There was something about Rumpus’ recently released 50 Most Beautiful list that seemed a little off. No, not the typos, falsifications, or numbers accidentally written in Arabic (seriously). We couldn’t quite put our finger on it. Something about the gradient: white after white after white. Maybe their printers ran out of black ink? If only…

Apparently, in the gossip rag’s esteemed opinion, a disproportionate number of Yale’s pretty people are, well, of the Caucasian variety. We’ll let the ‘50 most’ numbers speak for themselves.

For comparison’s sake, here are the racial demographics of Yale as a whole, courtesy of Questbridge:

(FYI, 20 out of the 29 Rumpus-ites who worked on the issue are white… yup, about 68%)

So, using the power of math, our crack quants at IvyGate HQ have calculated that Rumpus’ 50 Most Beautiful List is 21.6% whiter than Yale in general. Ouch.

So much for the post-racial America, Barry.

Our friends over at The Bullblog have delightful news for the Ivy League’s hair-gel, fake-tanner, and Axe deodorant enthusiasts (a bigger demographic than you would expect.) In the coming week, Yalies will have not one, but two opportunities to fist pump the night away with everyone’s favorite oversexed bon-vivants: the cast of MTV’s inexplicable-reality-hit, Jersey Shore. Vinny “I don’t know if she’s using that for protection” Guadagnino, the Jersey Shore’s least stereotypical resident (not saying much), will be throwing down at Elevate bar and nightclub on Thursday. Grab tickets fast; the Facebook Event indicates that over a hundred lucky Yalies will be in attendance. We presume that he will then be leading a Master’s Tea discussion on the topic of futurism and transnational identity in early 20th century Florence. The scholar muses:

Guys with the blow-outs and the fake tans, and guys that wear lip gloss and makeup, those aren’t guidos, those are retards.

A freethinking iconoclast indeed. But if you can’t make the Vinny party–or if you’re on the market for a far more ludicrous caricature–then head on over to Gotham Citi Cafe this weekend, where none other than the infamous Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi will be preaching the guidette gospel. Highlights might include:

My ideal man would be Italian, dark, muscles, juice-head, guido.

When I say I’m ready to go wild, I’m gonna go wild.

I’m fat. I’m about to eat a sausage right now. F*CK YOU ALL!!!

I am a princess at home, like, I am the f*cking princess of f*cking Poughkeepsie. Here, I am nobody, I’m like emotionally exhausted.

We’re waiting with baited breath. Will Snooki find love and existential fulfillment at Yale? Will she find a New Poughkeepsie in New Haven? Will she eat a sausage? Will she get punched in the face? Vinny has similarly high expectations for his Yale visit:

When I hear the music, I start fist-pumping, I start dancing, I’m pulling girls on stage and now… Vinny came out to play baby.

Drink your Red Bull, Yalies. And girls?:

I don’t give a f**k if you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re 45 years old. I’ll dance with ya. I think it’s hilarious.

In short, any fun-loving Eli on the market for a misrepresentative Italian-American–or an intellectual, emotional and sexual clubbing experience of epic proportions–should have one hell of a weekend. Get juiced, get tan, get ready. Well, except if tacit racism and stereotyping aren’t really your thing.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all:

Time notes that it’s unusual that any Harvard hoops star getting national attention is particularly rare. But Jeremy Lin is doubly a special case.

There’s a chance Lin might take Harvard to the NCAA tournament! (Time, wisely, makes no guarantees.) We’ll leave it to the magazine to crunch numbers, as we thought Yao Ming’s arrival on the scene meant a critical mass of Asian basketball stars was coming soon:

Fewer than 0.5% of men’s Division 1 basketball players are Asian-American. Sure, the occasional giant from China, like Yao Ming, has played in the NBA. But in the U.S., basketball stars are African Americans first, Caucasians second, and Asians … somewhere far down the line.

The magazine also lists some impressive stats — for an Ivy or a Big Ten school! Lin has 18.1 points per game on average, Harvard’s top record. Somewhat troubling, though, is the ethnic taunting that Lin has faced:

I’ve heard it at most of the Ivies if not all of them.

…Lin tells the reporter which, um, doesn’t surprise us). He seems very calm about it though — which possibly can be credited to his Christianity. (Apparently, he wants to be a pastor post-grad.) An uncynical Ivy League student?! That’s rarer than an — oh, wait.

After the jump: Jeremy Lin’s impressive dunk (or lay-up?) against Santa Clara.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave it to CNN to find a new and charming tidbit on the single piece of summer Ivy League news everyone is already sick of hearing about. Apparently, Henry Louis Gates sent a bouquet of roses to neighbor Lucia Whalen as an “expression of gratitude” for calling the police, albeit mistakenly. Perhaps Gates felt a little guilty for all the racial and political brouhaha he and the Cambridge Police stirred up. After the incident, Whalen was accused by the media of racism and received multiple threats to her personal safety. At the recent press conference she held on July 29 to clarify what had been written in the police report, she defended herself by saying that she did not assume the two men in front of Gates’ house were black before she dialed 911. Cambridge Police spokesman Frank Pasquarello lauded Whalen for her actions:

She did the right thing. I applaud her. She did what we tell people to do: call when you see something suspicious. She did her civic duty.

Obama himself felt a little remorseful about the entire stupid situation, so–as everyone on and below Earth is aware of by now–he invited Gates and his arresting officer James Crowley to a beer summit at the White House last Thursday to promote better race relations. But perhaps in another poor act of judgment, Whalen remained the only person in the controversy uninvited to the reconciliation picnic hosted by the Commander-in-Chief. After being asked about the gathering, which has the entire American beer industry questioning its legitimacy/promoting their products, Whalen’s lawyer Wendy Murphy responded that her client “doesn’t like beer anyways.”

Is a gender discrimination debate heating up to add to the racial profiling fire?

In the news conference that preempted Wipeout last night, the Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times asked President Obama about Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest and what it says about race relations in America. Here is his response (in text here):

Two minutes later, fat people were getting knocked around by giant bouncy balls. Read the rest of this entry »

And they say Boston is a racist city. Via The Globe:

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

…

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

Courtesy of the Washington City Paper’s Sexist blog (yes, that’s its name) comes this look back at life in Cambridge at the turn of last century. A New York Times article from July 1900 titled “The Cubans at Harvard” is not about the school’s new smoking club, but a large group of Cuban girls spending the summer in Boston in order to learn English. And like most articles from the time, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Blog author Amanda Hess does a good job ripping the unnamed Industrialization-era Times writer so we won’t run through the entire article. Here’s our favorite part:

The traditional beauty of the Cuban women has not been exaggerated by travelers. In the party now in Cambridge are numerous types of pure beauty; indeed most of them are above the average in looks. Among them is at least one girl with red hair, although the prevailing complexion is brunette.

It’s comforting to know that even back in 1900, the most important news on campus was, “Did you see the new hot chicks?” The article also stated that the showering of attention upon the young women was due in part to “their ignorance of our language”. That’s the same reason Valley Girls were so popular.

Sure this article is sexist and it’s slightly embarrassing for Harvard. But is it any more sexist or embarrassing than Larry Summers? You need to put these things in perspective.

Mixed Company of Yale, who’ve been busting out “exceptional a cappella since 1981,” recently released a music video called “Single Asians.” This cheeky rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” starts out with some nice references to how much Asian girls like to study for their pre-med classes and engages increasingly stereotypical imitations of Asian women.  Aside from the geisha comment and the fairly shocking subtitled final verse, here’s the best phrase:

At the restaurant
I’ll taste your sauce
And you can slurp my sushi.
I like it raw,
So bring it on,
And me love you long time.

Readers have stuffed our inbox with pretty angry reactions about the video’s racist undertones and how it actually manages to be more misogynistic than Beyonce’s original version. One would think that the recent Dartmouth racist email extravaganza might have postponed any racy releases at least until next month. But given that all of the girls singing the song appear to be Asian, it’s no big deal, right?

We tried getting in touch with Mixed Company but they’re apparently cool with letting the video speak for itself. Read the song’s lyrics in full and post reactions after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Brothers, Dartmouth ‘11, came forward as the author of the incendiary email about President Jim Yong Kim in an email (kid loves to email) sent to the student body Friday afternoon. Brothers states:

I hope you can all understand that my intent was never one of malice against the Asian community, but an extremely crass attempt at hyperbolic satire. I was initially trying to criticize what I perceived to be surprise among many at the naming of an Asian-American President-Elect, Dr. Kim.

Brothers goes on to discuss all the ways people will make a big deal out of this for weeks to come:

I have started, along with the rest of the GGMM staff, to try to find ways that the whole community can learn from this experience. We are meeting with OPAL and the Pan-Asian Council to try to find a constructive strategy moving forward.

After the jump, Brothers promises to meet with you and help you heal, but only after finals. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday morning, Generic Good Morning Message (GGMM), a popular email update at Dartmouth commented on the selection of President Jim Yong Kim. The comments were racist as hell, and consequently made a lot of people very angry.  GGMM managed to pull out just about every Asian-directed xenophobic comment in the book.  Including saying of Dr. Kim’s election:

It was a complete supplies.

Oh yeah you can totally tell from Dr. Kim’s resume and his mission trips to Uganda that he definitely a super villain. Let’s not leave out the part where everyone in Asia—except the kids from Slumdog Millionaire, they will always live in the slums if the press have any say—works in a Chinese restaurant and steals jobs from white people with hands:

Unless “Jim Yong Kim” means “I love Freedom” in Chinese, I don’t want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant.

Y’all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It’s a slippery slope we are on. I for one want Democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen.

Read the email’s full text along with an “explanation” offered by Dartmouth’s Office of Pluralism and Leadership—cough, sucks at their jobs, cough—after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »