Having recently left his cushy post with us for the greener swamplands of DC, Jim Newell is already rolling in the perks. Today he wrote an op/ed for the Daily Pennsylvanian on that whole Stetson affair thing.

Seizing on the telling detail ("Lasers! Amy Gutmann in strapless red!") and making use of everyday analogies ("It's like a babysitter refusing to feed an infant its Gerber, and then at the end of the day asking that infant for $3.5 billion."), Newell makes a compelling case that Lee Stetson should not be forced to give money to Penn even though he had sex with a 19-year old, or something like that.

After the jump -- words, sweet words.

Read the rest of this entry »

It's us: Hal Parker, Jacob Savage and Jim Newell. Regular readers may remember us from our summer guest editing stints. We offer them a truce.

We're excited to be editors for infinity and will try to build off of Nick and Chris' model. Big ups to them, of course. Thanks for trusting us with your baby. Nick and Chris still own things, but probably won't show up unless we get sued >3.76 times a week.

Also, thanks to other summer guest editors and regular tipsters for maintaining the foundation these lazy last few months. We want to build up our contributor base in the next few months, so if you have any interest in getting involved please e-mail us at ivygate@gmail.com.

This week we'll be making fun of freshmen a lot, a lot a lot, for they are a curious breed. Send in your best stories from the first couple weeks of school involving freshmen iconoclasm. We will also have real things.

Looking forward to making new happy friends,

Hal Parker, Jacob Savage & Jim Newell 

Our maligned guest stint has come to a close, ladies and gentlemen (we can hear you cheering already), and we're happy to say that it's been grand. We hope we were able to keep you from falling asleep during office meetings, at the very least.

They say it's dull in the summertime, but our two weeks has seen its fair share of scandalicious stories: Caroline Giuliani and Lucy Morrow Caldwell went head to head, the Ivy nerds took revenge, Hillary Clinton showed how she answered the voice crying in the wilderness, Yale's Beta Theta Pi fraternity went the way of the dodo, the Daily Pennsylvanian took heat from one of its own, a four-person crowd of fire-breathing bigots took Ithaca by storm and Cornell was simultaneously voted best and worst motto in all of academia.

(Oh, a few more things: sex, Kazakhs, gambling, MBAs, crime, snobbery, harassment and idiocy.)

So from the bottom of our hearts:

Andrew Nusca: We asked you to bring the comments on, and you brought it. It's been a pleasure to carry the torch for Nick and Chris whilst they tanned on the beach (or drank in the bar), and working with Newell these last two weeks was like enjoying a fresh hoagie from Wawa or a wiz-topped cheesesteak on South Street: nothing short of rewarding. I'll take this opportunity to sign off with my original greeting: Cheerio, fuckers!

Jim Newell: Thank you for reading our stuff. I've enjoyed building loving/hateful relationships with certain commenters. Andrew Nusca for president. And if for some inexplicable reason you want to get in touch with me, or you've got about 27k + benefits to throw away, I can be reached at newell.jim@gmail.com. Let the hate mail begin!

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate a pick-me-up to poor Caroline Giuliani. We all have bad stretches, Caroline. Don't be ashamed to cry it out. It's not unusual at all:

Be nice to the next guest editors and TIP THEM (ivygate.guest@gmail.com)! 

Always,

Jim Newell & Andrew Nusca 

IvyGate has gone 27 seconds without new guest editors, but the children's parade will now march on. It's like a whole new Internet. Everyone loves the Internet.

I'm Jim Newell, Penn '07, s/w/m, survivor of 9-year-old muggers. In my sporting youth I was editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian's weekly magazine, 34th Street (what what). Those familiar with Street consider it either an arts, entertainment and culture alt-weekly or a 20-24 page penis joke. Always the compromiser, I see Street as an artful, entertaining, culturally astute penis joke. Did I mention I'm unemployed? Wokka wokka.

My greatest pleasure while editing Street was to check a set of blogs the morning of each issue to see whether we'd been made fun of. Problem was, people had other things to do, like I don't know, breathe. Even IvyGate overlooked us, although they had their plate full of minor lifestyle plagiarism scandals to face first, and we all enjoy those. But now that I half-run this interlink haberdashery, I'm excited to get criticized ruthlessly, and with all luck personally, in the comments. Bring the pain, as it were. For all you trusty myrmidons out there, however, send yer raciest tips and a-list Evites to ivygate.guest@gmail.com. I'll only crash your party if you crash mine.

And I'm Andrew Nusca, Columbia '08 and the fiercest defender of the losingest city in sports, which just so happens to be the location of Newell's alma mater. You might recognize my handle from some of journalism's more, um, esteemed outlets (what, IvyGate's not esteemed? There's a spilled cup of brew in the logo. C'mon.), including the Huffington Post, Men's Vogue, Popular Mechanics and the New York Daily News. For all you news hounds out there, I write the media criticism blog The Editorialiste, too. I live in Brooklyn and as a result get no sleep until I'm there, so it's a very real possibility that my late-night drivel will greet you with your saccharine cup of Fivebucks the next morning. Cheerio, fuckers!

So fear not, dear readers, for there is plenty of room for a real journalistic integrity 'round these interwebs. Consider IvyGate under my watch to be the Vanity Fair of the collegiate blogging world: Always classy, always trashy. It wouldn't be any other way. As Newell said above, send the good tips to ivygate.guest@gmail.com . Mmm, tasty.