How will Harvard determine the guilt (or innocence) of students charged with cheating in last spring’s Intro to Congress course? A tipster writes in:

My Resident Dean told me that:

1. if you sat down and took the exam with others, discussed the exam with others, for whatever reason – RWD [Require to Withdraw] / Failure of the Course
2. If you received information while the exam was out, be it answers, notes, study guides, etc – RWD / Failure of the Course
3. If your overlap is because of shared notes, shared study guides, shared information before the exam – scratch or take no action
4. If you sent information, be it answers, notes, study guides, etc, while the exam was out – RWD

Most importantly, The board will not take the “culture of collaboration” that has existed in the course for many years when reaching it’s decision. They will leave the sanctioning of the course up to the government department

Interesting: My RD told me that students will have to prove their stories. If you say you shared notes…you must produce them. if you say you used study guides, you must produce them, if you said you sent an email, you must produce it – or else the board will think you’re lying. I reminded her that the ad board is not a court of law and do not have a burden of proof to meet. she said that in a case like this, you just have to prove your story

While their classmates are being investigated for plagiarism, The Harvard Crimson has apparently decided that now would be a good time to stop letting administrators make up quotes for themselves. The Crimson announced today that after years of allowing Harvard leadership to review and tweak any quotes from an interview, the newspaper will now enforce several previously dormant policies to make sure what happens on the record, stays on the record.

Courtesy of Romenesko, here’s a nice big block quote from Crimson President Ben Samuels’ email to the newspaper’s staff, outlining just how widespread this practice has become:

“Some of Harvard’s highest officials—including the president of the University, the provost, and the deans of the College and of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—have agreed to interviews with The Crimson only on the condition that their quotes not be printed without their approval … Even University spokespeople—employed to talk to the media—have routinely refused to have their names used in The Crimson, and Crimson reporters have agreed.”

This wasn’t just a case of a couple of words being moved around to make some Harvard big shot sound smarter either. According to The Crimson, “Sometimes the quotations are rejected outright or are rewritten to mean just the opposite of what the administrator said.”

Or, this, but imagine Larry Summers instead of Jack Nicholson (because really, who knows how long this has been going on for):

There are several reasons to doubt that Harvard’s massive plagiarism ring is as massive, or as damning, as Harvard officials suggest. It might have not have actually happened in the first place. Here’s what we know so far:

Actual evidence: Very early this morning, The Crimson updated its report to include the circumstances of the take-home, open-book exam that students currently under scrutiny took last spring. The article now indicates that, in the final hours before the exam was due, a single TF issued to a bunch of frustrated students the definition of a term that apparently was never fleshed out, or possibly even discussed, in any of the course’s materials or lectures.

This may explain how many of them employed the “same long, identical strings of words.” That doesn’t make what they did ethical, necessarily, but it weakens the theory that over a hundred students colluded to copy each others’ work.

Precedent: A handful of outlets cited Adam Wheeler’s web of deception as though the array of lies told by a mentally ill man were relevant to over a hundred people using the same language in an exam, simply because Wheeler and they attended the same university. (We’re looking at you, Bloomberg.)

A much better example is an incident that took place in 2010 at the University of Central Florida, where a business professor used statistical analysis to “prove” that 200 students had cheated on an exam. In truth, those students had studied using readily available sample questions, the same questions that the professor explicitly stated he would not use for the exam, but then did. (Which meant that he had presented someone else’s work as his own.) Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: The Crimson has updated its article to include the name of the course: “Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress.”

The Crimson reports that Harvard College is investigating an enormous plagiarism ring involving more than 100 undergraduates:

Harvard College’s disciplinary board is investigating nearly half of the more than 250 students who enrolled in one undergraduate course last spring for allegedly plagiarizing answers or inappropriately collaborating on the class’ final take-home exam.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris, who declined to name the course in question, said the magnitude of the case was “unprecedented in anyone’s living memory.”

