Ever since posing for a Halloween photo with a student dressed as a suicide bomber, Penn President Amy Gutmann has been getting star treatment from the Ivy League watchdog cottage industry. Congrats, Amy, you're famous! Here's a quick rundown:  

• The New York Post naturally takes the prize for most creative headline, "DITZY IVY PREXY H'WEEN BALL BOMBS."
• The Weekly Standard puts on a frowny face: "The images are, in fact, disturbingly familiar: Sympathizers of suicide-bombers in the Middle East routinely show solidarity with their 'freedom fighters' by dressing children up in the same type of costumes, complete with plastic dynamite and fake AK-47s."
• The Jerusalem Post is not psyched about Saadi calling himself a "freedom martyr." 
• See the Daily Pennsylvanian for an account that actually acknowledges that the costume was meant to be a joke. Saad Saadi, the student in the photo, says he regrets the photo, but not the costume. Is that one of those "I'm sorry you're offended" apologies? The piece quotes Anti-Defmation League official Barry Morrison: "No right-thinking individual ought to go around in [this] costume unless [he or she] is a suicide bomber or wants to be one."
• The DP also runs a full-length interview with Saadi: "It's the same as dressing up as anything scary."
• Gutmann also apologizes in a guest opinion column, noting that at a party featuring ax murderers, "It's hard to imagine that someone could create an actually offensive costume, but at least one of our students did."

Honestly? Unless you're going as a Katrina refugee named Terri Schiavo with a stingray sticking out of your chest that sends sexual IMs to Congressional pages ... we're not impressed.

From blue Cayuga, from hill and dell,
Far rings the story of the glory of Cornell.
From east and west the crashing echoes answ'ring call:
"Cornell victorious! The champions of all!"

Success! We asked and you delivered: Cornell tips, and lots of 'em. Without delay, here's about two dozen sketches of a gorilla chasing a banana.

Keep the tips coming, Ithacans!

Uh, make that "A Sorta Ivy Halloween" -- we have an angle here, we swear! The pics in this collection are from the Facebook account of Chris Brady, Yale '05, the grandson of former Treasury secretary Nicholas F. Brady '52. Chris is a true blueblood (FB groups include "There's a Yale Building Named After Me" and "1st Team All-FarHills Steeplechase"), and he parties accordingly. That's Michelle "Harriet the Spy" Trachtenberg at right with Lydia Hearst-Shaw (Ford model, daughter of Patty Hearst, heir to the Hearst publishing fortune, and vampiric breast enthusiast), hanging out with Chris at New York's Bungalow 8 the other night.

More pics after the jump, including one absolutely astounding shot of Michelle's tongue.

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Halloween is a fabulous opportunity to make poor decisions. Every year, same story: You start off doing something ironic -- dye your hair, dance to Wham!, get a little too carried away with your Mark Foley costume. Innocent fun. Then you look at the photos the next day and wince at how terrifyingly sincere it all looks.

Well, the unforgiving morning-after eye of Facebook has claimed its latest victim: Penn President Amy Guttman. We're sure it felt hilariously tongue-in-cheek to pose with a student dressed as a suicide bomber at her Halloween party. Apparently these guys didn't get the joke. Li'l Bo Peep Gutmann is a front-runner to be the next president of Harvard, and this is hardly the publicity she needs.

P.S. To be fair, "too soon" costumes were all the rage this year: at one Ivy party in D.C. last week, two girls showed up dressed as Darfurian refugees, alongside a dude with a bandana and scimitar calling himself a Janjaweed militiaman. They saw us wearing a blazer and asked us to be their U.N. negotiator.

P.P.S. We were scared to write about Saad Saadi '06, the student in the photo, when we saw his creepy webpage. Then we learned he's the one who started this Facebook group, so how tough can he be? (Saadi posted an apology to anyone who was offended by the costume, says the web site that found the pic; the text is after the jump.)

UPDATE 8:30 p.m.: Eric Obenzinger, the Daily Pennsylvanian's crack opinion page editor, has an interview with Saadi here.

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