In (almost) record time, one Stella Sands missed the nationwide memo. This week, she has released (in paperback) the complete, gory, exaggerated tale of the late Annie Le‘s untimely death in the form of Murder At Yale: The True Story of A Beautiful Grad Student and a Cold-Blooded Crime. Aside from crafting long-winded titles and maintaining a name that might as well be an Antiguan club resort, Sands also excels at forgetting that Yale, the Le family, and a nation of 300 million have, frankly, heard it all. See if you can detect any novelty in her blurb:

Annie Le seemed to have it all. A beautiful graduate student at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, she was also deeply in love. But just days before she was set to get married, Annie went mysteriously missing…and her fiancé started to fear the worst.

Good use of hook-words: “love,” “prestigious universities,” “mysterious.” Yet, if she’s going to exploit a tragedy on time, we suggest she arrange a rendezvous with Mavis Beacon and learn to type a lil’ bit faster. We give her a D+.

Thank you, class – that’ll be all.

Our frenemies over at Rumpus did some pretty impressive investigative work and uncovered every member of every Yale Secret Society this year, 41 in total. They then sent it to us, presumably as a peace offering. For Yalies, here’s the online exclusive, since Rumpus never puts its stuff online. For non-Yalies, marvel at phenomenal society names and a picture of this year’s Skull and Bones class. After the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Here at IvyGate, we usually tend to refrain from writing about ourselves (hell, who are we kidding… we’re Ivy-Leaguers. Self-promotion FTW). Yet, today marks a proud day in our humble blog’s scandalized history. The glass-house-dwelling stone throwers over at Yale’s drunken, debaucherous, dastardly, and delightful tabloid, Rumpus, today released a scathing IvyGate expose, gracing the last two pages of its final issue of the year.

After hard-hitting investigative journalism like “American Negro Gets Bored,” “Senior Hook Up Bingo,” Modern Love criticism, pornography, hipster-hating, lies, and half-naked pictures of its sultry, YD”P.N.”-loving Editor, how could we ask for more! Reaching our fill of typos, libel, ressentiment, social-masturbation, and “cock goblins,” we turn the page, feeling imperceptibly dirty… only to encounter this hysterical feature: “Remedial Media Awards: Yale’s Top Five Publications or, A Tribute to Alex Klein.”

The facts: Our beloved Bullblog is savaged for its hipster dilletantism, inflated sense of social importance, and journalistic frivolity, while the Yale Daily “News” receives genuine compliments and amorous overtures from the article’s “anonymous” author. And yes, there’s IvyGate, in first place! We didn’t even prepare a speech! From a publication that prints at least four times a year and that everyone reads, it’s truly an honor.

Wait a second… why is ex-editor and superstar Adam Clark Estes being lampooned for pouring too much effort into a “terrible, irrelevant blog.” (Maybe our 1,376,977 yearly readers — most of which hate us — should get in a fight with their 5,000 — most of which hate them. Then again, their middling few are supes cool Yaliens, so it would be close.)

The final page of Rumpus’ last issue of the year? Eat your heart out Pulitzer! We certainly can’t condemn our genealogical brethren at Rumpus for disorganization. There’s the five part list of “reasons why Alex Klein is brilliant.” Aw… you shouldn’t have. Oh wait, they’re insults:

• Dan and I update often and have expanded IvyGate’s readership (to ~7,000 unique visitors a day). Ouch(?)
• Supposedly, IvyGate posted the Yale secret society taps under *gasp* a pseudonym (um, the byline of our *gasp* co-editor-in-chief). Harsh, legitimate criticism, especially from the notable, obviously real author bylined in the feature: “Erectopus Superbus.”
• We totally released “wrong” Secret Society lists and noted that they had not been released yet. You caught us! A wopping one Skull and Bones difference, two Wolf’s Head differences, and zero Scroll and Key differences. So, that’s 3 out of 46… calculating… calculating… a 93.5% correspondence with the Pundits’ list.
• Hey, while we’re on the math front… Wasn’t Rumpus “50 Most Beautiful” list 21.6% whiter than Yale in general? Apparently, we were huge jerks to jokingly point that out and get picked up by “a shitty feminist blog”: Jezebel. According to “Erectopus,” 21.6% is “statistically insignificant,” while our aforementioned 6.5% divergence constitutes being totally “wrong.”
• We posted about our alumni. How douchey and braggy, totally unlike the only pseudo-maintained section of  Rumpus‘ webpage:

Although Rumpus may think the focus of their award-feature is IvyGate and its co-editor, really, the star attraction is the tabloid itself. In fifth place, with trademark self-deprecation, the Rumpus self-honors. At least they did it for the lolz.

