Jared Kushner--the Harvard alum who bought the New York Observer as his graduation present and recently fired the cleaning lady to cut costs--and his brother Joshua have a new enterprise. It's called UniThrive and works kind of like Robin Hood. (Take from the rich. Give to the soon-to-be rich!)

Basically, a student loan networking website currently in beta. Students who register at the website request a loan of up to $2,000. Alumni then search for students, pick the ones they like, and pledge some money to loan in order to fulfill the students' requests. The best part is that all the loans are 0% interest. It's a great deal--as long as you go to Harvard, because the only school whose students can use this website is the Kushners' alma mater.

It's not as if the people behind UniThrive know much about the debt Harvard students face, having been accepted after Big Kush donated $2.5 million to the school. The website's pitch to Crimson alumni paints it as a social networking site as much as a donation site. And though the Kushners may not be hip to some internet trends (see the Twitter pages of Jared and Josh), this new website does resemble a financial aid-version of match.com. Jared is actually very familiar with dating sites, as he likely met his fiancee through JDate.

At least the Kushners with their billions of dollars are finally doing something to help those in need. And who could be more needy than students accepted to the most prestigious school in the country? Take that you freeloading third-world entrepreneurs! You're not good enough for Harvard money.

Fantastic Four star and teenage boy fantasy Jessica Alba recently made a visit to suddenly very hip Wolf's Head Society. According to a tipster, husband and "budding producer" Cash Warren '01 brought her along for some elite treats out of plastic cups, weird games with sleepy-time masks, and photo ops. We can thank the latter for a peek inside the Hall (and Alba's see-through dress).

While you can find pictures of Jessica Alba in any Maxim magazine, the shots inside of the Hall rank a bit higher than bathroom reading. But just a bit. There's a framed picture of a letter to Yale President Richard Levin—that looks exactly as you'd expect a framed picture of a letter to look. Props to the photog for nailing that William Eggleston look in the boardroom shot. And the basement, well, it has that Yale feel to it: dark, Gothic, always morally bankrupt.

***Note: Stuffed wolf body but stuffed cougar (yes, it's a cougar) head? What gives?

Here's the part where everyone's an investigatory journalist. What was the stripper wearing in the eye-mask scene??? From the expression on LBD girl in the background (center-left) who looks like a Looney Tunes die-hard, it's probably an Elmer Fudd kind of thing—floppy hat, bell end gun, and accompanying insinuations—and she's just recognized the speech impediment. Dude next to her recognized it, too.

After the jump, photos inside the Wolf's Head Society and some surprisingly trustworthy captions about what's actually happening in them.

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The kids who maintain the popular Timothy Dwight College blog at Yale recently starred in a music video about the last day of school. Title: THE MOST EPIC VIDEO OF ALL TIME. Honestly, swashbuckling confidence is usually a turn on, but then they elaborated:

As you probably didn't notice, the IvySports Roundup did not run last week. That is not to say that no important Ivy League sports took place on the first weekend in May. Quite the opposite in fact, as Ivy League titles were decided in men's lacrosse, baseball, and softball. And that's in addition to Ancient Eight alumni actually doing well in pro sports. However, as last week was the beginning of study week for most students, we felt that we should honor the occasion by partaking in the great study week tradition of slacking off. But there are no excuses this week as the Roundup is back, and there's a lot of catching up to do since last time.

This week's rankings takes into account the events of the past two weekends, in which seven Ivy League titles were decided. Two schools tied for the most titles in the last fortnight with 2.5 each. After factoring in the intangibles--such as which school's band can we piss off with the minimum amount of effort--the choice for number one was clear.

1. Princeton

Holds bragging rights over: Cornell

The Tools--I mean Tigers--had a very successful weekend. Both men's lightweight crew and women's track won Ancient Eight titles. The latter team won their first outdoor track league title in 11 years and ended Cornell's seven year reign. Meanwhile, men's lacrosse--who won a share of the Ivy championship last week with their win over Brown--breezed past UMass 10-7 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Not to be outdone, women's lacrosse pounded Georgetown 15-9 in their first round game.

But Princeton's place atop the rankings this week (and their holding of bragging rights over Cornell) is mainly due to the accomplishments of one particular alumnus. Three weeks ago, Princeton grad George Parros fought Cornell grad Douglas Murray in Southern California. No, it wasn't a battle between agents for the right to represent Susan Boyle. It was in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoff series between Parros' Ducks and Murray's Sharks, and we never gave the fight its due. Based on the video, we see it as a close decision win for Parros, whose team would go on to win the series. And that's why the Tools are number one...for now.

Find out why after the jump.

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Since it stopped raining in Cambridge for a couple of days, I thought I'd take the liberty open up the traditional non-official yet highly selective application for IvyGate's 2009 summer editors. Past summer editors (Maureen) have coasted on the position to the inevitable flame and gory media careers----that's not a typo, but it is awkward to read.

At this juncture, there's a quite a bit of hullabaloo about how journalism is dying and Meghan McCain's boobs are taking over the media. But not at IvyGate! We'll never go anywhere, and it will like be some Penn sophomore's boobs are taking over Dartmouth fraternities. (Yes, we have secret posts maturing in our cellars. You can have a sip when you apply.)

