A student at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has been the first to die of complications of swine flu in the recent outbreak on Cornell's campus. Warren Schor '11 of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity passed away at the Cayuga Medical Center. He was 20 years old.

Although approximately 450 students have presented flu-like symptoms, a representative of the Cornell Flu Line stated in a phone interview yesterday that so far only two students had been conclusively diagnosed with H1N1. Vice President of Communications Tommy Bruce now reports that number at 520. Neighboring Ithaca College has reported at least 18 students are symptomatic.

The Cornell Sun reports that, at the behest of Gannett Health Services, the Inter-Fraternity Council had instated a weeklong moratorium on social events to help prevent the spread of the disease. But, due to a flood of flu-related visits, Gannett also has stopped scheduling routine appointments, so they may just be canceling frat parties to avoid the standard Sunday morning rush for Plan B.

After the jump, the administration's response: a lesson in hygiene.

UPDATE: Some have questioned whether it's appropriate to have jokes in the same post that acknowledges a death. No element of this post mocks the deceased or those grieving—in fact, any humor is directed at the administration and their lack of response that precluded the student's death. However, since we wrote most the post before the death, then updated it afterwards, the tone may now be off. It's our policy never to take down posts, but as a concession we've added a more somber picture and adjusted some language.

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The D’s peerless police blotter is back for spring in its usual trifoliate glory: animals, townies, and reckless intoxication.

Did you know there are BEARS in Hanover? They ate someone’s bird feeder, presumably jealous of human kindness toward animals that can’t eat us. Inexplicably, the woman “claimed that the bears had just come out of hibernation.” Are you sure? God, she must be an explainer. Worse than man hands, promise.

Elsewhere, a female Dartmouth student lost a tooth at a party “after she fell face first onto the concrete floor.” Not charged with anything because she’s of age, the young woman can only wonder why the irony-obsessed god of mishap chose to punish her: she lost the tooth at Heorot, the hockey frat. Imitation is flattery, boys.

After the jump: pizza, existential confusion, and the full blotter.

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Sigma Pi's boozy rush party last Thanksgiving ended with four freshmen at Cayuga Medical Center and the revocation of the frat's official recognition for what Cornell's associate dean for Greek affairs called an "egregious" incident. Last Tuesday, the InterFraternity Council voted to allow Sigma Pi to return to campus on January 1st for a year-long probationary period as an associate member, on the condition of a dry rush.

In a controversial move, the decision will forgo the usual restrictions on returning frats that would exclude Sigma Pi from voting in the IFC and participating in rush week. 29 brothers remain on campus and have been pushing for their official return, but not everyone is convinced that they deserve it. After their presentation before the IFC, Sigma Alpha Mu President Ross Freilich '09 asked, "Why is the IFC responsible for creating sanctions for their recognition?... They came in expecting to get recognition without a plan to move forward from last November’s event."
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Adam Solomon (Y '10), "Co-President of the Committe for Freedom," passes on to us photographic evidence of the work of a gang of debonair vigilantes. Here's the backstory.

After the jump -- more pictures!

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WE LOVE YALE SLUTS-gate rumbles on. The Zeta Psi pledge photographed holding the sign, Giovanni Christodoulou '11, chooses a unique defense:

"I never even read the sign," Christodoulou, a wide receiver and defensive back for the Yale football team, said in the interview. "They gave me the sign, and I held it up."

Of all excuses, this has to be the one we least saw coming. Rumor has it the football star is also in trouble for wearing his team jacket during the misadventure, though we find it hard to believe anything on his body is more problematic than that bandana. Then again, it would suck to have bad hair in the one picture that gets you on the cover of the school newspaper and blasted across a zillion blogs, so we understand the dilemma.

From a single sheet of 8-and-half-by-11 to a zillion column-inches of news. Yale Daily News joins the Yale Women's Center vs. Zeta Psi cagematch a day late and with no fewer than three articles: the news story, Zeta Psi's apology, and YWC's cold, hard rejection of it. And their sports headlines might have some subliminal messaging, too.

The news story offered some interesting details on the preamble to the WE LOVE YALE SLUTS photo op:

Former Women's Center Public Relations Coordinator Jessica Svendsen '09 said she found a group of men chanting "Dick! Dick! Dick!" in front of the Elm Street entrance to the Center... shortly before midnight last Tuesday.

