We 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.

Continue reading "One Last Bonesmen Bash" »

May 5, 2008 4:41 PM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (52) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale

Our commenters aren't known for taking the high road. Our boards tend to devolve into a sort of "my school is better than yours but at least we can all agree that Cornell sucks" type mentality. But people, you ain't seen nothing yet. Gaylies extraordinaire Akash and Victor - or maybe just their campaign "surrogates" - are duking it out, JuicyCampus-style, on our comment boards. Despite all sorts ofpseudonums, most of the comments come from the same IP addresses, posting again and again. Both Victor and Akash claim they are not the posters, only to follow up their denials with juicy tidbits more or less proving that they are in fact Victor or Akash or close friends. Did Akash lie to get into Yale? Did Victor ruin his life? Who knows?

Highlights: "cc" calls Akash a "psycho-loser" and "midget," and writes with glee about how Akash will soon be "raped and beaten in prison for 25 years." "ha ha" responds, calling Victor a "cross eyed bipolar, trailor trash freak" and insinuates that Victor may have had sex with his uncle as well as underage children - and that his mom supposedly had an affair with an illegal immigrant. It only gets worse from there. In all likelihood, none of these things are true - but to see the horrific results of love gone awry is nothing short of incredible.

After the jump: the flame war continues. How about a cease-fire, guys? We'd happy to engage in some shuttle diplomacy.

Continue reading "Gaylies Gone Wild: Victor and Akash Edition" »

April 29, 2008 11:55 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (21) | Read more: Yale , gaylies , skullfucked

Since no Bonesman is allowed to 'fess up to being one, the organization is, by necessity, unable to denounce frauds. Consequently, it is really easy to play jokes on them. Yale pre-frosh Princeton Ji Chang (not to be confused with Princeton freshman Princeton Kwong; apparently there was a bubble of Princetons born around 1990) stumbled across a group of "Bonesmen" offering photo-ops during Bulldog Days:

So here I am, young, impressionable Princeton Ji Chang, walkin' round Yale during orientation week [Bulldog Days] when -- suddenly and without warning -- a bunch of cloaked Skull-and-Bonesmen came up to me! Apparently they were holding a fundraiser: $2 polaroids, and $0.25 autographs. So, of course, I totally took a picture with them in front of their creepy building (i think they call it a tomb or something?). Anyway, the picture's great. But the whole thing struck me as a little odd - does Skull and Bones really need to be doing fundraising? And do they always wear such creepy clothes?

Nah. Usually they just pop the collars on their vampire capes and call it a day.

April 24, 2008 4:26 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (17) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale , skull and bones

Yalies: If you would like to commit a grievous crime, now is the time, as you are almost guaranteed to fly under the radar, because we are all way too busy discussing Aliza Shvarts-Embryo-Art's menstrual cycle and senior project.

Yale's administration is now threatening to ban the aborto-agitator's project if she doesn't 'fess up to making it up. YDN explains,

The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts ’08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday. ...  "I am appalled," Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement Friday. "This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project."

School of Art Dean Robert Storr also condemned the project in a written statement Friday.

"If I had known about this, I would not have permitted it to go forward," Storr said in the statement. "This is not an acceptable project in a community where the consequences go beyond the individual who initiates the project and may even endanger that individual."

Storr accuses Aliza of "avoiding intellectual accountability" for screaming ABORTION! in a crowded theater. Another administrator said the Shvarts-induced PR disaster is as bad as the time they admitted an ex-Taliban leader as a student.

Now that everyone's favorite kinda-slutty-for-needleless-syringes Yalie commands about 50% of YDN, plus headlines in every newssource this side of the Milky Way, there's much to read. After the jump, a highlights guide to the latest, including info on Shvarts' much-maligned adviser.

Also, may I please call attention to the fact that, in the above image, Aliza is standing on not one but two soapboxes? Girlfriend literally needs double the platform to get her message out.

Continue reading "Aliza Shvarts as Bad as the Taliban, PR-wise" »

April 21, 2008 12:00 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (31) | Read more: Yale , aliza shvarts , art

It's real! It's fake! It's real! It's— oh, hell. In the matter of Aliza Shvarts' reproductive organs and senior art project, who can even keep track? In a new interview with the Yale Daily News, Shvarts disputes Yale's designation of her abortion-goo-cube and menstrual-snuff-films as "creative fiction," and admits that even she isn't sure what happened:

Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University’s statement "ultimately inaccurate." ...Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

"No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen," Shvarts said, "because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties."

What is reality, anyway? What is truth? We have here the story of one mildly deranged art student who somehow took an entire 24-hour newscycle hostage. We have many questions but not a single sufficient answer. For instance: How supernaturally powerful must this girl's uterus be, if we are to believe it withstood nine maybe-pregnancies followed by nine abortions in just as many months? Aliza Shvarts, we dub thee "Wonder Walls."

More urgently: What poor, abused YDN staffer was forced to witness this?

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.

It's like some terrible staring contest, and I'm pretty sure someone blinked, I just don't know if it was her or us.

April 18, 2008 2:40 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (15) | Read more: Yale , aliza shvarts , art

As the frenzy surrounding Aliza Shvarts' abortion-goo finger-painting scandal escalated, some cried "bullshit": "Herbal" abortion? Artificial insemination? Nine straight months of crampsing and hormonal fluctuation? Personally, I figured she was just really talented; it is Yale, after all. Not so, says Yale's Office of Public Affairs in a public announcement:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art.  Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials.  She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages.  The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

Google-bombing yourself into horrific baby-killing infamy, however, raises not a single red flag. Basically, Aliza's senior thesis was to create the biggest PR disaster possible for her alma mater. Some will say this is attention-seeking malice; I say, it's a clever way to guarantee passing grade. At this point, Yale will probably do anything to make sure Aliza graduates on time and gets the hell off their campus and out of their hair.

April 17, 2008 7:23 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (29) | Read more: Yale , aliza shvarts , art

We saw this YDN headine:

For Senior, Abortion a Medium for Art, Political Discourse

And thought the headline editor made a humorously inappropriate mistake. But then we read this:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

So— wait a— holy shi—

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

I think I saw this, once. In a horrible, horrible nightmare.

If L'Affaire Papaya is any indicator, Shvarts should think about getting a security detail for her dorm. Drudge Report linked to the article, and you know what they say: First Drudge, then the blogosphere, then psychotic right-wing militiamen with websites hosted on Angelfire. Due to sudden influx of Drudge-related traffic, YDN's website is periodically going down. So, until YDN stabilizes, we're running the full article and a li'l more commentary after the jump. Oh, and in case you're wondering:

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

Well, at least she has a sense of modesty.

Continue reading "Endlessly Creative Yalie Makes Art with Abortion Goo" »

April 17, 2008 11:00 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (91) | Read more: Yale , Yale Daily News , aliza shvarts , art

So, you know how some people say Skull and Bones isn't so powerful or evil anymore? Because if they were, Team Cazares would have squashed Akash Maharaj like a bug by now, right? Well, a few IvyGate commenters showed off their best creepily conspiratorial powers last night, managing somehow to get a hold of Akash's social security number and posting it all over our comment boards.

Under society-alluding pseudonyms like "munchingonyourbonelikeawolf" and "keystothebone," the commenters printed documents they claimed Akash sent to various education and government authorities. Some had different SSNs from others which made it seem like a hoax.-- until we got an email from Akash saying that at least one of them got it right, so could we please remove it from our website, kthxbye. He thinks Victor is behind it.

Since the comments all came from Yale IP addresses, the rogue commenters may actually have been so stupid as to not cloak their identities and will soon be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay or something. That, or the guy at the library who leaves his laptop unguarded during study breaks just got so screwed. Before last night, SSN-revealer "322" last commented a year ago, on our walrus moustache post.

Continue reading "Secret Societies Return to Evil Glory by Stealing Akash's Identity... on IvyGate Comment Board?" »

April 16, 2008 4:30 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (70) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale , skullfucked

Ever since full names broke in the scandal we shall henceforth call Skullfucked: The Akash Maharaj and Victor Cazares Story, we've gotten a tsunami-force wave of tips evaluating the boys' relative worth and/or loathsomeness. Consensus seems to be that Akash is sketchy but super smart and kinda cute. Were it not for that whole felony thing, he'd be a catch!

On the other hand, Victor (at right) has more enemies than Wharton has douchebags. Gawker published a damning email about Victor with several redactions; since we got a nearly identical email, we're guessing the missing parts are those featuring the breathless retelling of sexual encounters of such graphic and character-assassinating proportions that even Gawker won't touch it. When your enemies are more ruthless than Gawker is, you know you're in trouble.

A brief compendium of Skullfucked rumors:

victor cazares used akash throughout their relationship so that akash would buy him food (every day), clothes, books, train tickets etc. victor even stopped going in regularly to his job at la casa (the latino cultural center at yale) because he expected akash to take care of him.

victor did indeed claim to destroy akash's belongings and the yale police have the email and have advised akash to seek monetary compensation by suing victor in civil court. it is unclear though whether victor actually destroyed his ex's belongings or whether he was just lying so he could steal them. ... last i heard, akash was trying to press charges against victor for larceny and criminal mischief (regarding his belongings) 

Both boys have blocked each other from their respective facebook profiles but there are still wall to wall messages that mutual "friends" like myself can view. It's fascinating how early in the relationship VICTOR seemed like the obsessive one, posting comments on Akash's wall over and over within seconds of each comment. ... It seems as if over time, Victor became more secure and then Akash went crazy. But in the beginning it was the reverse.  

After the jump: Wall posts for Akash, with love from Victor. We discover that "Babel" is overrated and that Trader Joe's is the market of choice for depraved Yalies.

