Well, IvyGate, it’s been fun. But now it’s time for your next flavor-of-the-fortnight guest editors to take over. So open up your small, bitter hearts to Dan Haley and James Yu. Send them links, personal essays, playlists, and dinner invitations at tips@ivygateblog.com.

So long, and thanks for all the tips!

And NOW, a long, personal post about our scandalous weekend, after the jump.

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I woke up the morning after IvyGate's big bar bash relieved that I was in my own bed and apparently still wearing my underroos. So far so good, I rationalized, and that was when I heard the shower turn on.

Despite the early morning haze of one too many gin and tonics, everything came back to me. I hadn't gone home from that party alone. I had gone home with my new co-editor.

**

I don't usually take showers in unfamiliar apartments the morning after. Hell, I usually just grab my pants and run. But this time was different. It was uncanny how much we complemented each other. Robyn was from Irvine, California, a student at Barnard, and headed to med school in the next few years.  Basically, she could do a Korean accent better than I could; she was the daughter my mother was meant to have. I was raised in New Jersey, a former prep schooler and a student of literature at Harvard.  I should have been bat-mitzvahed years ago.

When we met, we finished each others sentences. We ordered the same drinks, a few too many.  Sometimes you know right away that it's not going to work out.  But sometimes you know that it will.  And so I stayed for my shower.  We were going to be the best of friends.

**

Our beautiful-yet-awkward relationship started out where most healthy, substantive relationships begin: through Facebook. After stalking the shit out of each other once we were assigned as co-editors, we decided to meet for drinks.

We were both in New York for the summer, interning in publishing (Juli), and taking summer physics classes whilst editing Columbia's bioethics journal (Robyn). Well, drinks turned into a baking fiasco, then a round of embarrassing sex story trade offs, a trip to Nick and Chris's aforementioned IvyGate party, and finally a drunken subway ride uptown, which culminated in what can only be referred to as a slumber party.

Yes, really. A slumber party. With pajamas and giggling and cookies and all that girly shit. And now we're, like, totally BFFs. Over the past few weeks we've gone to the theater, the park, a nice Italian restaurant.

So thanks, Ivy Gate, for the first completely not awkward morning after we've ever experienced (i.e. In the words of Douglas Adams, 'So long, and thanks for all the fish').  And, as an act of gratitude, the plan is basically to turn this blog into the next Sex and the Ivy.  It's a hard job. But someone's got to do it.

Send us tips, recipes, personals, or embarrassing sex stories at tips@ivygateblog.com

---
Juli Min, Harvard '09, is the singer in a funk band and also an acoustic indie duo that performs in and around New York.

Robyn Schneider, Barnard '08.5, is the author of several forgettable books for teenagers.  She hopes to attend medical school and bedazzle the shit out of her scrubs.

--ROBYN SCHNEIDER AND JULI MIN

This is the end, my only friends, the end. After two amazing weeks of laughs, tears, and yes, a few other bodily fluids, my time at IvyGate is finished. I'm glad we had this time together. Thanks to all my friends for leaving nice comments, and everyone else for displaying the intellectual rigor and insight that I've come to expect from Ivy League students who didn't go to Columbia.

If you can't imagine life without my blogging, I suggest you start visiting The Pacific East. It's me and some other jerk raging about politics and shit. Go to it now and read an awesome post on Mongolia by my co-blogger that I wanted to excerpt on IvyGate but never managed to condense properly.

Mike Bechek'll probably have a sign-off for ya too, but I'm out. Robyn Schneider and Juli Min are up next, and I can say with certainty that they will both do a better job than me.

-- ANDREW MARTIN

UPDATE: I'll just add yet another exhortation to send the next guest editors tips. Coming up with stories over the summer is a tough business, as Andrew and I have demonstrated all too well. On the bright side, the plague of guest editors is almost over, so keep your heads up. It's been real.

-- MIKE BECHEK

For a few weeks in May, my friend Greg worked as a "scavenger" at Yale, going through all the crap people leave behind in their rooms after finals and (mostly) trashing it. He was paid pretty well, and got to keep anything he found. His final haul, I believe, was a few bags of chips, a blue bicycle and a ratty Dr. Pepper t-shirt he is way too proud of.

That is all very much less impressive than this.

According to police, a West Philadelphia apartment vacated by seven Penn students last month was, upon later inspection, found to contain a human skull.

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Good morning, idle Ivy League interns! I'm Mike, Brown ’10, and Jesus Christ is it a slow news month.

Seriously -- what the hell. Please, get out of your office, do something embarrassing and send us a video. Start a damaging rumor about someone you don't like.

Anything.

Many thanks to Nina and Charleton for holding down the fort. I am excited to take the reins at this esteemed blog for the next two weeks.

I will try to post some cheap, ethics-free entertainment when I am not at my day job interning at a newspaper in New York, where I pretend I am a serious journalist.

And now I'm happy to introduce the second guest editor:

Dear IvyGate Readers,

My name is Andrew Martin and I used to go to Columbia University in the city of New York. Unfortunately, I've had to move from the trendy bar district of Morningside Heights to the utterly desolate heart of the East Village. Some nights, I wake up screaming "Senior Night at the West End!" and realize that I have nowhere to go. But that's all right. I'm an intern at a very nice old magazine with downtown offices and I work with other people who attended Ivy League colleges, or foreign colleges that are even better than Ivy League colleges. I've moved up from getting rejected by Barnard girls to getting rejected by much prettier NYU girls. And I've got my Secret Ivy Ring now, which helps me get out of scrapes with the law on land and sea. My goal is to serve you. If something's not up to par, treat me as you would the help: with a swift kick to the shins.

****************************************************

True, it's another two weeks for you guys of hit-or-miss guest editors. But please, don't be too hard on us -- you almost had this instead. (Please, do click.)

--MIKE BECHEK AND ANDREW MARTIN

Well, it's our last day of guest editing. Look out for what will surely be awesome stuff from Andrew and Mike. Keep sending them tips and remember to register to comment.

It's been real.

-NINA SHIELD AND CHARLETON LAMB

Finally someone has recognized us for our looks rather than for our intelligence! A tipster from Arizona points us to an article detailing the timeless allure of the preppy style.

It's so true. The bro uniform of Khaki shorts, a polo, and Rainbow sandals seems to never go out of fashion, no matter how much you wish it would. As a boarding school graduate, I've lived in a J. Crew catalog for quite some time so I feel like I know a lot about being preppy, but I was completely unaware of the shocking origins of New England's favorite look.

Apparently we stole it from India! A few quotes from the article:

Today, Madras is known as the epicenter of India's outsourcing industry.

Seersucker, the other great warm-weather classic, also hails from India.

Khaki, another style of Indian origin, is a classic staple in preppy clothing.

Funny that a style that symbolizes the "you wish you lived like this" lifestyle of Northeast rich kids is really just hand-me-downs from India. Still, seersucker does look really nice in the summertime.

Sidenote: This picture has to be the most diverse group of preps that has ever been assembled.

After the jump, some preppy animals just because they're so cute!

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Take off your novelty flag shirt and turn off that Toby Keith album -- it's time to take a moment to shed a tear for our destitute dollar. First Jay-Z flashes euros in a music video, and now the price of a college education in the U.S. is so low for everyone else in the world that enrollment by foreign students is expected to explode. At the same time, higher education is becoming prohibitively expensive for Americans. Sucks.

But it's not all bad! At least the influx of rich foreigners will bolster our suffering economy:

As the throngs of foreign tourists who flock to Harvard Yard and other local campuses attest, the Boston area has long been a beacon for international students...

The surge in foreign student enrollment could have a considerable positive economic effect on the region, education specialists said.

If you're wondering whether it's time to accept your fate and head to vocational school, The Atlantic just hosted a round-table discussion with a bunch of white dudes around the question, "Is higher education for everyone?" They use the phrase "stratification by education" a lot. Video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy belated fourth, kids! May your hangovers be tolerable and your illegal fireworks never explode in your face... forevermore.

-NINA SHIELD AND CHARLETON LAMB

It's a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the '60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are "less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate": 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as "liberal activists," versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, "My generation is not so ideologically driven" and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »