Now that we're officially in a recession and everyone's throwing around words like "death of the middle class," "what job market?" and "SPAM for every meal", perhaps you're having trouble keeping track of all the bad news. We're here to give you the rundown, Ivy-style. In this afternoon's installment of Recession Watch '08: Harvard is out $8 billion! Brown makes like Dartmouth and Cornell and imposes a hiring freeze! And Columbia looks to sell its private equity holdings (maybe)!
This morning, the New York Times reported that Harvard's endowment has lost $8 billion, or 22 percent of its value, in the last four months. In a letter to the deans, University President Drew Faust and Executive Vice President Edward C. Forst '82 said that the total loss in value will likely be closer to 30 percent by June, the end of the current fiscal year. Harvard's endowment is the largest in the country, and the $8 billion loss alone is larger than the endowment value of all but four other American universities (Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT). Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone has those moments where your mom gets a screen name or your high school frenemy pokes you and you think, Man, technology is the worst. Along those lines, did you know that the terrorists use social networking sites too? True story! It appears that Al Qaeda has been distributing training manuals with instructions for would-be terrorists on how to use digital platforms to accomplish their, erm, goals.
These young leaders will form a new group, the Alliance of Youth Movements, which will produce a field manual for youth empowerment. The field manual will stand in stark contrast to the Al Qaeda manual on the basics of terrorism, found by Coalition Forces in Iraq... [It] will form the cornerstone of a much larger online “hub,” where emerging youth organizations can access and share “how-to” guides and tips on using social-networking and other technologies to further their causes.
The Howcast press release doesn't provide details on what exactly in the terrorism manual requires an in-kind response, but the forum was specifically inspired by an anti-FARC Facebook group that helped organize millions of Colombians to demonstrate against the guerrilla organization. Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and MSNBC's Luke Russert are scheduled to speak. Read the rest of this entry »
America's collective crush on Obama finally consummated last night. At 11PM EST, approximately 30 seconds after the polls closed in California, the television networks called the presidential election for Obama and effete intellectual young folks came streaming out of dormitories the nation around and—
Now where was I? Oh, right. Orgiastically celebratory young people, pouring into the street at universities like Penn (and recorded by the Daily Pennsylvanian):
What is the chance that a budding young politician of undeniable talent and promise spends his junior and senior years at Columbia, and no one remembers him?
My guess is that young Barry dropped out of Occidental in '81, not to go to Columbia, but to go to New York and be a black revolutionary bohemian. We know he was a red-diaper baby (no shame in that - my father's parents were CPUSA members), and we know he was involved with an SDS splinter group at Occidental. Zombie has a very interesting timeline of his time in New York, during which it seems very probable that Obama met Bill Ayers. She also links to a completely unsubstantiated and irresponsible speculation that Obama was a roommate of Ayers and Dohrn...
So Barry wasn't the most popular kid north of 114th Street. That means he's a fraud? The proposition is so preposterous, even Volokh Conspiracy disputes it. Among Volokh's evidence: Barry's undisputed degree from Harvard Law School, where we hear they are pretty good at checking credentials. Also, no self-respecting Harvard grad would allow himself to be associated with Columbia— one of the lesser Ivies— if he didn't have to. Case closed.
The interesting part of this story isn't the No-lumbia accusation so much as the conspiracy-theorizing blogger behind it, Unqualified Reservations' "Mencius Moldbug." Not only is Mencius a fellow Ivy League transfer student (Brown '92) but he is... drumroll... an Obama supporter.
Has the world gone mad? Are Brunonians so crazed? My strangely sane correspondence with Mencius Moldbug, followed by a strangely less-sane conversation with Columbia's Office of Public Affairs, after the jump.
It's election eve, Ivy Leaguers, and we at IvyGate are hoping that you'll all go out and vote tomorrow for Obama. But until the polls open, you'll need something to do with your lives (besides eating half-off Halloween candy from the grocery store), and we humbly suggest that you check out YA For Obama. YA For Obama is a social networking site created by young adult (YA) novelist Maureen Johnson (Columbia SOA '03). It's also the website where both Judy Blume and the creator of Gossip Girl officially endorse IvyGate's favorite candidate. We sat down with Maureen Johnson to find out how she came up with the idea for a political website that targets, well, people who aren't old enough to vote (aka next year's doe-eyed frosh). Check out the interview after the jump:
Do you ever have great ideas for future businesses? Me too! But while I'm trying to settle on a name for my 2.0 erotic literature site, guys like Jordan Goldman are actually starting real companies. Goldman, Wesleyan '04, just launched Unigo, a site that's kind of like CollegeHumor without the boobs or jokes. The website, which Goldman considers more a "national grassroots movement" than a website, is essentially an online student guidebook: it contains brief staff-generated descriptions of the colleges and a growing amount of student commentary. That's right: students are logging onto this site and reviewing their colleges (and posting pictures and videos). Let's see what they're saying:
Columbia social life is what you make of it. At a glance it is incredibly lame, but if you meet the right people and can make your own fun it is a great time. The Greek life seems to be run but neonazi's as there is basically no such thing as a frat party anymore. There seems to be a war on fun at our school and I hear people complaining all the time. There are ways around it and as I said if you know the right people and put yourself out there, a good time can be had.
