• Columbia: “‘Rooster’s breakfast’ is Slovenian slang for ‘early morning sex.’”
• Columbia: Madonna Constantine demonstrates inability to cut losses.
• Harvard: Oh Harvard kids, so goddamn worldly.
• Yale: Would you believe these kids and their hats?
• Princeton: Construction workers go overboard trying to take Princeton’s gobs of money.
• Dartmouth: “An officer assigned to detail a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority event at Everything But Anchovies arrested an underage male who brought liquor in a cup to the event.” Gin and anchovies — busted.
• Penn: Hillary Clinton owes everyone money.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the ’60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are “less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate”: 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as “liberal activists,” versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, “My generation is not so ideologically driven” and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh man, our sanctified academic standards haven’t been so betrayed by a member of the ivory tower since Kaavya Viswanathan did that thing that no one cares about anymore.

Madonna Constantine, a tenured professor at Columbia’s Teachers College, was just fired for plagiarism. Background (for those of you who haven’t been following our pretty extensive coverage): Constantine became infamous last fall after reportedly finding a noose on her office door, but some folks were a tad bit suspicious because her claim emerged in the midst of the university’s 18-month investigation of her work. Constantine called out the TC community for stirring up a “conspiracy and witch-hunt” and, always down for a protest, hundreds of Columbia students and faculty rallied in her support. Anthony Kelley defended her in the batshittiest Columbia Spectator column you will ever read. In a nice Orwellian twist, Constantine’s attorney said that her accusers, two former students and a former colleague, had plagiarized from her. It now appears that Constantine mooched from the trio in a dozen separate instances. Read the rest of this entry »

The world works in mysterious ways: Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes bad people are really pretty. And sometimes that guy who hits on all the girls at the bar, the one who uses phrases like “my mojo” and “the sweet spot” and “When it Rains, It Whores,” actually has a big dick. Quoth Spec’s sex blogger, The Big Bad Wolf:

I’ve always been told I have a huge cock. When I was 14, my first girlfriend to engage in heavy petting started a rumor that must have helped me to get quite a few handjobs in high school. She told everyone I was enormous.

A 14-year-old girl’s expertise on male anatomy. Unassailable.

Wolfie is theoretically anonymous, but seeing how Commentariat’s “author” pages use suffixes featuring the author’s first initial and last name, and seeing how the Wolf’s author page uses the suffix “/cchima,” we’re guessing the Big Bad Penis belongs to this guy. And if it doesn’t, some poor kid named Chikodi is going to be pissed that the world now thinks he masturbates chronically.

More on The Big Bad Wolf’s penis after the jump!

UPDATE: Whoa, touchy. Commentariat pulled everything we linked to, except the author page. (We try to back up sources, but seriously, every single post? No, I did not save them all.) Commentariat is a branch of the Spectator, which takes itself pretty seriously, so altering the record is a bold move.

Read the rest of this entry »

A busy week for racists at Columbia: Amid the modicum of offensive bathroom-stall doodles inherent to public restrooms in New York, someone hung a noose on black Teacher College professor Madonna Constantine’s door. And, you know how when you learn a new word, all of a sudden you start hearing it everywhere? Nooses are now materializing on lampposts and in lockerrooms city-wide (and in at least one burb). Expect ironic nooses at MisShapes any day now.

As much as we Ivy League hacks enjoy naming Columbia the source of all trends (good, bad, ugly, and  St. A’s-related), Newsday suggests the more likely source is recent media attention on the Jena 6.

Oddly, CU TC officials resisted NYPD requests for security tapes of Constantine’s building. Officials cited “policy” and “student privacy” (you know, the expectation of privacy one has when scaring the shit out of strangers in a public building). Those inclined to conspiracy theory suspect a nefarious Bollinger plot to turn hate-speech into free-speech (NYCLU is already salivating, say various rumormills). Cat-fight enthusiasts point to Constantine’s ongoing book-credit battle with fellow TC Prof. Suniya Luthar. Is Columbia’s derelection of crime-fighting duty a sign of taking sides? Could Luthar’s desire for bylines have driven her to the proliferation of treacherous ropes? *

And, haven’t we already seen this on Law & Order?

In the meantime, the Spec’s cup runneth over with bias crime meta-talk: PrezBo interview, five op-ed headlines, and a handy-dandy Hate Crimes at Columbia timeline.

* No, says New York magazine, and stop spreading so many rumors. But seriously, what’s the fun in that? 

And that editor is me. To the relief of most of you, I’m stepping down from my short-lived stint as an IvyGate 2.0 editor next week after accepting a new bloggy job that, you know, pays an income. I will maintain a loosely defined contributing editor’s role, meaning I won’t do shit but reserve the right to troll the tipbox for hilarious Spectator articles to make fun of every so often. Hal and Jacob will fill you in on however they plan to fill this tragic, heartbreaking loss, once they’ve stopped sobbing.

On another note, I’ll be embarking on my first and presumably last IvyGate road trip this weekend to cover the “Kill the Ivy League” thing at the New Yorker Festival. So if you’re going to either that or the Sasha Frere-Jones-hosted, Diplo-laced dance party this weekend, come and say hi! I have red hair, but no touchy.

XOXO,

Jim

The bizarre message above has greeted visitors to thedartmouth.com for at least the last 36 hours. We’re not sure what Al Gore has to do with web-publishing a college newspaper, but here’s a message to the commenter who complained Monday that we’ve been ignoring The D in RagTime: You’re in charge of letting us know when the precipitation lets up. (Actually, a D staffer just gave us a sneak peak at the redesigned site, which looks like a snazzy improvement; they say it’ll be up soon.)