Continue reading "Nothing Like an Internet Scandal for Finding Out How Many Enemies You Have" »

April 14, 2008 5:20 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (44) | Read more: Yale

America's Next Top Model alumnus Victoria Marshman will soon be joining the shadowy legions of secrecy, if her participation in secret society pre-tap night is any indicator. Unless, of course, she wanders campus with a rainbow-striped bedsheet wrapped around her derriere on a regular basis, in which we apologize for the spreading vile, false rumors. That's Tory in the back, with the bike helment on it.

April 11, 2008 5:30 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (39) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale , america's next top model

A New York Post article entitled "SKEEVY IVY SCAMMER: NYer Faked Way Into Yale and its $$: Probe" (when did NYP start sourcing headline-writing to 13-year-old girls on MySpace?) breaks the identity of Yale's mysterious scam artist. Gawker breaks a second identity via a web of rumors on our comment boards: Bonesman Victor Cazares is also rumored to be the gay lover who initially alerted authorities to inconsistencies in Maharaj's story.

Meanwhile, this 2006 Spec article offers a Moebius strip of imagined Maharaj history. Before claiming to be a Columbia transfer at Yale, he apparently claimed to be a Yale transfer at Columbia:

"Columbia has been disappointing in almost every way," said Akash Maharaj, who transferred to Columbia from Yale at the beginning of the year. By the end of first semester, he was ready to transfer back.

Since his arrival here in September, he says, pretty much everything has been going wrong. He says that the Core Curriculum is "old-fashioned and ridiculous", the school environment is "anonymous", and, though he loves New York City, he gets to do things around the city "only around once every two weeks, anyway."

April 9, 2008 10:39 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (23) | Read more: Yale , crime , skullfucked

Yale, can you feel the excitement? It's secret society tapping season! Last night Tonight is "pre-tap," which is when society members alert desired members to their sought-after status, and we have here an exclusive leak on Skull & Bones' list! Pre-tap-ees get a week to choose whether or not to accept. Should any decline, our tipster says the alternates are

Meghan Murphy, Andrew Mangino (Editor in chief of YDN), and Michael Losak, in that order. 

So, if the last three really want to be Boners, they now have a hitlist and estimation of how many of their peers they have to destroy to get in. Someone should make a reality tv show out of this.

As for the likelihood that the above is true, well, your guess is as good as mine. Yale-based readers can hash it out in the comments. But I googled the first guy and found an article about his "Patrick Bateman-approved bachelor pad," so that bodes well.

UPDATE: Whoops, tap is tonight, not last night. Apologies to confused tap-ees and/or anyone who burst into tears because they thought nobody wanted them. You have a whole new 24-hour cycle to wait anxiously through!

April 9, 2008 7:20 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (84) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale , skull and bones

Yale Daily News reports that a 26-year-old student "defrauded Yale University wholesale," faking records, transcripts, and major elements of his identity. After burning through $46,000 in financial aid, Yale tried to pull a hush job on the guy—whose name isn't in the articles—with a quick, quiet dismissal, but the alleged fraud sticking to his "not guilty" plea, Yale and the mysterious man will be airing their dirty laundry in court, starting next week.

The story has so many twisting elements, it reads like a daytime soap: Gay lovers' spat! Race-related unrest! Forgery, identity theft, mental instability! The defendant may have duped NYU, Columbia, and Yale with falsified transcripts and tales of charitable works in Sri Lanka (probably fake) and a childhood in Trinidad and Tobago (probably real). YDN indulges the byzantine plot here.

Equally distressing (read: disgustingly juicy) is the fact that he made it this far. Records suggest at least four years of financially-aided education, and while we understand that transferring credits can be a total bitch, that's gotta add up to at least one associate's degree in "Fraudulent Psychopath," right? YDN explores college-app forgery here, but really, all you need is this sentence:

The revelation that someone could infiltrate Yale shatters the mystique of the Ivy League as an impregnable bastion of the elite.

Raise the alarm! Our ranks have been broken! We'll follow this story as it unfolds; so far, my frantic Googling offers zilch; I can't even find stuff on the September charge.

April 8, 2008 6:10 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (22) | Read more: Columbia , NYU , Yale , crime , skullfucked

...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:

• Whining about JuicyCampus is officially so over now that old people are writing about it and the gay Yale porn therein. How long until the ironic "we heart JC" backlash begins?
• Columbia's most well-known transman got some press, too.
• Remember when some random guy on a laptop took down the Harvard Grad School website for three days? Turns out he also stole about 10,000 people's personal data, including about 6600 SSNs. Harvard's response: "sorry for the inconvenience."
• If Jesus went to Cornell and wore a pocket protector, he'd be the newest Beauty & the Geek Ivy Leaguer, Jim.
• If Gawker : NYT :: Bwog : the Spec, then Nick Denton used to write our Ragtimes. Just call us "starmaker."
• Tony Blair is going to teach at Yale, which prompts us to wonder: Has Skull & Bones ever inducted a faculty member?
  

