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?

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.