War? Nazis? Frat parties? Columbia exactly.
After the jump, Lamonster laments the exodus of Harvard grads into i-banking (I think this was posted before September). Read the rest of this entry »
Columbia has moved to dismiss hometown favorite anti-feminist Roy Den Hollander's class action lawsuit against the school. The University brings the snark in its filing, stating from that start that Hollander's claim "reads like a parody" and culminating in a section entitled "All of Hollander's Claims Fail Because He Does Not Allege Actionable Discrimination." Not only is Hollander more or less nuts, it seems that there's really no legal basis for his lawsuit.
For readers in need of a quick briefer, Hollander asserts that the women's studies department both "discriminates against male students and male alumni" and "violates the First Amendment establishment clause concerning religion." How? Unclear! But the motion is a nice rundown.
Firstly, Hollander insists that if Columbia is allowed to keep its feminist indoctrination program, it must create an equivalent men's studies curriculum, "a field he does not define and does not even claim exists as a coherent scholarly discipline." Furthermore, although Hollander did graduate from the Business School, he is no longer at the University, so it's tough to prove that he has any direct claim to damages:
To begin with, he is not a Columbia student and he has never taken, or attempted to take, a women’s studies course, let alone been the victim of any discriminatory conduct in such a class.
I'm a graduate of the Columbia Business School and a lawyer who is currently suing Columbia University because its Women's Studies program discriminates against male students and male alumni and violates the First Amendment establishment clause concerning religion.
The case is a class action lawsuit, and I am currently looking for Columbia students or organizations to join as plaintiffs. All expenses are being picked up by the MR Legal Fund.
I can be contacted at [redacted]@yahoo.com or (917) [redacted].
Thanks
Roy
Over on the Philolexian Society's list, they're replying to Roy with chicks-with-dicks porn. But to discuss the impressive girth of Philo's collective silicone phallus is to beg the question: MR (that's misogynspeak for "Men's Rights") Legal Fund exists? And... has money?
After Bwog helpfully suggested that Columbia students without more awesome weekend plans check out Zombiecon, I figured that my weekend plans certainly weren't more awesome than dressing up as a zombie and terrorizing the streets of Manhattan with my fellow undead. This year's theme was Wall Street, and we at IvyGate spotted a number of Columbia grads in their mournful, bloody business wear partying amongst the other zombies who traipsed through Macy's, staggered down Wall Street, and drunk-danced at Continental. If there were any recently-unemployed Whartonites hiding behind the sheepish Columbia B-Schoolers, they weren't owning up. More braaaains (and people dressed as barely-undead douchebag bankers and undead Sarah Palin) after the jump:
Congratulations, Columbia! Never again must you covet from afar Harvard's Matt DiPasquale and his low-budge porn magazine: it's only homegrown smut from now on. Editor-In-Chief Hoang Jessica Tang (C'09) introduces C-spot as "a new erotic review produced by Columbia University students."
C-spot's website looks way classier than some aforementioned attempts at Ivy erotica, but in the same vein as H-bomb or Boston University's boink: original b&w photography, a pleasantly streamlined site, and articles on the origins of the vibrator and YouPorn.com. Plus: poetry!
My nails are chipped; my cuticles, overgrown; and the paint worn...
Now that we're officially in a recession and everyone's throwing around words like "death of the middle class," "what job market?" and "SPAM for every meal", perhaps you're having trouble keeping track of all the bad news. We're here to give you the rundown, Ivy-style. In this afternoon's installment of Recession Watch '08: Harvard is out $8 billion! Brown makes like Dartmouth and Cornell and imposes a hiring freeze! And Columbia looks to sell its private equity holdings (maybe)!
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It's election eve, Ivy Leaguers, and we at IvyGate are hoping that you'll all go out and vote tomorrow 
And by "chastity oath," we mean "becoming a co-defendant in his 
After Bwog helpfully suggested that Columbia students without more awesome weekend plans check out
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