The A.D., one of eight all-male final clubs restricted to Harvard students (but not formally recognized by the University), owes the City of Cambridge approximately $17,000 in unpaid property taxes. That may seem like a lot - and to normal plebeians it is - but not when you consider the value of the glorified fraternity's building and land, which is estimated at an astonishing $3.6 million.

As a social club the A.D. is exempt from taxes, but because the organization generates money from space it leases to Adidas - a whopping $320,000 in 2007 - it must pay taxes on that income.

Nevertheless, the entire affair seems to be somewhat of a touchy subject among A.D. members and alumni, since after The Crimson left a voicemail message for Michael Madden - a Harvard alum listed as the vice president of the A.D. - it received an angry phone call from a man identifying himself only as Madden's representative threatening to take legal action:

“You are blinded by your hatred of final clubs. The Harvard Crimson should have other news besides the tax matters of the A.D. Club,” he said. “We are going to have to go to our lawyers if this continues.”

Later, Madden called to inform The Crimson that the back taxes had been paid and that everything was fine - that it was negligence more than anything else - but somehow, in the back of our skeptical minds, we at Ivygate doubt. Does anyone know something we don't? Email us at tips@ivygateblog.com.

Barely legal hottie Emma Watson (aka Hermione Granger, aka Harry Potter's First Boner, in the movies about the kid whose penis is now available for public viewing on Broadway) toured Harvard yesterday and is now wandering the street of New Haven, according to students who spotted her this morning:

Saw her walking around with one of the head tour guides, and now she's in the admissions office having an interview. Once I muster the courage (read: creepyness), I'll take pictures from the bushes or save her from being run over by a bus or something.

In the absence of Miss Watson, Harvard has been entertaining a handful of other celebrities. An operative informs us:

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are currently at Harvard as well. Rumor has it that one of Demi's daughters is looking to apply. And also JoJo was here like two weekends ago I'm just learning. As opposed to Emma and Demi's daughter, she came just to party (allegedly) and was sighted at a couple final clubs.

Eh, who cares about Rumer or Bristol or whoeverthehell Ashton is awkwardly fathering these days. Let's obsess about Hermione Granger a little more. Since Emma's Grand College Tour appears to be heading south, we predict a Columbia appearance tomorrow (plus partying in NYC for the weekend?) and Princeton next week. Squeal!

Budding paparazzi, get your shutters ready. Next time, we want pictures.

We all know it's tough being an Ivy League conservative, what with elites and communists and feminists at every step, and tougher still to stand up tall and proud and confess your love for that be-lipsticked pitbull from the North, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (doncha know hahaha *wink* hahaha). Enter Harvard Men For Palin, who are not afraid to sing from every corner of campus, YES! I love this woman! with "A Summer Surprise," now on the YouTube.

(Harvard Men For Palin are actually the Harvard Democrats, but the concept and execution is pretty believable if you don't listen too closely -- after all, Obama Girl was real.)

Like all great power ballads, the chorus tugs at one's heartstrings:

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Apparently a diamond really is forever, because we all tried our hardest (or at least I did) to forget about Matt DiPasquale (Harvard ’09), his flaccid dong, and most of all his porno mag "Diamond," but it just isn’t going away.  The Harvard Voice recently published a series of candid interviews with DiPasquale and his never-actually-topless-vixen Fiona.

It turns out that DiPasquale had originally gazed toward the future of Harvard porn and imagined his baby to be bigger, grander, and…featuring a nekkid Teaching Fellow.

Choice quotes from the interviews, after the jump.

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• Princeton: "I Could Be McCain's Econ 101 Teacher"
• Princeton: COMBO shows that many Princeton students aren't sure whether their families were rich or poor, methinks their personal statements revealed otherwise
  
• Dartmouth: The most depressing Career Fair ever
• Harvard:  Blindly follows Columbia down the "now that Obama mentions it" ROTC policy reform path
• Harvard:  Frosh get famous on the internet, nothing to do with anything, they're not really famous, guys, they're just running for UC
• Yale: Yale "might have climaxed when it comes to your sexual health"

Can three men really put the economy back together? Of course not. But to a large degree, it's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner who are engineering our response to the Market Meltdown™.

But what do we know about these men? Can we find out anything about them from the various newspaper profiles they've appeared in this week?

Um, yeah. We can find out a lot about them. But I'm only going to note their college affiliations: Paulson is Dartmouth 68' and Harvard business '70. Bernanke is Harvard '75 and MIT '79 (econ PhD). Geithner is Dartmouth '83.

I know what you're thinking: "But Harvard's only a lesser Ivy." Not to worry; McCain is pitching in.

In case you haven't been reading the newspaper or watching television, the startled-looking bald man in the above picture is Paulson.

