Bostonist alerts us to the sad, strange saga of two Harvard Crimsoners who decide to go on an expedition to that far-flung land of the Houyhnhnms Tufts Jumbos. Turns out, the party scene at Tufts on Valentine’s Day (huh?!) is no better than Harvard’s. Okay! Did the Crimson put two investigative reporters on the case, or were these two exciting, worldly people (who for some reason took a “$15 cab ride,” all right, Harvard, to a place that commenters note is easily accessible by T) just going to Tufts anyway? They may as well have written their article before they left Cambridge for the night; count the cliches in this excerpt alone!

Three girls pirouetted violently on the dance floor while a frazzled frat brother nursed a paper cup. A collection of listless sorority girls loitered in the hallway, coats on as if about to leave. We sauntered past lots of rooms, some with people in them, none with anyone even close to making out. Oddly it reminded us of Revenge of the Nerds.

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Gawker points us to a 2001 Crimson profile of America’s next top conservative pundit, and erstwhile Harvard student, Ross Douthat. In the dwindling of Kristol’s limelight and Glenn Beck moving to some off-the-grid commune with his followers (a boy can dream!), Douthat is one of the more influential conservative pundits, if only for the rare penumbra of sanity — if, you know, prickishness — that comes from his columns. “Move Over Limbaugh,” says the Crimson, but Douthat’s really more like the kid in your Econ lecture who won’t shut up about Ayn Rand. Still annoying, but more human. Sort of. Also, he’s just striking a pose of conservatism so he can be different, which is also like current college students we know!

Douthat has always stood apart from the crowd. As the sole Republican in a “staunch, hardline-Democrat family”, [sic] he formed his conservative worldview from an early age as “a way of rebelling against my parents”. [...] “I am most proud of the fact that I have made—and kept—friends, in spite of the fact that my public persona is to disagree with everyone here.”

At least he knows that writing is all about persona, and not at all about knowing the adjective “Democratic.” Why the Crimson ran a profile of one of their own columnists, we aren’t sure, but thankfully they were wise enough to plant the seeds of doubt in our mind as to whether or not Douthat’s position on “homosexuality” (which he apparently… opposes? Like, in general?) is informed by hard-won experience:

Indeed, his room is adorned with posters of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe – stars from Hollywood’s glamour heyday – as well as a towering tribute to Gladiator. “I think that Russell Crowe’s evocation of manhood is something all men should aspire to”

Mm-hm. It’s not just glamorous screen divas our Ross loves, though — it’s also power!

“Coming to Harvard, I now have a new sense of the power and success that is at our fingertips – I know I will be one of the 25 richest writers of the future”, [sic] he says.

Well, it’s not the future yet — we’ll know when conservative columnists write their columns from green moon cheese, but Ross, you’re well on your way! Congratulations on leveraging a Harvard degree into, um, what it is you do now.

• Brown: OMG, somehow we missed this, Ruth Simmons went to the BET Honors! No word on whether BET stars Tiny and Toya were there, or if Lee Bollinger sat behind Carrie Underwood at the People’s Choice Awards.
• Cornell: No more special financial aid for “enrollment priorities” — which, predictably and unironically, meant athletes.
• Yale: Humanities seminars overcrowded; fifteen percent of English majors to be placed in Chemistry department by lottery.
• Harvard: Hey, did you hear there was an election at Harvard — I mean, in Massachusetts? I hope Scotty plans a senior-class mixer and books a good music act for once!
• Dartmouth: School forgets it isn’t Yale or Harvard, attempts to place alumni in the Senate. The Senate in Washington.

Okay, the three of you who watch late-night network TV on the regular: Vanity Fair has released a scintillating, way-insidery take on the Conan O’Brien sturm und drang: apparently, NBC head Jeff Zucker H’86, former Crimson president, is taking revenge on former Lampoon president O’Brien, H’85:

It’s a prank that included uprooting Conan and his staff from New York to Los Angeles, spending hundreds of millions of G.E. and Universal shareholders’ dollars, all just to yank the rug out from under O’Brien. Was it really worth the effort?   Yes, when you remember that Conan started it.

Turns out, NBC never wanted Conan at all! And Crimson editors are able to turn their aggression towards outsiders, not just each other.

The post unfolds like an online-only version of Pale Fire (with Carson Daly playing the role of Zembla), as the “editor,” a Lampoon alum, cuts chunks of Ben Schwartz’s prose and asks “What about the lobster incident?” Well. The Cheerful Money bit has been done to death, but the theory maybe holds up—that this whole fracas is just one in a series of escalating pranks. Hey, remember the prank war Gob and the seal dealer had on Arrested Development? Well, it ends with middlebrow lisping on NBC at 11:35.

More theorizing after the jump.

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The Harvard Crimson shot a video record of Harvard’s first ever Primal Scream held in December last Saturday. The Christmas Hats are a nice touch. The black bars are not. Except for at the end when they had to black out half the screen. That was just lazy.

