Rumors on the interwebs, and by that we mean an anonymous tipster, says that the Yale Chapter of Beta Theta Pi was disbanded by the fraternity at last week's "General Fraternity" meeting.

Why? Besides the typical run of "keg violations," "massive debt" and other problems, it seems "recent events" might have provoked action.

What recent events, you say? I don't know -- might want to ask the New Haven chapter of the NRA.

According to our tipster, the frat adjourned just days ago. IvyGate is looking for more information, dear readers. Anonymity guaranteed. Send the goods to ivygate.guest@gmail.com. -- ANDREW NUSCA

Oh, Yale. You think your assault rifle-toting frat boys make you so special. But don't you realize 5.2% of all Greeks carry guns? (The binge-drinking kind of Greeks, not the baklava-making kind.)

So reports Jennifer Epstein in an Inside Higher Ed article, which is chock-full of all sorts of troubling anecdotes. For instance, at Alpha Gamma Rho members at Oregon State University "told police they were frustrated that transients entered the house without permission and at least two told police they had shot at transients with BB guns." Maybe if they left less porn and pizza and booze lying around, the transients would be less likely to stop by?

The weirdest story, though, is from Dartmouth and dates all the way back to the pre-IvyGate Stone Age of 2005. Apparently a Michael Volodarsky, Class of '08, decided one Super Bowl Sunday to explore the roof of the Zeta Phi house on a "smoke break." Up there he found a loaded BB gun, and with nothing much better to do, decided to take a pot shot at an Epsilon Kappa Theta... er, at a garbage dumpster. The Kappa Theta sister just got in the way. Michael is still at Dartmouth--and a proud member of the Bones Gates Bones Gate, a.k.a. Delta Tau Delta.

IvyGate's advice: Stay away from Bone Gate parties--you never can know if cries of "Shotgun!" precede free-flowing beer or falling plaster.

--BETH MILTON

The Yale Daily News reports that David Light '09 was arrested Monday by Yale University Police and suspended after police followed up on a witness report that last Friday Light had fired a handgun into the ceiling of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity where he was living. Shooting up the ceiling of you fraternity is bad; shooting up the ceiling with the least powerful weapon in your arsenal of shotguns and assault rifles is worse.

When police arrived on the third floor of the fraternity they found a treasure trove of firepower including, but not limited to: an AR-15 assault rifle, a .50-caliber rifle, a Russian M-91 infantry rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, various pistols, and ammunition. In total, two assault rifles and nine other guns. Light reportedly did not have permits for any of the weapons.  After searching the fraternity during the raid police also said they found 'bomb-making materials,' an assortment of chemicals including a large bottle of mercury. Some students speculated that this might be explained by his background in the sciences.

 Described as an excellent student by his peers and as 'a perfectly normal person' by an unnamed member of his local gun range, Light was well known as a gun enthusiast and collector. His facebook profile (gone since this afternoon) describes an interest in 'pyrotechnics, blacksmithing, weaponry, surfing, firearms' and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Generic taste in music isn't the end of this story, though: more after the break.

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Long before Lord Elgin, people -- particularly male people -- have been stealing statues for the sake of stealing statues. There's something deeply satisfying about it, some kind of primitive martial attraction which goes against the grain of our sedate modern culture.

So it is not without a spirit of history and destiny that the Cornell Daily Sun reports the theft of a "six foot long, three foot high plaster of paris replica of an original statue of Sleeping Ariadne" along with its subsequent discovery in an off-campus fraternity house. Fraternities, of course, are the modern keepers of the statue-stealing flame.

According to the Sun, the statue weighs 350-pounds (too zaftig for Theseus to handle?) and is worth between $5,000 and $20,000.

A tipster has informed us that the statue was discovered in the Theta Delt house. If you know something about this, please speak up.

--HAL PARKER 

Nooooooooo!

You know that bug-eye, rollercoaster-stomach thing that happens when you go to save your term paper, only the computer's frozen and you look and look everywhere but you just know the brilliant text is gone? Well, we just found out that "This video has been removed by the user" is the blogger's equivalent.

There was a video of Zeta Psi brothers at Dartmouth lightly hazing a pledge. We were going to share it, after getting a tip this weekend. Now, we have only the pathetic image above as proof we're not making this up. Sigh.

The background: Zeta Psi was expelled as an official Dartmouth fraternity in May 2001 after an incident involving an edition of "The Zetemouth" newsletter that promised "patented date rape techniques" in a later issue. Not the most sophisticated move, especially in the shaky months following the Dartmouth murders. But no matter, Zete is back on track to be re-recognized in 2009. Unless, you know, a clip explicitly tagged "hazing" shows up on YouTube. We're assuming a friend of the chapter prevailed on the people who uploaded it to take it down.

We're actually not sure where we come down on hazing like this -- that is, a pledge being forced to dig a hole for a very long time while older brothers drop what looks like flaming debris and firecrackers from a balcony. ("Oh, plus it's raining," adds one of the girls taping the scene from their house/dorm/whatever window across the way.) On the one hand: it's kinda funny to watch -- "DIG FASTER!" the frat guys yell, and the girls narrating say you can hear the entire campus laughing. And making the kid dig and climb three flights of stairs ad infinitum is just physical labor, nothing psychologically traumatic. (A friend of ours who went to UNC reports watching fraternal twins stripped to their underwear and saran-wrapped face-to-face, and then forced to drink water -- hyponatremia alert!! -- until one of them peed on the other.)