Questions, questions, questions. Which course? Which students? Which professor? If you know, you have our email.

The Crimson, “Excited and Nervous, Class of 2016 Arrives on Campus”:

Some freshman have also arrived with a set of expectations of Harvard social life. Unitas, who caught a glimpse of the social scene during the Visitas weekend this past April, said he is not sure his impressions of Harvard’s social scene is correct.

“I’ve heard about the social life from a few Prefrosh and mostly from ‘The Social Network’,” he said. “Essentially, I’m trying to find the gray area between what students tell me and Justin Timberlake attempting to conceal the cocaine on his fingertips.”

How meta. The Social Network was, of course, filmed at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, where said freshman is from. And the cocaine scene a) takes place not at Harvard but at Stanford, and b) is based on an incident that happened at neither Harvard nor Stanford but in North Carolina, during a “kiteboarding vacation.”

Otherwise the film is totally real.

It’s that time of year again. While the Ancient Eight are preparing themselves for the quickly upcoming academic year, here at IvyGate, we’re looking for new talented contributors to join our elite ranks. And, as we’ve said before, “Experience is arbitrary.”

Seriously though, we want you! We’re looking for the next crop of newsies to break the big stories, investigate enticing leads, and cover the day-to-day foibles of the Ivy League. We’re looking for columnists to give their opinions on Ivy League sports, ethics, and whatever else you can think of (we’re open). We’re looking for design and multimedia mavens to create images, cut videos, and generally make us look as pretty as possible.

Have your work read by literally thousands of eyes every day, including some of the snarkiest most beautiful and intelligent commenters in the game. Join the entity recently referred to as a “blog” by The Huffington Post, ABC News, and many other equally impressive outfits. And look out, because there’s a website redesign coming soon that’ll knock your socks off.

If anything here appeals to you, or you have something slightly/wildly different in mind, or you have no idea what you’d want to do, hit us up at tips@ivygateblog.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Unfortunately, the collegiate sexual abuse scandals keep piling up. Wednesday, The Boston Globe reports, Stephen Embry filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against Harvard University, claiming he was repeatedly molested by a Crimson swimming coach on Harvard’s campus from 1969 to 1972. Although the abuse started when he was 12 years old, Embry first realized he was molested in 2008, after decades of repressing the memories.

According to The Boston Globe, “Embry said he was raped and sexually assaulted approximately 100 times over the course of three years, usually at the Harvard pool.” Ben Merritt, the accused Harvard swimming coach, lived near Embry’s family and would regularly drive him and several other boys to Cambridge to practice.

Embry is also charging that Harvard misled him about the statute of limitations on abuse claims when he raised his concerns with the school. Embry wrote Harvard in 2008 shortly after piecing together his abuse, The Globe reports, and described living “in a state of abject fear.” According to The Globe, in 2010, a university attorney told Embry that she had “been unable to find anyone who would support your suggestion that Harvard is legally responsible … [and] The time has long since passed for bringing a legal claim against the university.”

However, The Globe states, “Under Massachusetts law, victims of sexual abuse can file a civil claim within three years of when they realized they had been abused.” If Embry had first realized what had happened to him in 2008, and reached out immediately afterwards, he still would have been legally within his rights in 2010 to take action against Harvard.

Additionally, the suit states that Harvard failed to disclose a previous claim brought in 1996 against both the university and Ben Merritt. According to The Globe, the complaint against Harvard was dismissed, while the suit against Merritt reached a settlement. A few months after the lawsuit was filed, The Globe reports, Merritt committed suicide.

Samyr Laine, Mark Zuckerberg’s freshman year roommate at Harvard, will travel to London next month to compete in the 2012 Olympics. A member of the track and field team while at Harvard, Laine is representing Haiti in the triple jump, in which he holds Crimson records.