Now that I've used boobs to coax, it's worth noting that we also pay in beer and self-congratulation. If you think we're being too dude-bro, we'll give you stiff martinis and gift cards to Forever 21. In a gender neutral way, we offer you the opportunity to scoop out the Ivy League's dirtiest crevices for morsels of irony and flakes of hilarity. You'll make some people cry. You'll get berated in the comments section. And you'll love every minute of it. If that's not enough, you should be an i-banker. (Good luck.)

I'll announce our annual May-to-June hiatus later this week when I'm ready to say goodbye.

Meantime, if you're interested in applying or just want to hear about my day, hit me on my beeper: adam@ivygateblog.com

Watch out, Lena Chen: there's another sex blogger on the Internetz AND he's not currently in committed, monogamous relationship!

The gay blogger, who goes by "Boy Toy" is placed by some sources as a junior at Harvard. The Chicago locale is just a front to throw you off the scent. Actually, not that hard when 42% of Harvard students have had 0 sexual partners in the past year. (That number drops to 33.7% nationally.)  Although who knows, it could be an aging, diapered Floridian with an overactive imagination.

Boy Toy is keeping mum on the specifics of his identity, although he insinuates he's a Harvard affiliate. If we hear another creepy nudge-nudge statement, we might petition for an honorary associates degree from the Extension School:

Although I'm not going to pretend like these stories are not somewhat 'tickled and fluffed' into a more coherent narrative, every guy has a very real-life equivalent... Perhaps you recognize some of them?

This 2(x)ist wearing commitment-phobe loves to have international sexcapades in in highly narrative detail. One Army hookup's lips "taste like syrup." Aunt Jemima, we hardly knew ye.

After the jump, Harvard Boy Toy takes you to second base... and... that's about it.

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In a bizarre alternate universe, one where giant alien robots masquerade as roadsters and fighter jets, and where non-banker Ivy League twerps inexplicably manage to land hot girlfriends, Penn and Princeton are not rivals separated by state lines and forty-five miles, but constituent parts of the same university:

Twenty seconds into the newest trailer for Transformers 2, viewers are treated to a sweeping aerial shot of Princeton's campus. Immediately after that, there's ground level footage of Penn's Quad. There the mother of Shia LaBeouf's character spins around in a circle and says, "Look at this place - I feel smarter already. Can you smell it?"

"Yeah," her husband replies, "smells like forty thousand dollars a year."

Actually, it's more like fifty thousand. And does anyone know why Michael Bay decided to film on two separate campuses? We were baffled last year, and we still are.

This just popped up on the Daily Princetonian's blog, The Prox. This comment says it all:

I would boink half of them but still....ugh. Chest painting for Gym Class Heroes? Apples in Stereo were awesome.

I've heard this strange usage of the word "tool" bandied about and I've been waiting for an Ivy daily to publish a column explaining what it means. Finally, Cindy Hong, in "Taking a Peek in the Tool Shed," has cleared things up for me. According to Cindy, a tool is a person who engages in:

being fake, networking, pursuing finance, trying too hard, trying too hard not to look like you’re trying too hard

Cindy is quick to assure us she is not a tool, despite her various and acknowledged toolish affiliations: The Daily Princetonian, Wilson School, USG (Editor's Note: Cindy says these affiliations are toolish, not me. Though, I believe her.) Cindy writes:

“But I’m so cool and interesting,” I protested to my non-USG, non-Wilson School friends. “I listen to Neutral Milk Hotel and read David Foster Wallace.” These statements only confirmed their suspicions.

Yes, Neutral Milk Hotel is incredibly toolish (I'm not being sarcastic). After the jump, Cindy tells us why being a tool is actually a good thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Harvard Law graduate and Cornell professor William Jacobson is a member of an exclusive club, as he is one of the few arch-conservatives to make a home in Ithaca. Before this week, Jacobson was one of the lesser-known members of this group that also consists of Ann Coulter and the blind guy staunchly opposed to anal sex, even though his initials spell "A.S.S." But this week, Jacobson catapulted himself through the ranks of the Big Red Staters, thanks to his shocking expose of liberal media bias in MSNBC's coverage of President Obama's trip to an Arlington burger joint on Tuesday.

Mitchell even noted that Obama left a $5 tip in the tip jar. But she didn't mention one arugula-like fact, and you couldn't hear it on the MSNBC video because Andrea and her correspondent Kelly O'Donnel (they needed two people to cover this story) were talking so much.

NBC's regular news reported Obama's order as follows: ""I'm going to have a basic cheddar cheese burger, medium well, with mustard," Obama said. "Do you have spicy mustard? I'll take that."

Actually, the quote was "you got a spicy mustard or something like that, or a Dijon mustard, something like that" (at 0.55 of the unedited video below without Mitchell's talkover).

Obama ordered his burger with DIJON MUSTARD! Bet he had to seek John Kerry's counsel on that.

If anyone knows elitism, it's a Harvard Law-educated Cornell professor who worked for many years as a lawyer in Rhode Island.

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