In the late 60's the so-called Zodiac killer wrote a series of cryptic, threatening letters to newspapers across the Bay Area. Many people suspect the letters (and murders) were the work of one Arthur Leigh Allen. Personally, I suspect steel baron, philanthropist, and all-around bad-ass Michael Scharf (Princeton '64).

Since, well, forever his ridiculous letters have been appearing in The Daily Princetonian. Consistently scabrous, unabashedly conservative, and strongly committed to Jewish causes, they are more often than not the only thing worth reading on the editorial page.

After a particularly titillating "Sexpert" column, Scharf wrote a letter accusing the two female authors of having,"debase[d] themselves and Princeton with their coarse, vulgar and embarrassingly crude article." He goes on to suggest that, "the editorial staff at the 'Prince' obviously needs therapy and an infusion of morality and sensitivity," and wonders to everyone, "Is Princeton becoming the nation's poster university for the deviant, prurient and obscene?" Uh, if only.

In another letter he laments, "the abyss into which Princeton's basketball fortunes have sunk in only three years under Coach Joe Scott '87." Recently, after a student wrote an op/ed taking issue with certain eating club policies, Scharf wrote a letter counselling him to, "stop being so sanctimonious and accusatory, sit back and have a Grey Goose on the rocks (if he is 21)."

Diversity seems to be a particular bête noire for Scharf ("Oh, how I wish the increasingly vacuous word "diversity" would disappear from the lexicon of the Admissions Office.") In response to an article which suggested LGBT students might receive preferential admission to Princeton, Scharf penned what is probably the greatest letter ever published by the Prince. I have to quote it in full:

"This diversity nonsense is truly getting out of hand. To even consider giving a preference to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students is an absurdity. If the bizarro Admission Office wants sexual diversity on top of every other type of diversity, then let's hear a cry for bestiality, necrophilia, incest, sadism, etc. so that Princeton will no longer be accused of emulating Harvard's admissions office. We can just follow the course of Sodom and ultimately self-destruct."

Fucking legendary. IvyGate salutes you, Mr. Scharf.

After the jump -- the complete letters of Scharf, including some boarding school reminiscences ("I have always been fond of saying that 'Andover made life easy for me,' and it did.")

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a slow news day here at IvyGate. And on slow news days, we like to make fun of college dailies and the hilarious ways that they cope with slow news days.

The Daily Princetonian – apparently enthralled by the sensationalism of “To Catch a Predator” – has published an expose that might be better entitled “To Catch a Pizza.”

The Prince goes into hysterical detail about the fact that students, armed with nothing more than a computer and a telephone, can order and charge food to other students’ accounts:

“Elaine Bigelow '10 was studying in her room in 1915 Hall at 10:30 on Monday night. A few hundred yards away in Cuyler Hall, a large cheese pizza from Iano's Rosticceria was delivered to a room where four sophomores scarfed it down. None of them paid for the pie; they just charged it to Bigelow.”

The Prince, which, for the record, might be the Worst Newspaper in the World, wrote this article without finding a single student who had actually been victimized by the supposed recklessness of Tiger Foods. They received permission in advance from both the people whose accounts were charged and those who charged them - the only victim in this entire escapade is the reader. I can only imagine the next article in this series: the Prince sends hookers to students’ dorm rooms – with their permission, of course – and tells us that they simply charged them to Tiger Foods. Now that would be a story.

Sighted: Beauty & the Geek star Joshua Green at Princeton University's D-Bar ("Debasement Bar," in de basement of de graduate college here, remember? B&G brought their camera crew there to recruit last year). The 5'5" Joshua wore yellow shirt unbuttoned at the neck, damp black chest hair mussed across his pallid chest. His dance-move of choice is a lateral jumping movement paired with upraised arms and pumping fists.

I cornered Joshua and demanded an impromptu photo shoot (more pictures after jump). Sadly, the CW keeps its reality slaves on a strict gag order; I failed to get any details juicier than those his stock-quote-chocked Daily Princetonian profile. Penn '06 Will Frank got some press, too, in the Daily Pennsylvanian. Where is he these days, anyway? Anybody have sightings?

But enough rumormill foreplay. Let's get down and dirty with this week's episode, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Even with every Ivy school on hair trigger for offenses against political correctness, Princeton has handily won this year's Most Ridiculous Bias Sweepstakes, thanks to January's "I So Good At Math and Science" op-ed and April's Pictionary anti-Semitism. And with the orange and black, there's always room for one more outrage. In today's Princetonian, an editor's note reads:

A letter published May 3 on this page used the word "beaners" in reference to Hispanic immigrants and comedian Carlos Mencia's frequent use of the term. While we strive to allow our readers to represent their views freely in the letters section and generally edit only for grammar, length and clarity, this letter's use of the term in question did not meet our standards for offensive language.

As a general policy, we only print coarse or offensive language that is directly relevant and necessary to the topic at hand. In this case, the term was not germane to the writer's argument about University storage and we should have asked him to reconsider this language. We sincerely regret this oversight.

Anybody else not see that bolded part coming? We were expecting the unfortunate use of "beaners" (btw: like our tipster, we actually weren't even aware that was a slur) to have come in one of those "edgy" essays on race that appear like clockwork in college periodicals. But no, the offensive language was this:

Are there no mini-storage places along U.S. Route 1? Are there no beaners (as Mencia would call them) with trucks for rent in the area? Or does the Student Agency monopoly prevent such trucks from driving anywhere near campus?

Jonathan Baker '87

Also absurd: Are we really at a point as a society where we refer to Carlos Mencia by only his last name, like "Seinfeld" or "Goethe"? And why is an alum from the Class of 1987 writing to a college newspaper to do so?

Feeling excluded from Monday's tragedy in Blacksburg, Ivy kids? Lost, adrift, don't know what to think, how to feel ... because this story doesn't somehow involve you? Well, you can breathe a big entitled sigh of relief, because the Daily Princetonian is here to tell you that Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui's sister has a connection to the school.

Well, sort of. The woman was a member of the class of '04. Somehow that makes for lead-story news at the Prince, which believes that readers need to know that "Cho wrote her senior thesis on 'ethnic enclave[s] and wage earning' among Korean immigrants in California." Tragically, the article notes, the killer's sister's former thesis advisor could not be reached for comment; what a blow to students searching for meaning. Reporter Michael Juel-Larsen did reach Cho herself on her cell phone (an earlier version of the story described her as "palpably upset"; that's some phone), but alas she declined comment. History shall never know what window her time on Prospect Street might have provided into a massacre.

Prince EIC Kavita Saini '08 emails: "The shooting at Virginia Tech was the worst in U.S. history and everyone's trying to understand as much about the gunman and his background as possible. The fact that his sister went to Princeton was one aspect of our coverage of the shooting, and considering the amount of national interest in his family, we felt that it was the role of the school's student newspaper to report what we knew about her."

Hmm ... quasi-reasonable. Maybe we're being too harsh. What's a lowly student paper to do, anyway? Send a team of reporters to Blacksburg, Va., to do real reporting?

We knew there was a reason we hadn't yet written about Jian Li, the high school senior who sued filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton for discrimination after they rejected his early application. (He claims they held his Asian ethnicity against him.) And boy are we glad we waited, since now he can probably add the Daily Princetonian as a defendant.

In yesterday's annual "joke" issue, the Prince ran, among other laugh-laugh-sigh satires, an op-ed by one "Lian Ji" titled, "Princeton University is racist against me, I mean, non-whites." "Hi Princeton! Remember me?" it starts off. "I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring bell?" Having upturned that modest divet, they keep digging for another 550 or so words:

"What is wrong with you no color people? Yellow people make the world go round. We cook greasy food, wash your clothes and let you copy our homework. Brown people are catching up, too but not before the 2008 Beijing Olympics."

WOW. I mean, wow. After the year that brought us the Dartmouth Review Native American flap and Yale Rumpus' "Me Love You Long Time" ado, it's as if someone just pushed reset. Let's see that again! There should really be an award for the student(s) who, every year, think they will be the ones to transcend racism by displaying it in its crudest form. And who, every year, make utter fools of themselves (and learn that irony isn't a defense). So kind of them not to spell it "Orympics."

If this doesn't blow up in their faces, it's by the grace of God. Princetonian Editor-in-Chief Chanakya Sethi '07 told us he was "aware there were concerns" about the piece, but hasn't heard any direct complaints yet. Then again, students are in reading week. "If there are people who are concerned, I'm concerned," he said.

The best part is, the people responsible for running it -- the outgoing board, Sethi included -- won't even have to deal with the (still hypothetical) fallout. The hate mail, the meetings with deans, the sensitivity training seminars -- all will fall squarely on the shoulders of their successors. Thanks, fellas. It's been fun. Don't let the picketers hit you in the ass on the way out.

P.S. -- The Globe's must-read Brainiac had this first.

Damn it, that's how you write a headline! The Prince has a fine obit up for R.W. "Johnny" Apple, the round and well-rounded correspondent for the New York Times who departed us this week after a career that generated an anecdote or two. Apple did his years at Princeton right: spending so much time at the daily he got kicked out of school. Twice! The Prince has links up to some pieces that we think were well worth the trouble.

Einstein Dies! [Prince]
Top Secret Research Here Plays Prominent Part In Effort to Harness H-Bomb's Power for Peace [Prince]