College rivalries! Always exciting for the schools involved, but never of much interest to anyone else. And that’s fine, mostly. Then, one Saturday every November, Harvard and Yale meet for their annual contest, “The Game.” At that point, we brace for one massive, collective eye roll.

Elis and Cantabs never stop talking about that damn game. Which, like we said, would be all fine and well, except they’re so fucking annoying about it. “You’re the worst!” “No, you’re the worst!” “We invented Facebook, what have you done recently?” “Nice Harvard t-shirt, losers!” “We only admitted 6 percent of applicants last year.” Good grief.

Every year — from now until whatever Harvard-and-Yale-brokered oblivion we all ultimately face — we’re going to have to face the prospect of listening to those two groups of hyper-qualified idiots that make up the Harvard-Yale fan bases rub each others noses in their Mensa-scented bullshit. Such is life. And, such being the case, IvyGate has received an estimated 503,341 emails this week with links to soooper funny videos put together by the members of said institutions, making fun of said rivals. Well, fine. We’ll watch them. Are you happy now?

After the jump: Yale video = actually pretty funny. Harvard video = awful. Read on!   Read the rest of this entry »

Dartmouth College lies at the nexus of white-bred, good-old-boy institutionalism and straight clownishness. On a single stroll from your dilapidated mansion of a frat house to the new, multi-million dollar dining hall, it is completely normal to pass ten suited econ majors, five girls in multi-colored spandex and wigs, a gorilla chasing a banana and a sorority girl in a penguin suit. Our Outing Club members dye their hair for zany freshman trip rituals each fall, only to re-color it in time for Goldman interviews.

Never has this dichotomy been as apparent as this election cycle’s Republican debate.

I first noticed preparations for the debate over the weekend, when the abundance of old white people on campus shifted from a typical Hanover level (read: so, so many) to a holy-shit-I-can’t-believe-there-are-actually-this-many-old-white-people-around proportion, in the span of just one night. Parking spots disappeared, it became impossible to get into the local coffee shop, and you couldn’t smoke a cigarette outside without getting at least ten disapproving stares. By the time Michele Bachmann’s campaign bus parked in the center of campus to the horror of every crazy old Vermont liberal in proximity, I sensed that things were about to get weird. Come Tuesday afternoon, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amidst the tumult of nationwide protests, it’s reassuring to know that we haven’t totally forgotten the unsung victims of the stagnant economy:

Bankers aren’t optimistic about [private sector] gains. Options Group’s [Michael] Karp [a headhunter] said he met last month over tea at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York with a trader who made $500,000 last year at one of the six largest U.S. banks.

The trader, a 27-year-old Ivy League graduate, complained that he has worked harder this year and will be paid less. The headhunter told him to stay put and collect his bonus.

“This is very demoralizing to people,” Karp said. “Especially young guys who have gone to college and wanted to come onto the Street, having dreams of becoming millionaires.”

Working hard. Drinking tea. Getting rebuffed by headhunters. And no longer making 500k.

Once again: What hath god wrought?

Having never been fully initiated in the ways of the Elis, we were a little bit surprised to find that the mildly notable Yale haunt called Toad’s Place — “the wretched, rail-soaked Rohynpnol assembly line we grudgingly like” — has been generating so much conversation of late. (And not just as the place Yale students wind up on Wednesday night because … fucking Toads.)

Well, since the bar has been making some noise, we felt compelled to pull together our first- (and hopefully our last-) ever Toad’s Place Round-Up. Enjoy.

Love blossoms at Toad’s
It’s true! Over the weekend, Allison Pataki — daughter of former NY governor George Pataki, and distinguished Yale alumna — married David Levy, himself a former YC lacrosse  bro. The New York Times’ Weddings section wrote-up the nuptials in its Sunday edition, describing how the couple first bonded while studying for a midterm — and how they first kissed while dancing at the dankness we call Toad’s:

Not long after the midterm exam, Ms. Pataki realized that Mr. Levy was a catch, too, and asked him to dance at a party at Toad’s Place, another New Haven bar. Then she kissed him.

We wish the couple many happy years spent as far away from the Toad’s dance floor as humanly possible. [Via YDN/NYT]

After the jump: A nascent Toad’s competitor, boy-band Hanson, and plenty of pimply grotesqueries. Don’t miss out!  Read the rest of this entry »

“Don’t ask me those questions. I’m just a banana.”

Dartmouth’s students are really flexing their mental muscles looking for new ways to articulate all the things that make Dartmouth kind of a bleak place to be sometimes. Last fall, if you remember, there was an absolutely terrifying guitar jam equating all frat brothers with date rapists. Later, there was an elaborate  monument to the school’s semi-official pastime.

Now, there’s this student-drawn comic strip – which is ostensibly a jokey take on the anxieties of looking for a job; though, in actuality, a stark portrait of how Dartmouth drives students to schizoid fever dreams with talking bananas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, Lazy! Yeah, you. College is about learning, not padding your resume, you hear?

According to Shauna Shames — former Harvard undergrad, and current Ph.D candidate and Teaching Fellow — college shouldn’t be about coasting along and getting A after undeserved A ( why not, exactly?) but rather should help students develop their thinking and writing skills. She notes that while Harvard students get a bit touchy (read: militant) about non-As, low grades are an important part of learning as an undergraduate.