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

The batteries are out of the vibrators and back in the graphing calculators at Yale, where Sex Week reached its anticlimactic end yesterday. After the much-hyped Great Porn Debate featuring luminaries like Ron Jeremy and Monique Alexander on Friday, we imagine the celebrity-less "safe sex" Monday must've been a little boring.

Naturally, Saturday's Vivid Girls film-screening and "Skull and Boned" party at the Toad's prompted a flood of "omg so-and-so totally went home with Monique!" tips. Since adult film stars are a special breed of human that communicate solely through sexual acts (How else would those totally normal situations caught on film turn so quickly into raunchy hair-pulling and screaming?), we humored our tipsters and followed up on a few of their stories. Our guide to various porn stars' supposed sex lives at Yale, after the jump.

Continue reading "Sex Week Wrap-Up: In which everyone claims to know who slept with the Vivid Girls" »

February 19, 2008 5:32 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (10) | Read more: Sex , Yale

Adam Solomon (Y '10), "Co-President of the Committe for Freedom," passes on to us photographic evidence of the work of a gang of debonair vigilantes. Here's the backstory.

After the jump -- more pictures!

Continue reading "Last Post on "We Love Yale Sluts"-gate...We Promise" »

January 27, 2008 3:41 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (41) | Read more: Yale , frats , inexplicably, burke , redemption of the male sex

WE LOVE YALE SLUTS-gate rumbles on. The Zeta Psi pledge photographed holding the sign, Giovanni Christodoulou '11, chooses a unique defense:

"I never even read the sign," Christodoulou, a wide receiver and defensive back for the Yale football team, said in the interview. "They gave me the sign, and I held it up."

Of all excuses, this has to be the one we least saw coming. Rumor has it the football star is also in trouble for wearing his team jacket during the misadventure, though we find it hard to believe anything on his body is more problematic than that bandana. Then again, it would suck to have bad hair in the one picture that gets you on the cover of the school newspaper and blasted across a zillion blogs, so we understand the dilemma.

January 24, 2008 9:53 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (31) | Read more: Yale , frats

A brief discontinuity in the IvyGate continuum: Around 2PM yesterday our post on papayagina abortion went dead, following Yale Daily News' removal of an online article about a pro-choice event where, among other things, students simulated abortions on papayas. YDN's explanation:

Out of concern for Rasha Khoury, whose quoted comments were being dangerously misinterpreted throughout the blogosphere, we removed the story yesterday afternoon from YaleDailyNews.com

Leave it to pro-lifers to get all dangerous with misinterpretation. (Does Francisco Nava have a blog?) Of course, YDN's removal of the story is slightly futile, since copies of the original are already circulating right-wing blogs. We also have a feeling the Eric Rudolphs of the world aren't the type to check facts. Khoury (Med '08) writes in today's YDN that the papayabortions were "to practice and demystify, not trivialize, the procedure."

Oddly, the trivializing forces of L'Affair Papaya are mostly on the other side. Dawn Eden, author of Thrill of the Chaste, hosted a contest to rewrite Yale's anthem "for all those liberal arts students ... about to learn how to suction a live baby out of the womb," a clear homage to conservative Clinton Taylor's "Taliban Boolah Boolah" fight song.

Continue reading "Pro-Lifers Protect Papaya Seeds' Right to Life" »

January 24, 2008 4:11 AM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (16) | Read more: Yale , Yale Daily News

Remember when the Daily Princetonian ruined kittens for an entire generation of Ivy Leaguers? Yale Daily News (and the people they write about) just did that for papayas:

Students who walked into WLH 119 on Tuesday night were greeted with models of the female pelvis complete with fallopian tubes, cervixes, vaginas — and papayas on which to perform mock abortions.

Adds unexpected context for this headline, though.

UPDATE: This post links to a Daily News article that has since been removed. Read here to find out why.

January 23, 2008 1:56 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (1) | Read more: Yale , Yale Daily News

From a single sheet of 8-and-half-by-11 to a zillion column-inches of news. Yale Daily News joins the Yale Women's Center vs. Zeta Psi cagematch a day late and with no fewer than three articles: the news story, Zeta Psi's apology, and YWC's cold, hard rejection of it. And their sports headlines might have some subliminal messaging, too.

The news story offered some interesting details on the preamble to the WE LOVE YALE SLUTS photo op:

Former Women’s Center Public Relations Coordinator Jessica Svendsen '09 said she found a group of men chanting "Dick! Dick! Dick!" in front of the Elm Street entrance to the Center... shortly before midnight last Tuesday.