Another highlight, it appears that a porn company may or may not have been attempting to recruit. Here’s an excerpt from a flier handed out at the event:

I hereby agree to participate in and in connection with College Pussy, a series of internet videos being produced by DIGITAL PLAYGROUND.

One student was not happy:

Somebody find the producer and punch him!

No no no. Somebody find the producer and shake his hand. That shit is hilarious.

Why has the crossword puzzle disappeared from the Harvard Crimson lately? Could it be a symptom of financial woes for the august broadsheet? We asked managing editor Clifford Marks, who writes: “We did have a technical issue with our crossword service, but it’s fixed now, and they’re appearing regularly again.”

Hmm. If they’re having trouble with the crossword service, we know some people who write a pretty good acrostic!

Readers — have you noticed any other signs that the Crimson is ailing? Email our tipline if so!

If your ears are burning right now, it’s because a) you work at the Harvard Crimson and someone was just writing about you, or b) you are literally any other human being on the planet and your ears are burning anyway because the SEARING FLAMES of this BURN EMAIL are just that scorching hot.

Also, really gross!

IvyGate got an email last week from a Harvard tipster — he/she asked to go by the informer name “The Chimney” — with the text of an absolute screed that some outgoing staffers at the Crimson allegedly sent the entire business board. All the names have been redacted out (please, no guesses in the comments! srsly) … and thank John Harvard for that. Here is my tally of the sex acts, etc., mentioned within:

• hand jobs: 2 (?)
• circle jerks: 1
• group fistings: 1
• castrations (figurative!): 1
• poles up asses: 1

Oh, and there is an acrostic poem and some talk of people management skills.

Okay, before we get to the big reveal, a rule to abide: no names in the comments! That is like kind of a rule from now on!

Full email after the jump. Can print newspapers please not die, so we can keep seeing crazybombs like this? Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Crimson featured a neat little open letter from Bradley Smith, founder of the Committee for the Open Debate on the Holocaust. Yep, it is exactly what it sounds like. A group that questions the existence of the Holocaust.

Bradley Smith, the founder of the organization that placed the ad, is a known Holocaust denier who has been identified for his hiding behind the veil of free speech in America. Here’s his coolest quote:

I don’t want to spend time with adults anymore. I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled.

Really, economic times are hard—Harvard knows that—but the Crimson business board is really opening the flood gates with this one. Not only is the Harvard Hillel pretty serious about not ignoring Jewish history, but to be frank, their student body is pretty aware of the sensitivity of certain issues.

Seriously, the First Amendment is awesome, but would the Crimson might as well run a full page for the Imperial Klans of America on that campus. (Yeah, that’s the real link. I’m on some sort of list now I think. Fuck you, Harvard Crimson Business Board for making me reckon with freedom of speech!)

After the jump, pictures of kittens. Because IvyGate was not built to deal with bigot-speak. But you can see the ad in context, too.

UPDATE: Max Child, President of the Harvard Crimson, published an apology. Evidently it was some sort of crazy accident. They even gave the ad money back to Mr. Hates-the-Jews. Nice cover-up, dude.

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Turns out all that tuition money Harvard kids shell out is for naught after all. Christian Flow, Harvard ‘10, recently wrote an article for Harvard Magazine on the university’s apparent lackadaisical attitude at giving students an actual education. Based on a personal episode of academic buffoonery involving a flight back home to write a term paper in 24 hours, Flow highlights how professors at the number four douchiest college in America do everything but put their students in the time-out zone and put a hilariously inappropriate amount of effort in squeezing quality work out of their pupils.

In three years at college, I had never been slapped around like this. This was the kind of thing that happened in high school when you didn’t do your reading. Who knew that tenured professors had the time or the temperament for this species of intervention?

Expectedly, all the blame can be dumped on the Harvard Management Company. And as the college devises ways to prevent further whiny and self-entitled protests on student-life related budget cuts, it plans to reduce the number of teaching fellows hired this year, slash small seminars in favor of giant lectures, as well as phase out general examinations for certain honors concentrations.

After the jump, it turns out Ivy League professors don’t actually give a shit how you do in their class. But various forms of B usually cut down on office hour interaction.

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On Wednesday night, Jon Stewart lampooned the MBA Oath established by a group of second-year students at Harvard Business School. Earlier, the Harvard Crimson reported that as a result of the financial apocalypse, Maxwell Anderson, now an HBA graduate, had drafted a Boy Scout-esque pledge, which was then signed by hundreds of fellow graduates. A few lines:

I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.

I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.

I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.

But this little tree-house word of honor didn’t fly with many other future Kenneth Lays. In an interview with the Daily Show’s John Oliver, Bruce Kogut, a business professor at Columbia, admitted that “not a very high percentage” of his students considered taking the oath. Oliver then spoke with a group of Harvard and MIT MBA students who found the oath contradictory to what they’ve been taught to “be responsible to shareholders.” One guy commented, “I feel that ethics is a really fuzzy subject.” When asked if she feared going to jail in the future for possibly using illegal profiting tactics, one Harvard student piped up with no reservations:

It’s important to be a little bit of an asshole sometimes.

Scout’s honor, indeed. See the video after the jump.

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