The Paper Trail - an education blog for U.S. News & World Report - has once again listed IvyGate as a contender for the best alternative media outlet of the year. Other nominees for the poll, which closes on February 17, include Wesleying, Bwog, The Daily Clog, Mads Vassar, Onward State, Saxa Speak, Timothy Dwight, MiddBlog, and the Critical Badger. Presently we are in last place, with a mere 1.35% of all votes. By contrast, Timothy Dwight - a blog about a certain cult group residential hall at Yale - is leading the polls at 28.72%, and Bwog - the blog of Columbia's Blue & White - is in second place with 24.9%.

The reasons why IvyGate is being trounced by the likes of a dorm blog at Yale and campus-specific new media rags are numerous. One explanation is that some sites, like Timothy Dwight and Bwog, have posted links to the poll below their mastheads and are urging readers to vote multiple times. Another reason may have to do with the fact that IvyGate content has been conspicuously spare since the beginning of the new semester. This is due to our own laxity - we're lazy and underpaid (read: paid nothing) - and also because we've been sorting out, in a productive way, our various levels of commitment for 2009 and onward.

In short: the hibernation is over and we're as eager to probe the bizarre depths of higher ed as we've ever been.  If you've got a hot tip or want to write for us - we're hiring! - email us at tips@ivygateblog.com.

Oh, Facebook. Why must you, like the girl in my English seminar who eats her feelings, return from Summer Break twice as wide as when we last parted? New Facebook, you are not hot. Not even a little bit, and Bwog agrees with me. Per Bwog: "A preference of New Facebook is no longer an acceptable option for anyone, ever."

But fear not, Facebook-addicted Ivy Leaguers: the fattening of Facebook will seem insignificant compared to the impending loss of Scrabulous. The apocalypse is nigh! Sweet baby Jesus, hear our collective cry: "Please, God, I have so little: Don't take Scrabulous, too!"

And, to make matters worse, as I sat at my desk with tears rolling down my cheeks, panic swelling beneath my Barnard T-shirt, no fucking clue as to how I would survive next year, I came across a gem of an article on TheDartmouth.com which can only have been written by a Facebook atheist.

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As reported in the estimable Bwog of Columbia University yesterday, Columbia President Lee Bollinger's son, Lee Bollinger Also, has gotten himself hitched to a pretty third grade teacher named Jennifer Ellis. Having barely survived an in-class cross examination from Lee the Elder myself in his constitutional law class, I have sympathy for Jennifer in what is sure to be a long and happy life filled with tear inducing Thanksgiving dinner interrogations.

Also earning my sympathy are the legions of Spectator staffers, past and present, male and female, who have now lost their last chance to "bag a Lee Bollinger." I guess those photoshopped naked pictures of Prezbo in the old Eye office will have to do.  The Silver Fox does NOT commit cruel and petty infidelity, and, one assumes, neither will his doppelgang-banger spawn.

Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured an interview with Columbia religion professor, Dalai Lama friend, and famous person spawner Robert Thurman. Thurman, who was the first American ordained as a Tibetan monk (and a Harvard man himself), is on university leave this year but normally teaches classes on Buddhism.

At first, the interview seems to be standard fare -- thank you, New York Times, for hard-hitting journalism along the lines of:

As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino’s bloody “Kill Bill”?

But then something really fascinating and bizarre emerges. Follow the jump for an image that will sear itself into your brain.

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...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?

Whew. Keep the tips coming, people. We'll be here all week.

Ed: No, but seriously, enough with this schlemiel. To conclude our coverage of Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia, here's Columbia miscreant J.D. Porter again with a roundup of the reactions in the news and on campus. Hopefully Lee Bollinger won't take offense at one of J.D.'s statements and yell at him, but that's his problem.

Of all the media covering the Ahmadinejad speech, Fox News was the most impressive. After a week decrying Columbia as maniacal liberals supporting a dictator, a weaker network might not have known how to report on an orderly hour spent ridiculing him. In classic form, however, Fox simply elected to report on their own fictional version of the event.

More of J.D.'s trenchant commentary and edgy photography after the jump.

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• Brown: "Our language isn't equipped to deal with people who do not fit into the so-called 'gender binary.'"
• Columbia: Goddamn Spec website! Bwog 1, Ahmadineblog 0
• Cornell: Hmm... what's the best stock phrase for this... presto: "We may not agree with what you have to say, Mahmoud, but we'll defend to the death your right to say it."
• Harvard: Let's Go travel guides escape Harvard tyranny, might actually be good now
• Penn: "I'm scared of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad"
• Princeton: All we can learn from Ahmadinejad is that he sucks
• Yale: Something about journalistic ethics... blah blah blah ignore

The lovelies at Columbia's Bwog have been following their University's "War on Fun" this past week-ish. And as the situation on the ground gets worse, the casualties continue to mount (Umm... sorry if this is the wrong day for such wordplay.)

The Boss Tweeds running the school set a precedent for antifun last spring by de facto fucking over some frat's annual, glitzy "Hot Jazz" party. Students lived through the forfeiture of such a luxury, but the crackdown continued into the new semester. In the first couple of weeks, security guards have been breaking up millions of dorm parties. Students claim they hear these snivelling rat-cops hatching plans for funlessness over their two-ways.

Still, dorm parties were never the essence. Columbia is about getting fake IDs from that place on the Lower East Side with the costumes no later than 48 hours after move-in. Then, bars.

But now, according to Bwog, McLovin probably will have an easier time getting served in the Village than your average Columbia minor will around campus:

A bouncer at one of the area bars that Bwog frequents tells us that all bars around campus are getting ID scanners within the next two weeks. Furthermore, according to the buzz: Columbia's footing the bill. They must really hate us... 

D'you think the freshmen who saw Clipse perform on campus a week or two ago knew it would be the last fun thing ever to happen there? And if they can't have fun on campus, what the hell else are Columbians supposed to do in boooooriiiiiing New York City?

I'm Beth Milton, Columbia '06. Impression of my undergraduate years? Let's just say I currently live in Copenhagen, a good 4,000 miles away from Morningside Heights. Not that I mind writing about the place, having helped launch The Bwog back in 2006, when the biggest thing we had to report on were some mysterious cracker packets. Oh, how the times have changed. When I'm not working on, thinking about, or dreaming of IvyGate, I'm also an Associate Editor for The Morning News, where I whip up some delicious afternoon headlines.

Want to win my undying affection? Try sending Sam and me rumors, tips, links, videos, musings, compliment, and complaints at ivygate.guest@gmail.com. It works every time.

And I'm Sam Jackson, Yale '11, no relation to Mace Windu and son of an actually black Michael. Some of you may already be familiar with my writing, as IvyGate sends a couple hundred visits to my blog about college admissions each month, where you stay for an average of 11 seconds longer than the usual visitor (thanks guys!). Basically, I'm here writing to repay my free traffic voodoo blood debt. I'm spending the summer working around the Boston area to pay down those tuition bills; nothing too glamorous. IvyGate's '40 grand' tagline is sadly out of date.

I may not be as jaded as the other editors but all the same I'll do my best to collect, pervert, and distort Ivy-related news just the way you like it. The inbox has some gems, but I'm confident you fine readers are withholding some great summer stories.  My undying affection isn't won as easily as Beth's, but don't let that stop you--send in your tips, praise, rumors, rants and career-ruining revelations today! Sharing is caring, after all.