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.

Yale’s cruelest and least copy-edited “publication,” Rumpus, just dropped its trademark issue: the much-heralded and uber-nepotistic Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful. And inexplicably, there are 52 people on it. (Oh, and the cover mistakenly advertises 49, see below.) The rarely published and never fact-checked gossip rag also alludes to the exploits of a certain promiscuous “Cock Goblin,” public masturbation in Zeta, and more “truths they couldn’t prove.” Hot off the presses!

But don’t kid yourselves, you tasteless pamphleteers; we’re here for 50 Most. Best ways to get in? Know/hookup with Rumpus staff, make a public fool of oneself, (check, check) be a twin… or be beautiful, too, we guess. IvyGate’s got the list, and the balls to fact-check (stay-tuned).

Stats: The hottest Residential College is Davenport (mine, baby), with nine beautiful people, and the worst represented, Ezra Stiles, with a measly two. There are 11 freshmen, 12 sophomores, 18 juniors, and 11 seniors.

The actual hotness of these snarkily profiled folks is soon TBD. For now, feast your eyes on Movement for Beauty and Justice founder and professional airhead Justine Kolata, who made the issue alongside an exploited and confused horse above. After the jump: the full 50 Most list.

(Photo courtesy of Miranda Lewis, list graciously compiled by Joe Satran)

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Hey ladies! The brawny and bawdy “Mr. Harvard Freshman Contest” has snuck up on us again. If only it hadn’t. The contest, run by Freeze College Magazine, seems something of a twisted take on the women’s lib movement of our mothers’ college days. Ivy League ladies may not peg themselves as high-priced steak for the delight of their male classmates—at least, not in this context! But for the third year in a row, Harvard guys have stepped up to put themselves on the menu.

It might make Betty Friedan roll in her grave, but women are still the object of a lot of Ivy League eyeballing. At Yale, Rumpus magazine still churns out its 50 Most Beautiful People every year. There isn’t quite the enlightened thirtieth-wave feminism that seems to flourish at Harvard. Women and men are fetishized just the same.

But things like Rumpus’s list seem more passive. These Harvard Mr. Americas are actively soliciting their reader’s love. Or at least their attention. Be careful, though, gents: you’re part of a long Harvard-man tradition of preening for the ladies. This either leads to the career of Keith Gessen or a more revealing sort of publicity.

The Yale Pundits, culprits of the Scroll and Key application prank earlier this year, have released the list of taps for the top secret societies late last night. The newsletter-style email for the “Yale Does It Nude” addressed to and credited to former YDN editor-in-chief Andrew Mangino cracked what will hopefully be the last swine flu joke. Ever.

By the looks of it, Key is holding onto their YDN legacy by tapping current managing editor Bharat Ayyar.  Meanwhile, Skull and Bones kept it presidential, welcoming Yale College Council president Rich Tao along with current publisher of the Yale Record, Nozlee Samadzadeh-Hadidi.

The Pundits’ announcement is hot on the heels of Rumpus’s publication of the graduating class of 2009 society members list. Regarding our mistake in framing that coverage, we hope you commenters will cheer up now that we’ve covered everything. After all, this shit’s supposed to be secret, right?

After the jump, the original email from the Pundits and a video of a slow loris getting tickled.

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Yale’s Rumpus magazine recently published the full list of secret society inductees for 2009. These future-leaders-of-the-world hopefuls join a league of will-never-really-be-leaders-of-the-world Yale alums plus George W. Bush. Meanwhile, nobody outside of New Haven gives a shit after that Joshua Jackson movie showed how whack secret societies are anyways.

The lists may or may not be correct, but Google doesn’t care. The only name we actually recognized immediately was Andrew Mangino, former Yale Daily News editor-in-chief who is now a Scroll and Key member, again. (Wonder if he applied…and too bad he’s not a Boner…) Since he was on last year’s list, this  seems confusing. Smells like journalistic integrity, nevertheless.

After the jump, the absurdly long list of tap-ees and the trailer to aforementioned Joshua Jackson movie. The list is really effing long. Do the Elis really need 32 secret societies? Do we have a little complex, Yale?

Correction: Kind commenters have let me know that Rumpus publishes the list of graduating members, so obvious that Mangino is on both. We still don’t care.

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UPDATE: The prank was actually pulled by the Pundits. More below.

Over the next few hours before Yale’s tap night, a few sorry Scroll and Key hopefuls will be finishing up their applications to join the secret society.  We’re sorry all you wannabe Keysmen. It’s a hoax. And if our well-informed hunch proves to be correct, it’s yet another Rumpus hoax.

Several anonymous tips came in to us over the past day or so calling Wolf on an obviously fake email. In short, the message said that Society of Scroll and Key would be opening up the 2010 Delegation to applications.  (!?!)

After the jump, a little bit of banter about Rumpus and the full text of the hoax email.

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It’s Thursday night, you’ve once again been sexed in by your roommate (walk-through doubles are baaad news), and you’ve got a good hour to kill. Here’s a project for you. Pour yourself a scotch and sink into the online archives of Rumpus, Yale’s inimitable tabloid, which we are completely derelict in not covering a lot more. Part trashy gossip, part genius prose, Rumpus lies at the intersection of two highways that don’t meet often enough. What they lack in substance, they make up for in complete disdain for anyone who considers substance a requirement for college journalism. Aleksey Vayner? They slammed him first, in like 2002. Dr. Susan Block? Same. We’re pretty sure it’s run by a group of self-absorbed fuck-ups, but what great publication isn’t? Rumpus’s primary flaw is that it doesn’t publish often enough.

With that preamble, we feel comfortable piggybacking on their proudest (only?) tradition: Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful People [PDF], the 2007 edition of which is out now. Every year, Rumpus turns its already astonishing superficiality up a notch and dolls up a few dozen passable-to-smoking students for the noblest of purposes: to stoke Yale’s collective fantasy furnace. 

But last Friday, on the eve of our journey, while compiling our initial draft on this, we found ourselves in an unprecedented schism — at each other’s throats over blonde vs. brunette, decolletege vs. prim, bulging obliques vs lattimus dorsi. With intra-IvyGate strife threatening to rend the blog in twain, we tabled discussion. No hot-or-not civil war would divide and conquer us. Besides, as every Facebook airbrusher knows, the camera lies. We investigated, and these people are not worth the infighting. So we’re calling this issue of Rumpus out for the Photoshopped fiction that it is: it’s time to fact-check Yale’s alleged 50 Most Beautiful People.

Upon inspecting their Facebook photo records, the women acquitted themselves quite well. But to paraphrase Derek, the male models are really, really, ridiculously … ridiculous-looking. Rumpus has a cute tradition of always referring to Yale’s paper as the Yale Daily “News,” even abbreviating it YD”N.” Well, we’re starting our own little tradition here. After the jump, enjoy our fact-checking of Yale’s M”B”P …

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In the student government universe — a realm that is equal parts absurd, amusing, and unflinchingly self-serious — Yale College Council has always served as the Platonic ideal. This year’s race has already perfected the form.

Sam Heller, Yale ‘08 and former editor of campus tabloid Rumpus, submitted the following candidacy statement for Pierson residential college council: 

“What is the YCC?  I don’t really know, but I plan on finding out – pronto.  It’ll be an exciting adventure for all of us, and we’ll really grow as people.

“With this statement of hope and fabulous dreams, I hereby announce my candidacy for Pierson YCC representative.  I hope all of you will get up out of your chairs and put your hands together, ’cause when I say “Sam”, you say “Heller”!  

“Sam!

“Heller!

“Sam!

“Heller!

“With your help, I can make this the rock ‘n rollinest year evar! Hooray!”

Council rep Steve Engler, ‘07, doing a spot-on angry dean impression, responded:

“Sam- You know I can’t accept that. Write a legitimate statement and then I can enter you.”

The rest of the conversation, in which Heller cc’ed the Rumpus discussion list, is inappropriate for a family blog. So we included it after the jump. Short story: Heller is back on the ballot. Score one for Dadaist, faux-anti-establishment student council campaigns.

*UPDATE 10:22 p.m.: See Heller’s campaign poster here.

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