This reminds me of Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia, who preaches phallocracy but it just ends up gay, because standing around with a bunch of dudes talking about penises tends to have that effect. In retrospect, I don't recall if the character was actually gay, or if that's just the way it reads because, you know, it's Tom Cruise. But if the Zetas were Tom Cruise in Magnolia, they probably wouldn't have published these groveling words:

Continue reading "Unforgiving Women's Center Gives Zeta Psi Apology-Blueballs" »

January 22, 2008 4:51 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Yale , frats

Following a frat stunt picturing twelve alleged Zeta Psis with a sign reading WE LOVE YALE SLUTS by the Yale Women's Center, the Women's Center is threatening to sue. YWC publicist Valerie Steinberg ('09) was unable to provide details regarding who they are suing, and for what crime, but she confirmed that the YWC board sent the following email to its list:

From: Yale Women's Center
Date: Jan 21, 2008 10:50 AM
Subject: This Time We Sue
To: [redacted]

Dear Yale,

The photograph below was taken during a recent Yale fraternity initiation.  This is sexual harassment.  Lawyers have been consulted, and we are taking legal action.

If you are unwilling to be enrolled in a school where woman-hating is a subject of pride, email yalewomenscenter@gmail.com now.  We will keep you informed.

"WE LOVE YALE SLUTS" Uploaded to facebook.com January 16, 2008.

Sincerely,
The Yale Women's Center Board

The email included the original photo, which we provide in high resolution after the jump. No word yet from the brothers, but since Yale's Zeta Psi happens to be presidential granddaddy Prescott Bush's alma mater (frater?), we'll just assume they have secret society influence and shadowy henchmen will be descending on the YWC to hush its noisy broads up shortly.

Interestingly, Zeta Psi is among the soon-to-be-reinstated Dartmouth frats that has Hanover's proverbial panties all in a bundle.

Continue reading "Zeta Psi Pledges "Love Yale Sluts," Women's Center Pledges to Sue" »

January 21, 2008 6:12 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (213) | Read more: Yale , frats

Apparently GoCrossCampus, that super complicated internet Ivy League war-game thingee, still exists and is thriving or something. We'd update you on how everyone is doing, but that'd require understanding how it works. Luckily, Kurt Hugo Schneider (the Yalie behind the genius known as "Watch YTV"), has an explanation, and it's in his usual catchy music video form, featuring songstress sweetheart Meg Martinez and yet another pidgin-speaking emasculated Asian male for cheap laughs.

v

I'd question the logic behind the Asian-bash-for-giggles thing (Anger regarding academic competitiveness? Redirected sexual anxieties from overeager college kids?), but that'd be even more complicated than the rules to GoCrossCampus, so, meh. If only GoCrossCampus actually had the power to inspire choreographed fight scenes with musically talented dweeb-chic boys in scenic locations all over campus -- then I'd take the time to figure it out. In the meantime, I'll just watch the movie.

December 19, 2007 2:34 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (50) | Read more: Yale , YouTube , gocrosscampus

An interesting coincidence: The same weekend that George H. W. Bush (Y'48, S&B'4life) dropped by New Haven to receive a Yale alumni award, witnesses saw a truck from the nearby Hamden Rental Center unloading an impressive quantity of tables and chairs at the Skull & Bones tomb. Famously absent from Boner bashes in recent years (last appearance we can confirm was in 1998), all signs point to the 83-year-old Bush Sr. as guest of honor at the Bones' latest homoerotic leather-daddy Satan-worship, or ritualized flag-burning, or whatever strange and magical things they do in those windowless buildings on High Street.

Obviously, the Bonesmen declined to comment on this story. Also obviously, there are no photos of Bush strolling into the tomb. So instead, at right, Bush frolicking in the streets of New Haven. He appears to be packing a snowball, but actually he is signing a baseball. Because that's what you do when you're old, famous, and powerful: sign sports paraphernalia that has absolutely nothing to do with the reason you are famous.

As for that blatant O-face beneath the words "Toad's Funk," I think we just got a new sexual euphemism.

December 17, 2007 12:42 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (164) | Read more: Secret Societies , Yale , bush , skull and bones

Yalies are really into their Christmas penises. We're not so sure why.  Another tipster writes in:

Well, in response to your story of today about Yale's lights, the freshman in JE amended the message on the side of Farnam to be more accurate, rearranging a few lights here and there. ES is the acronym for Ezra Stiles college, the one that....erected the original display. ES and JE apparently agree on something - ES sucks cock!"

December 13, 2007 10:23 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (26) | Read more: Yale , christmas , penis

'Tis the season for many things, including giant electric penises. 

A tipster writes in: 

Last night, between 10pm and 3am, the freshmen of the Ezra Stiles college at Yale constructed a massive christmas light penis on the front of Lawrance as a response to the traditional christmas light "JE SUX" written across the front of Farnum, the adjacent dorm. The penis was estimated to be about 100 feet long, and even sported multi-colored, blinking ejaculate. The penis will ostensibly remain on Lawrance through the end of finals (next week)."

Argh! All this Yale geography is confusing me! I think the point is that ever since Father Time first came around, Yale students have been writing "JE SUX" on one of their buildings to the chagrin of other Yale students. Thankfully the war has apparently escalated into an epic battle of electric penises, which is far more satisfying for the rest of us.

After the jump: the electric penis ejaculates all over Harvard. More pictures.

Continue reading "The Yale Christmas Penis Brings Holiday Cheer to All Who Cross Its Path" »

December 12, 2007 10:55 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (31) | Read more: Yale , christmas , penis

If Josh Duboff's (Y '08) blog, Text Message in a Bottle, looks like he made it in five minutes, that's because he probably did. What kind of stuff does he blog about? Certainly not ideas or politics, if that's what you were thinking. Some observational humor, some quirkography, and a lot of bitching about pop culture -- all in the best tradition of the internet.

I read the whole archive, and it's pretty funny. Here are two entries from a list (there are a lot of lists) entitled "awkward moments:"

1) When you are on the subway and your iPod happens to be on something like "Glamorous" by Fergie or "Bye Bye Bye" by N' Sync (this has never happened to me, obviously) and the cool guy who has just the right amount of facial hair and those really big noise-canceling headphones who is sitting next to you glimpses the album art on your iPod and looks away smirking.

3) When you are sitting with your friend Ed in the dining hall and that girl who you met at that party who you talked to for like 45 minutes walks by and you say to Ed, "Oh, that's Kara! You'll love her. She's great - really funny." "Kara," you shout! She doesn't hear you, it seems, and keeps on walking with her gaggle of girlfriends in hip outfits to the back of the dining hall. You shout "Kara!" again, this time a little softer (it's more for show than for actually getting her attention at this point). She doesn't turn around. Ed looks down at his half-eaten lasagna.

You can read more here. 

Got a blog you want featured? Email us.

November 13, 2007 2:19 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (15) | Read more: Blog Man on Campus , Yale

This past Monday Padraic Scanlan (McGill '08) prophesied for the McGill Daily that, "when the class war comes at long last, it will begin in New Haven, and Yale’s undergraduates will be first against the wall." Such sentiment was the outcome of a visit Scanlan paid to Yale the previous weekend, a visit he probably would have enjoyed more were he not tormented by "how obscene the divide is between the rich and the poor in New Haven, Connecticut."

Scanlan has this to say about the social scene at Yale:

The whole atmosphere was one of sexist, predatory relationships between men and women and total contempt for the surrounding community. 

I mean, he says says that like it's a bad thing. After going through the motions of white guilt ("In New Haven, white and young means Yale, and Yale means hatred."), seething resentment ("If anyone wants a non-theoretical, non-academic reason for supporting the redistribution of wealth, visit Yale."), and sophisticated sociological observation (Yale is mostly white, and Asian. Inner-city New Haven is mostly black and Hispanic."), Scanlan comes to the crux of his complaint:

"I was walking around the city, just outside of Yale with a bunch of other McGill students, and we were cat-called by bystanders. I can honestly say that that has never happened to me, ever, in Montreal. I have always felt completely safe, and I have never felt a shameful feeling of nervousness around people who have a different ethnic background."

You poor thing. Go back to Canada.

After the jump -- the article in full. 

Continue reading "Harvard of Canada to Harvard of Connecticut: Drop Dead" »

November 9, 2007 5:43 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (61) | Read more: Yale , mcgill

So gushed Allison Williams (Y' 10) on HuffPo yesterday, in a post titled, "Well, He Did It. And He Did It Extremely Well." Why is NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams so awesome? Because he hosted SNL last week despite being an upstanding and responsible public figure.

For an indication of his awesomeness, check out the bitchin' and totally unexpected commentary Williams wrote on The Sopranos last year for Slate. Or you could just take Allison's word for it:

I've grown accustomed to his job out of necessity. It's really only weird to see him on television in public places (billboards and gyms) when I'm completely anonymous and have a special connection with "that dude" that no one around me realizes.

Last night I remembered how awesome it is that my dad is Brian Williams. I could not be prouder to share genes, a last name, love for SNL, and many other things with him.

The show was a great success. His acting was nuanced, subtle, and wonderful, the lines were delivered naturally (not a surprise), his characters were colorful, he took enough risks and didn't cross any lines, and lastly: HE'S FUNNY! Let the record show that Brian Williams is a man with a mind for journalism and comedy.

November 7, 2007 9:23 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (19) | Read more: Yale , brian williams

I started watching Last One Standing (streamable here) expecting the worst: Advertised as an imperialist fantasy pitting testosterone-pumped Western athletes against tribal warriors in caged death matches the world around, it seemed a little outside my ANTM schtick. But the presence of Harvard senior and Natural History major Corey Rennell necessitated IvyGate supervision. LOS turns out to be a ridiculously addictive BBC/Discovery observational documentary, featuring heartstopping sequences of Zulu stick-fighting, Mongolian wrestling, and long-distance running with the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. Oh, and the cast is total eye candy.

After the jump: Pictures of Corey playing sports in various states of undress, and our interview, including discourse on compassion, sustainability, and anal sex.

Continue reading "Harvard Guy Mostly Naked on TV
An Exclusive Interview with Corey Rennell" »

November 7, 2007 7:57 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (14) | Read more: Last One Standing , Yale , reality tv

We're already salivating for the December issue of Glamour magazine, featuring all four female Ivy League presidents as 2007 Women of the Year.

Prince and DP reports confirm that The Prezettes -- Princeton's Shirley Tilghman, Brown's Ruth Simmons, Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust, and Penn's Halloween- and maybe-Jihad-loving Amy Gutmann -- will appear in glossy photos alongside the likes of Jennifer Garner, Elizabeth Edwards, and child actress Abigail Breslin. Gutmann has already begun denying the fact that she's totally pumped to get airbrushed:

Though Gutmann doesn't "have much time to read magazines like Glamour," she said she is pleased that the magazine will use the Fund to raise money for charities that support causes for women.

Whatevs, Amy, we know you're excited to get a professional blow-out and glossy photos, and for little girls the world around to cut out your picture and decorate their notebooks with it. For those who can't wait to see if the Gutbomb reprises her strapless red Homecoming dress, fear not! IvyGate will be there for you on November 13 when Women of the Year hits newsstands.

November 5, 2007 4:45 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (4) | Read more: Brown , Penn , Princeton , Ruth Simmons , Shirley Tilghman , Yale , amy gutmann , drew gilpin faust , presidents

Today's Yale Daily News opinion page puts a post-Halloween doodle on wash, rinse, and repeat. Please compare today's Entryway K by Sara Freiberg:

...with last year's November 1st Artist's Alley by David Muenzer:

Interestingly, Muenzer is still on staff and shares white space with Freiberg, which makes us think the YDN opinion staff should form a circle around them and start chanting Fight! Fight! Fight! to settle issues of intellectual ownership. Of course, the concept is simple enough that each doodler could have come up with it independently, much like the time I thought I invented using DP as a pun (say what you will about YDN, at least its acronym isn't also a feat of slutty acrobatics).

November 2, 2007 1:44 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Yale , Yale Daily News

Gawker and Dealbreaker are reporting on the re-emergence of the greatest thing to ever happen to this website -- the man, the myth, the video-resume-superstar -- Mr. Aleksey Vayner.

He's been shopping his new resume (take a look) around to various NYC-funds, and has even gone to a couple interviews. According to Dealbreaker, he came off as “personable, chatty, and laid back.” Of course he also claimed to have been about to go pro in tennis...at the US Open...until his doubles-partner broke his wrist two hours before his first match. Drat! Those preternatural coincidences can be a real bitch. (You know, it's not even funny any more; it's just sad.)

Looking at his resume, we can see what Aleksey has been doing with his time off from Yale. He completed some certs -- RIA, CFA (help! what are these?) -- from online shop Boston Institute of Finance, and is living currently in Kips Bay, an area of Manhattan about which we know literally nothing.

He also claims to have authored a book, Millionaires' Blueprint to Success, whose anticipated publication date is Summer '08, which means some yet unknown guest-editor will be reviewing it probably

Know something about this?

November 1, 2007 6:56 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (34) | Read more: Yale , aleksey vayner

You know it'll be a good e-mail when it starts like this:

YALE DAILY NEWS: PLEASE RESPOND ASAP - DEADLINE TONIGHT

It's like the reporter thinks it's our fault he's on a short schedule, his hastily-pressed caps lock key indicating the vital urgency of the following questions about Yale's attempt to sabotage Harvard's H-bomb-vs.-Y-bomb football smackdown t-shirts:

3.) Would you qualify this as a prank, and how so?
4.) I'm just curious what you mean by the obnoxious sixth grader comment.
5.) Do you expect this issue to intensify to anything else? A prank war perhaps?
6.) How effective was this Yale stunt at achieving what it is doing? And what do
you think it is trying to achieve?

Continue reading "Yale Coverage of Yale Emails about Harvard Shirts -- World Turns Upside-Down, Inside-Out!" »

October 26, 2007 2:41 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (24) | Read more: Yale , Yale Daily News , football

We’ve recently been accused of harboring certain anti-Harvard tendencies. But if there’s anything worse than Harvard students designing some truly terrible t-shirts for the Yale game – and yes, there are many things that are worse, i.e. Islamofascism Awareness Week – it’s Yalies trying to subvert Harvard students’ democratic right to choose the worst t-shirt they can imagine.

Yalies have been emailing each other like whoah trying to hijack the Harvard t-shirt vote with all the smugness and subtlety of an obnoxious sixth grader. It seems not to have occurred to anyone that at some point the Harvard webmaster might catch on.

From email #1: so harvard decided to have online voting for their game shirts. and we decided to choose their shirt for them.”

From email #2: The word on the street is that Yale is backing choice no. 3 cause it too lame for words. Vote # 3 and sabotage Harvard."

From email #3: They made their t-shirt contest public. Naturally, we should all vote for the lamest shirt. I'm thinking either shirt 2 (to get them wearing out color, and becuase it doesn't make sense) or shirt 3, which is just idiotic. Either way, lets vote in a large block (There are about 1100 of you i'm emailing)…

Ummm, intense.

After the jump: the emails in full.

Continue reading "Yale Emails Lamer Than Harvard T-Shirts" »

October 24, 2007 10:30 AM by Jacob Savage | Link | Comments (27) | Read more: Harvard , Yale

After posting Harvard '09 Peter Shields' -- excuse me, Petros' -- boy band jam "Body Glow," we received tips on Yale Television's latest self-promotional clip, a jazzy little ditty entitled "Watch YTV" where we learn that Asian males continue to be the easiest punchline in entertainment, and someone named Andy Wexler has a micropenis. Also, fat kids like eating brownies and have surprisingly angelic falsetto voices.

UPDATE: It has come to our attention that the above video might not be an actual YTV production, in which case the above singing tele-ddicts are straight-up nutjobs, and YTV should probably hire them, stat. Our attempt to visit YTV's website revealed a massive relaunch project. Maybe this is all a guerrilla marketing scheme to create buzz while we anxiously await the YTV relaunch -- and IvyGate has fallen right into YTV's greedy, ratings-grubbing, anonymous-YouTube-launching hands!! I feel so used. But at least I have a catchy tune to hum.

October 22, 2007 11:28 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (40) | Read more: YTV , Yale , YouTube

It wasn't supposed to be like this. In preparation for the "The Game" vs. Yale on 11/17, Harvard students were to design a bunch of killer t-shirts and then choose the best one. Orderly hordes of students in rad threads watching Crimson pull out a win. Yeah!

Too bad these shirts are some of the most awful things we've ever seen. They're funny, but funny in a bad way. Part of it is their amateurish production, and part of it is their reliance on tried-and-true sources of humor like multiple-choice questions, dipole moments, and transfer applications.

After the jump -- the worst of the submissions.

UPDATED: Apparently voting is open to the public. Go vote for what you think Harvard students should be wearing.

Continue reading "Harvard Sadder Than Ever" »

October 20, 2007 5:15 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (38) | Read more: Harvard , Yale

Last week saw the sad demise of Victoria Marshman, Yale '09, from America's Next Top Model. Eliminated for her "prickly" disposition while posing as a cactus, Tory left the show and returned to life as a History major. In an exclusive phone interview, everyone's favorite failed model gave IvyGate juicy details from her life as television star.

After the jump, Yale's Hottest Skinny Chick dishes on castmates, crazed fans, the quality of Tyra Banks' boobs... and re-tells a scene Lady Banks didn't want viewers to see (hint: it involves Tyra siccing her bodyguards on a tiny, defenseless Tory)

Continue reading "Tory Tells All in Exclusive Interview!
I'm not sexy, and Tyra feared me." »

October 18, 2007 2:30 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (83) | Read more: Yale , america's next top model , reality tv

This past Friday the front page of the New York Post, America's paper of record, was given over to a picture of a naked man strolling about Midtown. Naturally, he went to Yale. Today the paper caught up with "curly-haired hipster" Josh Drimmer and exchanged a few words with him from his comfy new Bellevue digs.

Juicy details are few and far between. A freshman dorm-mate reports,  "He would eat scraps of food people left around for a couple of hours." He was a double major in English and theater studies, like seemingly everyone else at Yale. He was not, however, a member of "the Pundits" -- the secretive anti-secret-society secret society -- which is too bad because this sounds like it would have been a huge coup for them.

Also, here's his blog, which isn't as weird as one would hope. Dude really likes Fleetwood Mac, apparently.

Anyone know anything else?

Lastly, here is a video which Gothamist is reasonably sure stars none other than Drimmer "bopping around Time Square," as the Post put it.

October 15, 2007 3:27 PM by Hal Parker | Link | Comments (7) | Read more: Yale , new york post

Dressed as a cactus for a plant-themed shoot, Tory proved too "prickly" for the Top Model judges' taste (photos coming ASAP!). Despite high-quality pictures in episodes 2 and 3, Tory's bad attitude and sass at the judge's table was our leggy friend's downfall. She'll just have to settle for "the top history program at Yale." The above picture is from the anti-smoking campaign of episode 2. See the dead fetus doll in her arms? That's what smoke-induced stillbirth looks like.  Which is to say, HOT.

October 10, 2007 10:36 PM by Maureen O'Connor | Link | Comments (27) | Read more: Yale , america's next top model , reality tv

Yesterday Xiaochen Su (Y' 10) incited furor when he penned a guest column for the