It’s been almost two years since “Operation Ivy League,” the NYPD sting that found five Columbia University students selling over $10,000 in cocaine, pot, ecstasy, Adderall, and LSD to undercover cops. Tonight, one of the Columbia Five — Stephan Vincenzo, the cool one — will be on NBC’s Rock Center to speak about drugs and stuff.

As a refresher on Vincenzo’s cred, you can check out this Blue and White profile, or the Gawker writeup on “da sickest party” (sans booze) he attempted to throw his freshman year. Or, just admire his modeling shots.

Video preview of his interview below:

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So there’s that.

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Marie Lourdes Andre appeared on NBC’s “Today” show this morning for a conversation with Matt Lauer about her $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against Cornell’s SAE. Andre filed suit against the fraternity earlier this week, a little more than four months after her son, George Desdunes, was found dead following a night of “reverse-hazing.” She appeared alongside two of her attorneys, and all three made it very clear that they intended to ensure that nothing like her son’s death could ever happen at SAE-Hillcrest again.

Watch the video below:

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If NBC comedy shows are any indication, Cornell’s status as Ivy League whipping boy is pretty solidly cemented. Take last night’s 30 Rock for example: Tracy Jordan — riding high off an Oscar win for some thinly veiled Precious parody — declines to speak at Cornell’s commencement because he doesn’t do safety schools, thankyouverymuch.

Fun fact: Cornell doesn’t actually invite famous people to do its commencement speech. That honor always goes to the University president, while notable figures are relegated to the convocation — just one of many reasons why Cornell never gets anybody cool to speak at graduation. (Sorry, but Nancy Pelosi reciting her congressional report card doesn’t count.)

The bit starts around the 12-minute mark:

Every year, 14 dudes dress up in butler suits and sing for the fine men and women of Yale. Sometimes they even deign to croon for the lowly plebian masses. They call themselves the Whiffenpoofs. And, for some reason, they seem shocked when people make fun of them.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Whiffenpoofs appeared on the nationally televised Sing-Off competition on NBC. They appeared in their coat-tailed tuxes. They wore white gloves. They sang Michael Bublé. Along the way they got teased, then eliminated. (Maybe it had something to do with singing Michael Bublé?)

What they took away from the experience was that people just wanted to fixate on the Ivy League thing.

The Whiffenpoofs were invited on the show without auditioning. I think they felt confident about our ability to be on the show because the quality of Whiff groups tends to be at least decent, and because even if we were bad, we would have still had the image they were going for. As you can image, the “feel” of an Ivy League group in coattails was a lot of what they were going for, and I think that came across really strongly in the first episode’s intro.

(UPDATE: Quote per Whiffenpoofs business manager Daniel Turcza)

Sure, sure. Of course the media is going to make a big stink out of anything involving Ivy League affiliations. (Just ask Columbia.) But the Whiffenpoofs basically poured gasoline all over that fire – and in a way so as to make themselves as unlikeable as possible – during their introductory video on the Sing-Off’s season premiere.

First, musical director Stefan Weijola claimed that the Whiffenpoofs invented a cappella, which is both false and just incredibly snooty. Then, for anyone who didn’t already think the ‘Poofs got their jollies from playing out Victorian cosplay fantasies, first tenor Brennan Caldwell said this:

My favorite thing in the world is to dress up in my tux. I feel so inordinately powerful.

Humility fail.

The rest of the time, anyone who spoke was basically just repeating the same self-fellating manifesto: “Everyone is expected to be good. But people expect the Whiffenpoofs to be super fucking awesome – like, curing-cancer-and-transfiguring-gold-from-lumps-of-cheese-whizz-whilst-singing-Cole-Porter levels of awesome. Cuz, you know, YAAAALE.”

After the jump: The Whiffenpoofs perform, everyone makes fun of them

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This coming Friday marks that rare event when you break out your interest in figure skating for the first time in four years and cross your fingers that the Jamaican bobsled team will actually take home the gold. You’ll obviously be doing all of this because, as NBC has making it clear with those 5 rings in the corner of everything they air, it’s the 2010 Winter Olympics. Surprisingly, though, Ivy Leaguers may find some brethren to support.

While the wickedly helpful Ivies in China blog does not appear to be returning for the Vancouver trip, we’ve done our best to gather the stats on who, if anybody (hello, Columbia, Penn and Princeton?) the Ivies will be sending to the games.

Dartmouth wins the gold (see what we did there?) with ties to nine athletes: from biathlon competitors (Laura Spector ’10 and Sara Studebaker ’07), skiers (Tucker Murphy ’04, Patrick Biggs ’06, Ben Koons ’08, Andrew Weibrecht ’09 and Tommy Ford ’12) and ice hockey players (Gillian Apps ’06 and Cherie Piper ’06) headed to Canada –– So when they’re not fighting to for the right to binge drink, it seems that the Big Green is cultivating Olympians, which is apparently no huge surprise since

Dartmouth has sent representatives to every winter Olympics since the Games’ founding in 1924.

The Harvard Crimson took the Ivy silver with ties to five females who may potentially be going head to head against one another as the women are divided by their home countries of the U.S. (Angela Ruggiero ’04, Julie Chu ’07 and Caitlin Cahow ’08) and Canada (Jennifer Botterill ’03 and Sarah Vaillancourt ’09) to battle it out in the hockey arena.

Cornell held down the bronze with three links to athletes who will all be representing different countries. There’s one woman (Rebecca Johnston ’12) joining the Ivy ranks for Canada’s ice hockey team, one male (Douglas Murray ’03) representing Sweden in ice hockey and one male (Jamie Moriarty ’03) bobsledding for the gold, although he used to dawn the Big Red as a football player.

Yale and Brown each boast one Olympic bound alum (Natalie Babony ’06 and Becky Kellar ’97, respectively) with the Yalie rostered to play for Slovakia and the Brown grad adding to the Ivy saturation of Team Canada’s ice hockey line up.

As for Columbia, Penn and Princeton: the interwebs lack the typical bragging rights about sending any of you up to Vancouver… so we’ll just have to assume you’re hoping for better luck in 2014? Or maybe that you’ve just sent your admissions officers up there to hunt out some stellar Class of 2014 crop?