What would you do if one day you were walking along Harvard Yard and suddenly came upon THE MEMBER'S MANUAL OF THE OWL CLUB FOR MEN??!! (For those of you who don't know, the Owl Club is one of eight final clubs at Harvard, boasting exclusive all-male membership, vast alumni connections, and a constant bevy of barely-dressed freshman waiting outside its doors on Saturday night.)

Well, if you were Garrett Dash Nelson, Harvard '09, you'd publish this gem on your blog "Legion," a blog fully equipped with snarky commentary and refreshingly witty insight about everything from politics to Harvard life. Like so:

The opening page to the manual is an appropriately button-up affair, but perhaps a bit too austere. For example, this owl is hocking potato chips and having a fucking awesome time doing it. This owl is peacing out with Abe Lincoln (!) and is also “wise to the monumental mischief of the Terror Twins.” By contrast, the Owl Club’s owl appears to have been “backed up” back up there for well over a century, standing on its anthropomorphic legs and stuffing its wings up its butt. And thus we have stumbled on our first ethnographic discovery: Owl men never poop.

Nelson and his fellow bloggers Jon-Mark Overvold and Maryellen McGowan take the most amusing selections from the Manual and proceed to tear it apart, all in good humor. In response to one rule listed in the Manual, "Alcohol and tobacco are the only drugs allowed on the premises. If any other drug is brought onto the premises, all members involved will be expelled and their names purged from the records," Legion writes:

That’s right PURGED FROM THE RECORDS. And what’s worse is, if you then break the mirror you were snorting coke off of before you were PURGED FROM THE RECORDS your collars (all of them) will refuse to pop for a period of seven years. Shackled to permanently flaccid neck accoutrements, exiled members then have little chance of spawning.

Highlights from the Manual analyzed and dissected by Nelson, Overvold, and McGowan along with comments about the article given exclusively to Ivygate by Nelson himself, after the Juuuump! Read the rest of this entry »

• Harvard: Comp sci kid attacks and batters cops (three times!), is subsequently arrested
• Cornell: Feel bad about yourselves Um, no idea why this showed up on the Daily Sun's front page this morning (really, it did).  This editor feels like an ass.
• Cornell: But ironically, a similar (and current) version of the same as above.
  
• Columbia: Revisiting ROTC policy causes student groups to squabble, ignore bigger issue at hand

Having finally torn our eyes from Matt DiPasquale's hirsute body long enough to actually read his magazine (or rather, having finally overcome the intense shame associated with even having the PDF open on our computer screens) we reach a whole new level of embarrassment-by-association. First, the editor is also the sole figure on the cover, a crime of vanity not even Oh So Fresh dared. Second, as fellow Harvardian Harrison Greenbaum notes,

I can only imagine Matt's sale pitch: "All Playboy and Hustler ever give you are pictures of beautiful, naked women. At Diamond, we give the readers what they really want: shameless, half-naked shots of our hairy editor. Diamond: Where vanity meets profanity.

The cover article is ten pages of DiPasquale interviewing himself. This is a technique I used once in my 4th grade diary, and even then I had the wherewithal never to let anyone read it, much less line it with explicit images and seek funding from an Ivy League university based on the quality of this work. And to add insult to injury, DiPasquale's self-interview isn't even good.

After the jump, we break it down. Sneak preview: "my spooge tasted like unripe bananas."

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We know that it’s been scientifically proven (thanks Radar!) that, except for Lena Chen, Harvard students don’t have sex. Ever. Fortunately for us, however, that sense of propriety doesn’t extend to the number one Harvard pastime: starting new and marginally useful publications. We were all a little scared of H-Bomb, which at least tried to be artistic in its display of bookish nerds baring their pasty white flesh. But who could have prepared for Harvard’s newest sex “journalist,” who drops all of the pretense and is just straight-up porn fit for your 13 year old little brother.

Matt DiPasquale (pictured) made some waves last year when he returned from an AVN Adult Industry Expo with the humble dream of creating Diamond, a porn magazine that Harvard could finally be proud of. And then he had the balls to speak about it at a conference on feminism!

Seven months later, the first issue of Diamond is here, and it’s...interesting. (The Crimson on Diamond's launch) It looks like it was designed using only Microsoft Paint and ClipArt, but that’s not the worst part!  The editorial content is mostly a a look ahead at some of Summer 2008’s potential biggest blockbusters (This Dark Knight flick looks like it might be pretty good!) but that’s not the worst part, either!

In spite of sending several creepy emails over open lists looking for “sexy models” to pose for him, it looks like Matt could only find two volunteers for the first issue. One of them is himself. The other is a beautiful young woman. Only one of them gets naked. (Are you worried yet?)

After the jump: some very nauseating, very NSFW pages from the first issue of Diamond. Be forewarned: there is an excessive amount of body hair, and one flaccid dong, billowing in the wind in a public park in Cambridge.

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