On the other hand: it's a bunch of Dartmouth frat guys screaming at a slightly younger wannabe Dartmouth frat guy to dig a hole in their front yard. This is, in 5 minutes 4 seconds of banished YouTube, exactly why we never joined a frat.

Two anonymous Dartmouth alums write in this week with a brilliant guide to the Hanover Greek scene. Don't go to Dartmouth? Read anyway, out of respect to the men and women whom history alleges invented beer pong.

On a campus where there's not much else to do than drink, where one spends the majority of his/her time drinking is, understandably, a matter of utmost importance. Hence, the frenzy surrounding fall rush -- that magical time of year when the powers that be (juniors and seniors) spend three days deliberating over which obsequious sophomore guys and girls they will deign (or beg, depending on the social cachet of the house) to let join their respective fraternity or sorority.

Despite frequent attempts by school administrators to curtail the "vibrancy" of the Greek system, about half of all guys, and an even higher percentage of girls, join one of Dartmouth's 15 frats and nine sororities. In the interest of time (and relevance -- some of the houses technically considered "fraternities" by the college are actually minority "affinity houses," and are thus, for the most part, totally marginalized by the rest of the overwhelmingly white Greek system), here's an abridged, house-by-house guide to frat life at Dartmouth:

Fraternities

• Alpha Chi (Athletic affiliation: none): A solid enough bunch of guys who throw the occasional well-attended pig roast but mostly keep to themselves. Not a major party destination, but not a bad place to have a beer, either.
• Alpha Delta (Athletic affiliation: Rugby, soccer, squash): An absolutly filthy sty of a place, as one might expect from the frat that inspired Animal House. Pissing and projectile vomiting are standard practice in the basement (even during crowded parties), which literally doubles as an open sewer. An ecletic bunch, the house has shifted in character in recent years from rugby meatheads to scrawny hipsters who think they're cooler than they actually are, which is why Heorots and Theta Delts (see below) consistently get hotter women.
• Bones Gate (Athletic affiliation: none): A vaguely secretive house that always seems to be at odds with the administration, which is why they're usually on probation. A bit more "alternative" (read: more experimental drug use) than the mainstream houses, Bones Gate is perhaps best known for serving "Cutters" during major party weekends, a drink of dubious origin but of definitive effect (euphoric inebriation).
• Chi Gam (Athletic affiliation: Baseball, tennis, date rapists): Historically, the sleaziest house on campus. Has tried to clean up its roofies-laden reputation of late, but that hasn't stopped the brotherhood from throwing parties specifically tailored to freshman girls. A disproportionate percentage of the house hails from Long Island and New Jersey, essentially rendering Chi Gam the Meatpacking District of frat row.
• Gamma Delt (Athletic affiliation: football): Big steaky meatheads, and the sort of girls who are attracted to a bunch of guys who haven't been competitive in the Ivy League in almost a decade.
• Heorot (Athletic affiliation: hockey, skiing, crew): Fun fact #1: Heorot derives its name from a mead hall described in Old English epic Beowulf. Fun fact #2: No one in Heorot is smart enough to have ever read Beowulf. Boasting the highest percentage of athletes of any of the houses, Heorot is where intelligent discourse goes to die. It's also where most attractive freshman girls and sorority sluts go to get rummaged by large hockey defensemen from Saskatchewan. Heorot parties are perhaps best known for turning into Top 40-fueled raves at 3 a.m., which is awesome or awful, depending on whether you are one of the aforementioned females.
• Psi U (Athletic affiliation: sailing, squash, gay bashing); SAE (Athletic affiliation: none): Two seperate houses joined by one common bond: extrodinary douchebaggery. Psi U and SAE embody every abhorrent stereotype you can conjure up about an Ivy League fraternity: elitist, WASPY, rich and preppy. (UPDATE 11:53 a.m.: A Psi U alum informs us they've recently had openly gay members.)
• Sig Ep (Athletic affiliation: none): The house for those that don't want to be in a real house. Big, gay-friendly, and an all-around bunch of nice guys. Not exactly bedding the hottest girls on campus, but they're not trying to bang your girlfriend, either.
• Sigma Nu (Athletic affiliation: Dungeons and Dragons aficionados): The nerdiest house on campus, bar none. No one really knows anything about the house 'cuz no one actually goes there.
• Theta Delt (Athletic affiliation: Lacrossse, basketball, football): Conservative jocks/ex-jocks and the girls who love them (Stepford Wife hot, emotionally and intellectually vacant). Dude, bump that Van Morrison and O.A.R. a little louder, dude? For shizzle. Robert Frost was a brother, and he didn't graduate. Go figure.
• Tri Kap (Athletic affiliation: none): The only legitamately diverse house on campus (lots of Asians, increasing number of blacks). Double Asian stereotype alert: hypercompetitive about beer pong.
• Phi Delt (Athletic affiliation: none): "You don't like us...We don't care," proclaimed an old Phi Delt shirt. Amen. Phi Delt returned to campus in '03 after being derecognized for attempting to burn down Chi Gam. The vast majority of campus wishes sleeping dogs had stayed down. The cultish, socially inept brothers of Phi Delt strive to embody the "Good Old Boy" Dartmouth mentality -- that is to say, loud, obnoxious and entirely loathsome. Phi Delts do have a loyal coterie of groupies from the dregs of near-by sororities, though you'd be hard-pressed to find an attractive (even for Dartmouth) one in the bunch. Memo to anyone forced to suffer the terrible fate of attending a Phi Delt party: they piss in their punch.

Tomorrow: Sororities.