And so did we. Rumpus and IvyGate are practically twins separated at birth. We also make typos, self-promote, slip into snark, and fuck up. After all, we’re just uppity (yes, uppity), hormone-addled muck-rakers, spreading stories of Ivy League ridiculousness in between papers, parties and trysts. So are Rumpus, and here’s their Editor-in-Chief, who just emailed us to apologize:

we do this sort of thing in remedial almost every issue (our first remedial of the year was 2 pages of why we hate Tom Kaplan, we don’t actually hate him, he didn’t mind at all). We’ll also be the first to admit that we have no credibility criticizing publications when we’re clearly the worst run organization on campus and haven’t so much as written a real article all year.

But, despite all our foibles, making unsubstantiated ad-hominem attacks behind the veil of a pseudonym… well, we’d rather post about stuff like that than do it ourselves. So we are.

All that aside, our evil twin Yale tabloiders, we stand by what we said in that personal, complimentary email we wrote you – which you mockingly reprinted, without our permission: we love you. We’re proud of our dubious award; thanks for the publicity.

<3, IvyGate

Full Rumpus’ “Remedial Media Awards” feature after the jump, plus pics:

Read the rest of this entry »

LOL, ZOMG, ROFLMAO, et al! We frat-hating, irony-worshipping hipsters here at IvyGate HQ totez hate Greek Life SO much: even more than fun, hazing, and sincerity! OBVI we’re only reporting this def-insignificant news because of our wicked personal vendettaz and insecuritiez.

That said, humor us, because we have a slight inkling that quite a few normal, down-to-earth, fun-loving Cornellians are going to be sad to hear that not one, but two of their frats may soon be shut down. In the wake of our recent announcement of embattled Pike’s closure, we now have exclusive news from a source close to the situation that the Alpha-Kappa chapter of Kappa Sigma (that’s more of a mouthful than dogfood and tabasco!) will be losing its charter this year. According to our tipster,

The national organization has decided to revoke the chapter’s charter after hospitalization incidents during rush week, inappropriate pictures surfaced on Facebook, and a rogue fog machine set of a fire alarm at a pledge party.

This sort of sucks: especially since it’s not ADPhi. Jokes. In all seriousness, the besieged frats at Cornell, for all their foibles, have been on the receiving end of a disproportionate amount of administration crackdown, especially since — as a frat tipster notes — “on occasion, we do good things.”

Ithaca is cold and gloomy; frats are warm and, at their best, booze and camaraderie filled. When they do crazy things, we here at IvyGate write about them; but when they get shut down, we take no joy in Cornell’s loss. Godspeed noble bros; godspeed.

Oh good lord… So, a few months back we brought you the twisted tale of Pi Kappa Alpha at Cornell, whose rush-week boozefests left three freshmen hospitalized and the campus in uproar. Next, Cornell’s ADPhi bros bit the bullet on account of our leaked hazing regimen.

Well, as the great karmic wheel turns, IvyGate has received the exclusive final word, via a high-up on-campus source: Pike will be shut down, permanently. Apparently, the Interfraternity Council is holding out on releasing the news. According to the Cornell Daily Sun,

a public announcement on the fate of Pi Kappa Alpha is expected within the next two weeks.

But behind closed doors, the decision has been made… The hazers’ days are numbered.

And, by way of our own role in all this (also from the Sun):

Allegations of hazing at Cornell have garnered widespread media attention this year. Particularly, popular gossip blog Ivygate has prominently featured reports of the allegations, with stories being picked up by popular blogs such as Gawker and The Huffington Post.

We wash our hands of all this (after all, to us, ritual-abuse nonsense is a riot) and apparently, so does Cornell’s Associate Dean of Students Travis Apgar, who stated that:

while the Alpha Delta Phi allegations were first publically disclosed by Ivygate, they were simultaneously reported to the OFSA through hazing.cornell.edu. The Ivygate stories were not the basis of the investigation nor were they consulted as part of it. [IFC President Allen] Miller said that Ivygate was not involved in the investigation, and would not comment on the veracity of its reports.

Let’s just hope this isn’t unintentional paralipsis. As for our favorite quote? From the Associate Dean himself:

Media outlets such as Ivygate sensationalize for the reader.

Whoa, Dean Apgar, are you looking to start something? We’ll tread carefully: we know you’ve got dog-food, tabasco, dodgeballs, naked-laps, and alcohol poisoning at your disposal…

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger appears “Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide Open” in a 7,000 word cover story of the Spectator’s last Eye magazine of the academic year. “Finding Bollinger” represents a last hurrah for two former campus news editors who spent much of their tenure covering him.

(Full disclosure: One of them was my co-news editor, one is dating this site’s co-editor, and both are my friends. WINK.)

I wrote about Prezbo a couple months back, and their “magnum opus”—as it’s been called around the Spectator office—certainly puts my little bloggy bits to shame (what with, you know, actual reporting and stuff). It’s a story about the role of university president, how the job has been made and remade at Columbia, and how Bollinger has filled it.

But in an important sense, the story is as much about the way Bollinger gets covered as it is about him. This sometimes wonky take on a figure most students rarely think about except for quips on luscious locks is telling about the disparity between Bollinger’s presence in the media and in campus life. The story is written by people who care, for (mostly) people who care—and to its credit, this is exactly what it’s going for/gets that right—but it also raises the question: Who cares?

Read the rest of this entry »

Skull and Bones

• David Broockman
• Matt Zuckerman
• Paul Needham
• Kunal Lunawat
• Jesse Reising
• Kevin Wang
• Lily Blair
• Lusdymer Pichardo
• Kevin Fitzroy Beckford
• Kate Grace
• Temeica Bethel
• Nicole de Paz
• Jonathan Eng
• Mallory Baysek
• S.B.K. Weintraub

Friends and commenters, let us know if we’ve made any mistakes, and we’ll be quick to correct. We wouldn’t want to misidentify any Boners.

Yes, it’s that time of year! Through an anonymous tip, I am happy to provide–for your delectation–the 2010-2011 tap classes of two of Yale’s first-string societies: Wolf’s Head and Scroll and Key. Although we can’t vouch for 100% accuracy, we’ll put our editorial weight behind these lists based on source credibility. Not much editorial content to add: either you know these hot young future oligarchs, or you don’t. (Or, like me, you don’t go to Yale. Sorry, we’ll put up a post on Dartmouth on Thursday!) Who wants to be America’s next top secret society member? These Yalies do:

Scroll and Key

• Silia DeFilippis
• Abraar Karan
• Ka Mo Lau
• Andrew Gu
• Jackie Delligatti
• Katie Bolling
• Stephen Feigenbaum
• Cory Finley
• Elisa Gonzalez
• Grace Needlman
• Zach Rotholz
• Emma Sokoloff-Rubin
• Michael Boyce
• Jill Hagey
• Ben Stango

Wolf’s Head after the jump, and some insights from our tipster:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a busy month for our favorite “literary fraternity” ADPhi. First, they got busted for some slovenly hazing. Then, they blatantly lied about it. Next, everyone from Gawker to HuffPost was reposting the story. Well, a week or so ago the Cornell administration got involved, and the news is dire: Reports out of Cornell tell us that ADPhi has been placed on complete social probation. If found participating in fraternity sponsored social events, the bros run the risk of losing their university recognition and possibly disbarment.

Well, you’ve got to give them credit for bravery. According to an anonymous tipster, ADPhi is still having Hell Week, in secret, for their new pledges this week. No less than three of the pledges have been overheard lamenting. Thin ice, guys… thin ice.

So it’s come to this. In the wake of intense speculation and excitement over their Ivy League double-header, MGMT shocked Brown and Yale minutes ago by announcing that they will not be playing either concert, objecting to the inclusion of infamously misogynistic artists on the rosters: the Ying Yang Twins at Yale and Snoop Dogg at Brown.

The electro-flower-children have long supported feminist causes since their time at Wesleyan, and were not willing to be introduced with lyrics including, but not limited to: “Beat that p-ssy up,” “wanna control these hoes …can’t control these hoes (no, no, no),” “I hate hoes, I hate hoes, I hate hoes,” “Forreal b-tch, don’t take the sh-t wrong / Thinking I’m nice I’ll break you jawbone,” and of course, “I can’t stand b-tches and hoes / ’cause a b-tch is a b-tch and a hoe gonna hoe.”

Contacted by IvyGate, the band’s manager Andrea Neustein commented,

Andrew and Ben are extremely sorry to disappoint their fans at at Yale and Brown, and hope to return in the future. But, at this exciting and taxing time–with the new album, Congratulations, on-sale April 13–the band is under pressure to accept gigs that will reflect well upon their characters and beliefs. MGMT’s support for feminist causes is unprecedented in rock music. The band is uncomfortable with the offensive content that Snoop Dogg and The Ying Yang Twinz [sic] employ for shock-value. As Ben has told me, “music that disrespects women is not cool, or fun, or anything.”  We will release an official announcement 11pm EST, April 1.

Ms. Neustein also cited MGMT’s continued monetary support of the feminist organization NOW, and chastised Yale’s Spring Fling Committee, in particular, for such an irresponsible choice. So there you have it. It’s not time to pretend after all. Personally, we’re a little surprised they didn’t object to Major Lazer at Brown…