“Two houses, both alike in aggregation,

in fair Columbia where we lay our scene.

From ancient grudge break new mutiny,

Where civil link makes civil comments unclean.”

Okay SO! Some weird stuff, and a debate about the borderlines of both censorship and advertising, is going on in the Bwog comments thread for the article “Freaking Out? Free Roti?.” Someone — maybe a Spec staffer? — posted links to the new blog Spectrum, which were quietly expunged from the site. At 1:40am, a commenter wrote: “why are you deleting comments of most of the things people say about spectrum like that’s weird.” At 2:00am, site Co-Editor Anish Bramhandkar wrote: “Bwog routinely removes comments that advertise other web sites.”

And then it was ON! Bramhandkar started outing commenters’ IP addresses to reveal they were posting multiply at 2:18am. At 2:50am Bwog’s Webmaster Hans Hyttinen commented “Again, we are only removing comments that do not add to the discussion in any way, such as a comment which was, in its entirety, ’spectrum’.” So I guess we know what the comment said! Their true feelings on the subject may be revealed in the first comment in the thread — “Spectrum: MORE LIKE RECT’UM.” [sic] What a great conversation this is, on all sides! [Spec, you are not immune.]

Read the rest of this entry »

The Columbia Spectator launched its new blog Spectrum last night around 3 a.m., a launch heralded with a full-page banner ad on the cover of today’s paper. “We’re trying this blog thing again,” an all-caps headline pronounces, and trying they are! The new blog takes up the entire left side of the page, granting, as of this reading, equal visual precedence to an article, by the news editor, on the permanent appointment of a Dean of Student Affairs and an article beginning “What happened to you, Columbia? You used to be cool.”

This is bloggy, no doubt! And aggregatey! Spec’s site now grants a great deal of visual presence to a blog whose content promises to be less dry, if less newsworthy, than the daily paper itself. If the site maintains its current pace of uploading new posts — past blogging efforts, including “Spec Blogs,” the Opinion blog “Commentariat,” and the Arts blog “Spectacle” died a somewhat protracted death — it could become a go-to place for Columbia students. It’s certainly attractive! Really nice looking. This gives us pause, though: “Unlike Spec’s previous efforts, the new blog, Spectrum, will be supported by a dedicated blog team, meaning that it’ll be updated around the clock.”

And that’s kind of the problem, right? News worth reading isn’t constantly happening — the Spec, like every college daily ever, has to do a lot of stretching just to make its daily eight [or whatever] pages relevant. Minute-by-minute, what can Spec’s voice add to the discourse? Spectrum is a shot fired in Columbia mainstay Bwog’s direction, perhaps, but Spec and Bwog will end up fighting over the same stories, and Spectrum is at a disadvantage given how long Bwog’s had to establish its voice.

Well, hm! It’s not so much contributing a Spec voice to the discourse as letting the discourse change Spec, maybe! Right? It seems that opinion columnists will play a large role in the day-to-day workings of Spectrum, as will “daily editors” [a la Bwog, itself the well-defined internet outlet of monthly magazine The Blue and White] who will edit the site one day a week. Which gives them about as much power to define Spectrum’s voice as the editor-in-chief and managing editor have to define Spec’s? And both, Spec and Spectrum, are, again, equally prominent on the site. Which one is the cart and which the horse?

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

…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.

Read the rest of this entry »

• 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?