This reminds me of Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia, who preaches phallocracy but it just ends up gay, because standing around with a bunch of dudes talking about penises tends to have that effect. In retrospect, I don't recall if the character was actually gay, or if that's just the way it reads because, you know, it's Tom Cruise. But if the Zetas were Tom Cruise in Magnolia, they probably wouldn't have published these groveling words:

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Following a frat stunt picturing twelve alleged Zeta Psis with a sign reading WE LOVE YALE SLUTS by the Yale Women's Center, the Women's Center is threatening to sue. YWC publicist Valerie Steinberg ('09) was unable to provide details regarding who they are suing, and for what crime, but she confirmed that the YWC board sent the following email to its list:

From: Yale Women's Center
Date: Jan 21, 2008 10:50 AM
Subject: This Time We Sue
To: [redacted]

Dear Yale,

The photograph below was taken during a recent Yale fraternity initiation.  This is sexual harassment.  Lawyers have been consulted, and we are taking legal action.

If you are unwilling to be enrolled in a school where woman-hating is a subject of pride, email yalewomenscenter@gmail.com now.  We will keep you informed.

"WE LOVE YALE SLUTS" Uploaded to facebook.com January 16, 2008.

Sincerely,
The Yale Women's Center Board

The email included the original photo, which we provide in high resolution after the jump. No word yet from the brothers, but since Yale's Zeta Psi happens to be presidential granddaddy Prescott Bush's alma mater (frater?), we'll just assume they have secret society influence and shadowy henchmen will be descending on the YWC to hush its noisy broads up shortly.

Interestingly, Zeta Psi is among the soon-to-be-reinstated Dartmouth frats that has Hanover's proverbial panties all in a bundle.

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Enraged estrogen came to a boil yesterday when 200 angry Dartmouth ladies took to the streets of Hanover to protest sorority Alpha Xi Delta's eviction at the hands of rowdy frat Beta Theta Pi. Following decampment in 1996 for racist, homophobic, and criminally violent behavior, the Betas' history gets complicated and all, you know, Greek to me, so here's Dartmouth correspondent Ben O'Donnell with all the tawdry deets.

As any red-blooded administration-hater at Dartmouth will tell you, nine years ago the authority figures tried to take away that which is most precious to us students: our Greek houses.  The plan was jettisoned after students and alumni brought to the administration's attention how lame ice cream socials and movie nights are, but many still harbored suspicions of an anti-Greek conspiracy.

The administration's news a few days ago took those suspicions, poisoned them, shot them repeatedly, beat them with clubs as they attempted to stagger away in escape, and threw them into the ice-covered Neva River.  The headline in The D might have read "Awesome Frat to Return to Campus," and, indeed, some may have received the news of Beta Theta Pi's impending reinstatement that way. 

Many students, however, have been tripping over their retro-'80s sneakers with the neon laces in their rush to condemn the administration's decision, and I'm not just talking about the half with the two X chromosomes and sometimes questionable interpretations of the concept of "fun."  Because, of course, there's much more to this story, which has a "permanently" derecognized jock frat moving back into the house its alumni still own and kicking out the sorority that leases the house in the process.

After the jump, the Dick and Jane version of the story, in which Dick is a network of twelve hundred well-connected and deep-pocketed ex-frat boys who passed their time at Dartmouth beating up other dudes and shouting at gays, and Jane is a beleaguered sorority widely viewed on campus as pretty OK.  

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This past weekend was Princeton Homecoming, though few people actually made it to the game. Then again, Homecoming is not about football. It's about drinking beer at tailgates and watching the KA and SAE pledges wrestle each other for a ball in a lagoon. Who cares if Yale beat the shit out of Princeton's actual football team?

Watch the homoerotic frat boys wrestle! It's like totally college.

Did you guys know that Dartmouth has lots of frats, and that these frats like to be really fratty? OK, to a certain extent this is global knowledge, but we've allowed Dartmouth's Ben O'Donnell to describe for us the touchstone of their fratty rep: the Big Green's version of pong. Try it out this weekend. Learn from our friends in the woods.

See if you can spot the SAT analogy: CEOs: Golf. Robots: Chess. Egyptians: Egyptian Ratscrew. And Dartmouth students? Pong.

Pong. It is not "beer pong" (as if there were any other kind!) It is a game, sure, and a drinking game, more specifically. But it is  so much more. It is a skill set, a spectator sport, a study break, a snack, a kingmaker, a heartbreaker, a bonding activity, an intensity reliever, an intensity furnace, a pick-up line, a date, as much obsession as fun, bet-you-can't-play-just-one experience.

To your typical non-Dartmouth Hard Lemonade/Smirnoff Ice aficionado, however, pong can seem counterintuitive, unsanitary and egregiously alcoholic. It forces the consumption of Keystone Light, which tastes like a higher-quality malted beverage distilled in the bowels of a homeless person. But to understand pong is to understand us, so here it is: The Sparknotes version of our most unofficial collegiate pastime.

After the jump: the rules in full. 

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