyes and the ears of the Hanover police and the campus police.") Here's a fun fact about Robert Haines.

The noose he carries will eventually have 13 loops. He adds one every time he visits a state that was part of the original 13 colonies. The noose, Haines said, is for Osama bin Laden.

“I’m going to have a neck-tie party for Osama bin Laden,” Haines said. “After he’s given a fair trial.”

Damn right he's going to get a fair trial. You've got our vote, Mr. Haines. Consider that an official endorsement.

After the jump -- the D's article in its glorious entirety.

Continue reading "Meet Your Campus Crazies: Dartmouth's Robert Haines" »

October 3, 2007 3:37 AM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (12) | Read more: Dartmouth , campus crazies , robert haines

Here's Dartmouth columnist Daniel Belkin's assessment of the 907th '08 Democratic presidential debate held last night in Hanover. IvyGate dedicates this two-part series to keggy.

With the start of classes yesterday here at the College, the newly-minted members of the Class of 2011 were flabbergasted at the bizarre world that lay just outside their dorm room windows. For a fleeting 24 hours, the Big Green was transformed from the tranquil academy depicted in admissions brochures to the wretched hell of presidential politics and media feeding frenzies, replete with activists, politicos and wonks. Not sure which is better.

Continue reading "The Dartmouth Debate: I'm Gonna Go Sleepers" »

September 27, 2007 3:58 PM by Jim Newell | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Dartmouth , chris matthews , daniel belkin , democrats , keggy , presidential race

We dispatched Daniel Belkin, Dartmouth senior and opinion columnist for the Dartmouth to give us a rundown on the school's furious preparations for tonight's debate. Stay tuned for his report on the event itself.

The mean streets of Hanover, New Hampshire seldom produce headlines that garner the attention of the world outside the confines of the White Mountains. Stories that chronicle squirrel infestations or scandals at the local Chinese restaurant (personally and affectionately deemed “Pandagate”) are the ones that paint the broadsheets and tabloids of the Upper Valley of New Hampshire. But all that ends for at least today.

The gang of loveable losers vying for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination are rolling into Dartmouth for a nationally-televised debate as the eight aspiring chief executives continue their horserace to inherit the utter and complete mess that President Bush has left his screwed successor. Both MSNBC and New England Cable News are co-sponsoring the much anticipated verbal jousting match, airing live Wednesday night from 9pm to 11pm. And despite being in notoriously frigid New Hampshire, no disgruntled snowmen will be grilling the candidates — à la the infamous YouTube/CNN debate. MSNBC has called in the big guns of political journalism to referee the bout: Tim Russert, the moderator of NBC’s Sunday morning staple Meet the Press. Suck on that, Anderson Cooper.

After the jump: The awful truth about Dennis Kucinich.

Continue reading "Fear and Loathing In Hanover" »

September 26, 2007 11:12 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (8) | Read more: Dartmouth , debate

It's all over, folks. Dartmouth is done. On September 8 all the lights went out in Hanover as Ed Haldeman, Chair of the Board of Trustees snuffed the candle of democracy once and for all. By adding eight (unelected) charter trustees to its membership, the Board has ensured it will never again be troubled by the niggling complaints of semiconductor tycoons and former Reagan speechwriters.

Nah, just kidding. Dartmouth's still kicking, though things will never be as self-determined as they used to be. Yet I feel like as long as wikipedia pages like this one continue to be well-maintained, Dartmouth is going to be alright.

The response in the meantime from alumni has been vitriolic, to say the least, since naturally every step away from the 1891 constitution is a step into hell. One alumnus ominously comments in our inbox, "This stinks of Russia circa 1905. Sooner or later, there is going to be a catastrophic reckoning," and threatens to withhold donations, "until democracy is reinstated."

After the jump: dueling strongly-worded letters to alumni (I know, I know -- why aren't these thrilling documents before the jump?)

Continue reading "R.I.P. Dartmouth College (1769-2007)" »

September 11, 2007 11:20 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (31) | Read more: Dartmouth , constitution , keggy the keg

WSJ editorial page writer Joseph Rago (D '05) begins his profile of embattled Dartmouth trustee T.J. Rodgers with some dubious praise for the unsung heroics of yacht-less millionaires:

Some men of his means and achievement buy a yacht, or turn to philanthropic work, or join other corporate boards. Mr. Rodgers went back to school: He became a trustee of his alma mater, Dartmouth College--and not a recumbent one.

Still Mr. Rodgers comes off as a likeable and capable figure at the center of a fiercely-fought controversy over trustee alumni representation, a controversy which has lately spilled beyond the nativist-angst-filled pages of the Dartmouth Review and invaded both the op/ed section of the Wall Street Journal as well as the advertising pages of the New York Times (see right). Two groups, Committee to Save Dartmouth College and Vote Dartmouth, have set up websites devoted to the issue, one of which publishes the contact information of every Dartmouth trustee. Its blog invokes the civic wisdom of P Diddy: "Vote or die!" They've even got one of those highly-effective online petitions going. "Dear Dartmouth," the rest of the world wonders, "What the hell is going on?"

UPDATED 9/8: The Board of Trustees has decided to add eight charter trustees (i.e., unelected by alumni) to its membership, in effect packing itself. The D has the story. Also, see Joe Malchow's excellent account at Joe's Dartblog.

Continue reading "The People's United Front to Save Dartmouth" »

September 5, 2007 5:19 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (16) | Read more: Dartmouth , T.J. Rodgers , constitution

• Newsweek: Facebook "is as much a part of campus as finals, iPods and beer."

• Huffington Post: Newsweek is as cutting edge as our great-aunt Hilda who wears orthopedic shoes.

• Time: Red Bull and video games are Princeton's new cocaine.  No, seriously.

• The Dartmouth: Rich alumni group launches public attack on trustee board policy, starting at the New York Times' home page.

August 18, 2007 5:09 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (3) | Read more: Dartmouth , Facebook , Princeton , guest editors