However, according to Bloomberg News, this means nothing, because Zuckerberg is rich and Laine can’t afford to eat. As they helpfully point out:

“Zuckerberg, 28, with an estimated worth of $16 billion, ranks 40th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Laine grabs free pizzas these days through a deal at a local restaurant, and sometimes needs help from his parents to pay his share of rent.”

The article goes on to mention how Laine can only afford a trainer who doesn’t ask to be paid. He “survives” thanks to a monthly stipend from the International Olympic Committee and money from the U.S. Athletic Trust, which is helping him and two other Ivy League Olympians. Additionally, Laine has two sponsorships: one that gives him clothing and another that gives him food.

On the other hand, Zuckerberg may now be too cool to be bothered with such trivial things as talking about his pre-billionaire status friends. As Bloomberg reports, a Facebook spokesman “declined to pass requests on to Zuckerberg seeking comment about his former roommates.”

Whatever man. We all know who was bringing more girls back to D11 Straus Hall.

The newest issue of the Claremont Review of Books—one of few respectable conservative publications in America—features a Harvard grad student’s review  (not yet online; see scan below) of Joseph Epstein’s 2011 book, Gossip. That review includes this non sequitur to end all non sequiturs, ever, of all time, unto eternity:

Here’s a piece of gossip: I once discovered a classmate’s blog in which he claimed to be a wolf mistakenly embodied in human form. In another time and place, such misconceptions would be addressed by some local combination of compassion and derision conveying the message that he was pretty clearly a human, and ought to give up his lupine aspirations. But online, he found a “community” of furries—people who also believe they were misembodied animals, or were attracted to such—who supported this conviction and welcome into their digital embrace, diminishing the constraining effect of private disapprobation, but also establishing a permanent record of his youthful delusions. It’s amusing to know that one’s classmates fancy themselves to be wolves, but does the world need to know that? And what will happen to these classmates when it finds out? The internet manages to simultaneously de-fang gossip’s norm-enforcing bit while preserving what would be be transient teeth-marks forever.  Read the rest of this entry »

Previously: The Not-So-Far-Fetched Fictitious Alumni and Attendees of the Ivy League, Part I of II

HARVARD

Harvard University’s Thurston Howell III (Gilligan’s Island), besides having the whitest name in history, is, of course, an allegory representing his brethren from Cambridge.  Trapped on an island, he’s just like every other Harvard alumnus: alone.  Harvardian isolation comes from many sources—an abnormal inflation of self, a woeful lack of social skills, or having gone so batshit crazy in Lamebridge that you lock yourself in a cabin in the woods and mail people bombs. However, Howell sticks out in his solitude by literally being isolated on an island—albeit with some commoners. (Of course, he retains the famed Harvard “work ethic” by refusing to perform physical labor.) Preferring Bearitas to Veritas, he further shows a social disconnect by sleeping with his Teddy more than his wife.

PRINCETON

Students at Princeton University have a particular and peculiar translation for their motto, Dei sub numine viget: God went to Princeton. Uhh, what?  Either Princeton’s Classics department is failing, or the school has one heck of an ego problem.  Anyways, here’s a guy (God) who claims to be all for justice, but likes to kill little boys (Exodus 11:5), is super possessive of a tree (Genesis 2:17, not unlike that other Princetonian from Harold & Kumar), and just generally doesn’t want us to have a good time.

Speaking of people with multiple personas, another Princephonian is Bruce Wayne.  A Classics major, Wayne (hopefully) knows that Princeton’s motto actually means Under God’s power she flourishes. Otherwise? Leave it to a Princeton guy to lack any superpowers, but still have the audacity to fight crime in tight clothes—and leave it to a Classics major to revive pederasty. Gotham’s defending knight?  Or weird pedophile? Probably a little of both; either way, the new film is gonna be way better than The Avengers, in addition to actually staring an Ivy League superhero. (Like, c’mon, Tony Stark went to MIT…sooo not Ivy League.)  Read the rest of this entry »