As she writes in the Crimson,

If I were an undergraduate again, I would demand honest grading and more of my teachers’ time and attention to help me correct my mistakes and learn from them. A low grade is not a sign that your TF hates you or thinks you are dumb. It’s not a commentary on your worth as a human being, or your abilities. It means that you have something to learn—and don’t we all?

After learning about the true meaning of college the hard way her freshman year, Shauna pays it forward by doling out un-inflated, “fair” grades to all of her students. Though the kids “make their displeasure clear” at times, Shauna firmly believes that she is doing them a favor. She claims she’s not trying to hurt them (suuree) but, rather, trying to help them learn. She credits her TF freshman year for imparting a valuable lesson about grades, writing and learning, and she is desperately trying to pass that lesson on to all the young minds that come her way – even if that means giving out the occasional C and winning the award for ”Most Unpopular TF Ever.”

Bottom line: Learning is all well and good, Shauna, but where does ego-preservation and getting into grad school fit into this philosophy of yours?

From the Huffington Post:

“I think they make [Harvard] hard on purpose,” Banks told the massive crowd at her “Modelland” book signing in New York of her strict education. “Once you get done reading one assignment, you get another.”

At the same signing, she also claimed that Boston is “like Paris.” So thank you, everyone, for playing “Two Truths and  a Lie” this afternoon.

“Fight the Power” Friday (Part 1)

Man, oh man. If we had to single out one overarching theme of this new semester, it would have to be that everybody is pretty pissed off at one thing or another, all of the time. Maybe something’s in the water. Maybe it’s some weird psychic osmosis from the Wall Street protests. Whatever the case, people be angry. (Especially this past week or so!)

As such, on this fine Friday, we’ll be highlighting just a few of the more notable examples of Ivy League orneriness to emerge.

First up: GET OFF MY LAWN. Ha ha, just kidding! We have to admit that we sometimes have trouble talking the elderly seriously when they get all riled up. Even when, as a result, they try to beat up on police officers — which is exactly what happened in Ithaca yesterday.

You see, the Cornell Police Department, not content to be universally reviled for all the normal reasons, decided to dole out hundreds of tickets on Wednesday and Thursday for the heinous crime of jaywalking. (Seriously, there was a “jaywalking crackdown” in Ithaca this week. Dumbfounded, we are.)

Most of the perps just accepted their tickets and griped about them afterwards. But one elderly man, upon receiving a jaywalking citation, promptly lost his shit:

“When the officers tried to confront him with the citation, he starting swinging at the officers and went into a karate stance,” Zoner said. “He was creating so much of a disturbance that the officer had no choice but to arrest him for disorderly conduct.”

The unnamed man is not affiliated with Cornell, and so was referred to the Ithaca City Court.

Editor’s Note: We’ve used an image of Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino” as artwork for this article (low-hanging fruit) — but what we’re really picturing is the old dude from “Up,” before his heart grew threw sizes from kidnapping and endangering a boy scout. Either that, or Andy Rooney. 

A day in the life of student politics: Peter Scelfo (pictured right) handily won a seat as a freshman representative on Cornell’s Student Assembly this week, scoring 146 more votes than his nearest competitor. His performance is largely attributed to a strong campaign platform, namely: “Vote for me. I’m dressed like a Christmas Elf.”

Scelfo’s victory is also a win for any Cornell student desperately searching for some reason — any reason – to actually care about the S.A.; though a bitter defeat for those who would ask that student governance be taken seriously, for fuck’s sake. (That is, other members of the S.A.)

An editorial from today’s Cornell Sun.:

Scelfo’s campaign — and victory — continued a recent trend in campus elections away from the issues and toward theatrics. Flashy campaign videos, Facebook groups and, now, even costumes have become the featured aspects in successful student campaigns. Name recognition matters above all else. While this has generated more interest in student elections, it has also reduced their legitimacy.

The big mistake here — assuming they had much legitimacy to begin with — betrays the starry-eyed naivety of someone not very well acquainted with how these things go.

Note: This post originally stated that the aforementioned Cornell Sun editorial was a letter to the editor from freshman Ross Gitlin, who finished second to Scelfo in the election, and also earned a seat on the S.A. What looked very much like Gitlin’s sign off was actually just a disclosure, by way of the Sun’s staff, that his brother is Ben Gitlin, the paper’s editor-in-chief. A third brother, Adam Gitlin, is the S.A.’s executive vice president. The Gitlins, it turns out, are Cornell’s answer to the Emanuels.

Tonight was supposed to be the night. Members of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association had been primping themselves, practicing dinner-table anecdotes and running through cogent talking points for days – all for their big date with world-famous autocrat Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Then, tragedy: On Monday, the Iranian mission reneged on Ahmedinejad’s dinner offer, according to the Columbia Spectator. The cancellation was reportedly a response to the ”media firestorm” that started when CIRCA members blabbed about the event to reporters. One little leak to the press, and BAM! Invitation rescinded. Just like that!

Dreams shattered, the group’s members brushed away tears and retreated to their dorm rooms, where they buried themselves under the covers, holding their Immanuel Wallerstein plush toys in a tight, forlorn embrace.

OK, sure. We mostly expected this course of events. What we didn’t expect, though, was that those darn Iranians would opt to throw salt in the wounds of the jilted IR dorks.  Read the rest of this entry »