Anyway, staring at this has inspired us to “investigate” (read: Wikipedia) something that has always jiggled the needle on our BS meter: The Dartmouth’s claim that it is America’s oldest college newspaper, founded 1799. It just seems off, just like the way they call their top editorial board “the directorate.” (Really.) Wiki says that…

…the Hanover newspapers existing then are unconnected to a monthly literary magazine that students established around 1843, which is the publication that evolved into the current paper. For that reason, The Dartmouth currently (2006) states that it is in its 163rd volume.

Guh? Clearly we are gonna need more info than this. Can anyone who’s familiar with Dartmouth history weigh in? Probably, there’s no point to digging further — this is an area in which the Yale Daily News says it’s the “Oldest College Daily” (its alumni org is vomitously called the “OCD Foundation”); the Harvard Crimson says it’s “the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper”; and the Columbia Spectator claims “second-oldest” status, without noting who’s first. Help us out, readers: who’s lying least?

You know you’ve arrived when you get your own fan-blog. But the true measure of success is whether you’ve inspired a hate-blog.

Miriam Datskovsky ‘07, the Columbia Spectator’s sex columnist (and opinion page editor), knows what we’re talking about. She’s been penning her column, “Sexplorations,” going on two years now. During that time she’s taken plenty of flak, like this scorcher that she ran on her own opinion page, but nothing has rivaled the meticulous vitriol of Fire Miriam Datskovsky. It’s a new blog so anonymously, obsessively hateful it kind of twists in on itself and, by the eighth sentence-by-sentence dissection of Datskovsky’s published prose, starts to read like a tribute. (Bwog’s burbling comment section is afire on the topic; it’s alternately hilarious and ad hominem.)

It’s true, Datskovsky is edging into Natalie Krinsky territory with her vanity site. But she’s been pretty good-natured about taking heat. “I don’t have a problem with the Fire Miriam blog,” she told us. ”I think it’s great people are taking the time to comment extensively on why they don’t like my writing.” (As for Bwog, she says they didn’t contact her for comment before posting.)

Consider yourself lucky, Miriam — after hate-blogs come book deals.

(Full disclosure: We’re biased. Half of us had drinks with Miriam once and she is, for the record, a sweet, unpretentious gal.)

One of the most memorable moments in Columbia football came in 1985, after Jim Garrett’s first game as head coach. The Lions led Harvard 17-0, but wound up losing in embarrassing fashion, 49-17. In his post-game conference, Garrett went on a tirade and famously called his players “drug-addicted losers.” He was fired after one winless season. Now, 21 years later, another first-year Columbia head coach has followed with an equally unprofessional tirade during a post-game press conference. After the Lions lost to Penn 16-0 on Saturday, a Spectator reporter asked coach Norries Wilson about the team’s inconsistency on offense. Wilson unleashed his rage for more than six minutes. Listen here, and read Josh Hirsch’s dead-on column in the DP for a full recap:
powered by ODEO “I realize that some of my comments may have been interpreted as critical of Ivy League football game officials,” Wilson said in a statement yesterday. Hey Norries, ya think? In case you didn’t hear the tape…

It’s much harder to play when you’re playing 11 on 18. I’m not allowed to comment on officiating, so I won’t say that we got held. What we should do is hire the Penn O-Line coach to teach our guys how to tackle, because their O-Line does a great job of tackling. And on the touchdown, if you want me to send you the clip, then I’ll send you the clip where our defensive end was tackled, and nobody made the call.

In the same statement, Columbia A.D. Dianne Murphy said that the school had apologized to the officials, to Penn, and to the other six Ivy League schools. Conspicuously absent from that list: the 19-year-old Spec reporter Wilson blew up at. “If we handed you a pen, none of you could draw up a coverage or a front, so I’m tired of hearing about it,” Wilson says on the tape. “If you want to come coaching, come coaching if you know so much about football. They work their butts off, so you all can complain about how bad they are. So you can write your negative articles about them every week.” We certainly have no idea how to draw up a coverage, Nor. But you’ve scored one touchdown in two Ivy games. So regardless, we feel pretty secure writing that you’re a jerk.

Last week, we brought you Penn readers’ “truly terrible,” “horrific,” “godawful” reviews of dailypennsylvanian.com’s redesign. Some of you have been asking: How did the DP, a reliably damn good paper, screw up so bad?

By signing up with College Publisher, a near monopolist in the field of putting college newspapers online. The Crimson, YDN, Dart, Prince and Sun all have indie sites. And while their looks don’t always go over so well themselves, everything College Publisher touches turns to blocky, ad-infested dreck.

Penn’s daily isn’t the only student paper to get hit by the ugly truck. Thanks to College Publisher, it’s a pile-up. The Columbia Spectator signed on this summer, and — oh crap, here we go again. Some sample comments at the Spec-sniping Bwog:

• “horrible”
• “go[d]forsaken shit”
• “an embarrassment…it’s not like you have to design a whole new one, just use the old templates. anything that was up before was far, far better. or will your new masters at collegepublisher not let you?”
• “cheesy, childish ‘collegepublisher’ ticker up top”
• “college publisher is what every school uses and frankly it sucks. not to mention the new site has like a billion adds. it looks like a yahoo homepage circa 1998″
• “dumb dumb dumb”
• “get rid of it and college publisher NOW while it’s summer and no one notices”
• “awful. … Just stop this little project now before you get in over your little heads”
• “At least the old look had some class”

Ouch! We know IvyGate isn’t the belle of the ball, but can’t they these guys take a cue from their hot cousins to the west? Them Stanford kids code some fine-ass HTML.