IvyGate Tip-Off: MGMT to Headline Yale Spring Fling

You heard it here first: hipioneers and Wesleyanites, electronic duo MGMT, will be headlining Yale’s Spring Fling music and booze-spectacular. The name “Missy Elliot” has also been thrown around, though with less conviction. (Last year’s big names were GirlTalk and The Decemberists.)

The news comes to us from several well-connected sources, and if we’re wrong, we’ll eat our hip, hip hats.

UPDATE: “White People… PRETTY White People” – Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful List is, well, Racist

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:

  • Caucasian: 68%
  • African American: 9%
  • Asian American: 14%
  • Hispanic: 8%
  • Native American: 1%
  • (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.

    BREAKING: Rumpus Releases Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful (Sneak Pic and Full List)

    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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    That Depends On What the Meaning of “Class Day Speaker” Is

    Hide your co-eds. Noted badass, saxophonist, and first black president, Bill Clinton, LAW ‘73, will be delivering Yale’s 2010 Class Day speech.

    His wife (also a Senator) Hillary did the honors in 2001. This year, Harvard, having settled for Christiane Amanpour, has definitively lost the fame-game.

    But after Christopher Buckley’s deliciously sassy 2009 speech, the former prez will have his work cut out for him. Maybe he’ll bring those two cute Korean journalists he rescued. Maybe he’ll inhale.

    At the very least, he’d better not fall asleep.

    RagTime: Filthy/Gorgeous Edition

    • Cornell: “I feel that an event that cost $27,000 and took 11 months to plan speaks for itself.” Um, right!
    • Dartmouth: SO IT BEGINS. (Student Council, we mean!) Life is about to get sooo much more irritating, you guys.
    • Harvard: There’s a new Egyptology professor — does this mean Indiana Jones is like real life now?
    • Princeton: Ivy Council to meet at Princeton, will accomplish a great deal, probably.
    • Yale: Student scores $666 on Jeopardy!, the real version for adults even! (Your IvyGate blogger feels a bit amateur now.)

    That’s Why I Chose… Middlebury?

    For better or for worse, we now live in a world caught in the long, twee shadow of Yale’s tunetastic musical admissions video. Reactions were many, with our personal favorite, Chris Buckley’s: “OMFG.” But after the dust settled, we all dreaded one, awful possibility. In the words of the Yale Dean of Admissions:

    I expect that there will be parodies and attempts at imitation.

    Well… damn it. Here’s MiddKid, a rap/R&B exploration of granola Middlebury culture:

    I’m flyin on the pitch as I catch the snitch
    and if you dont play Quidditch, then you’re a bitch

    Can we just blame this on Yale again?

    Aleksey Vayner to Attend Internet Fame Conference, Be Mocked

    You’re welcome, Internet. IvyGate’s oldest and greatest friend and triumph, deluded megalomaniac Aleksey Vayner, will be bringing his own special brand of hilarious douchebaggery to ROFLCON 2010, in April at MIT.

    For those who don’t remember, Vayner was the 2006 Yalie whose blustery and lie-filled video resume (“Impossible is Nothing”), fake charity, hedge-fund, and holocaust memoir took the Internet by storm after we dug up all sorts of hilarity. Good times… He threatened to sue us, leading to a highly-publicized online battle. Thanks for that, man. And since public self-promotion worked so well for you the first time, I’m sure this 4chan-style conference is a great idea, and that you’ll be taken very seriously. According to their website, ROFLCON is

    Another two days and two nights of the most epic internet culture conference ever assembled. Informed commentators suggest that this may be the most important gathering of humanity since the fall of the tower of Babel. And yes, we’re still looking to get Goatse.

    At least Goatse was up-front about where he stood. At the conference, Aleksey will be

    discussing what he’s been up to since those fateful months, the issues around privacy online and crisis management, and recounting and reflecting on the experience of being swept up in the middle of the memetic storm.

    Did somebody say “comeback”??? Aleksey, the only way you could get more IvyGate-y would be by marrying Lena Chen.

    RagTime: Man Bites Dog Edition

    • Columbia: Winter Olympics ongoing; less than a week until your IvyGate blogger gets his Parks and Recreation back.
    • Dartmouth: This is all well and good, but what does ZAC Posen think about Iran?
    • Penn: Shrug, um, we’re not sure how to feel about this. “Good”!
    • Princeton: OMG ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THAT HORRIBLE COLUMN AND INSANE HYPOTHETICALS?!?! Thank god Princeton kids are confined to Princeton where they can’t infect us.
    • Yale: Yale Law alum tapped for court seat. This could be taught in j-school as an example of a “dog-bites-man” story.

    RagTime: Ice Dancing Edition

    • Princeton: You get a Kindle! You get a Kindle! Everybody gets a Kindle!… and they won’t help you study.
    • Brown: You may get Rashid Khalidi for a lecture, Brown, but Columbia gets him every day.
    • Harvard: Famous figure skater makes her classmates feel even more inadequate.
    • Dartmouth: You guys, distribution requirements are really hard to complete!
    • Yale: “[The vegan options] take room away from other food that tastes better,” says the whiniest Yale undergraduate in the world.

    BREAKING: Yale Gets Gender-Neutral Housing for Seniors

    Yale College Council President and GoodCrushDarling Jon Wu just emailed all undergrads with some surprising and promiscuous (in the old-timey sense) news: Yale will offer next year’s seniors the option to live in Mixed Gender Suites. Not too much of a shocker, given that every other Ivy has already taken the gender-neutral plunge. Regardless, the email has been met with campus-wide celebration and student declarations of “victory” (after all, these kids camped out in the New Haven cold to rally for the program).

    And, just like the Hanover Police, the man finally caved in. Yale’s Class of 2011 will get to mingle in unisex common-rooms and blur meaningless, culture-imposed gender lines as “part of a pilot program,” which the YCC hopes to extend to the rest of the College after a year of review. But don’t worry kids, this won’t be a complete free-for-all. The new policy:

    1.  Each bedroom within a suite must be single sex. A man and a woman may not occupy a double bedroom, but they can elect to live in separate single bedrooms within a suite.

    So no hetero-roomie-sex, for now…

    2.  No student will be assigned to a mixed-gender suite against his or her will.

    …or imprisonment (?).

    3.  Mixed-gender housing groups will get no advantage or disadvantage in the housing selection process. If they are not able to select a suite that can accommodate them, they may need to break into different groups that may or may not be mixed gender.

    Plus, ostensible fairness! And finally,

    4.  Students in intimate relationships are strongly discouraged from entering into a shared suite arrangement.

    So, basically, you can’t be like this girl... for many reasons.

    The new policy found unanimous approval from the Yale Corporation (in the wake of a successful and liberating Sex Week), as well as our friends over at The Bullblog. Here at IvyGate, we’ll be reserving judgment until we see how the pilot program fares. Questions remain… Will it coax back the unwashed off-campus hordes? Will Jesse Morrell make an angry return? What will become of the fine art of sexiling? How will the trannies respond? How will Jesus respond? And has noone considered the cooties?

    This breaking news brought to you by a very tired and midterm-addled IvyGate EIC. For our past coverage of Yale’s housing sturm und drang, check out this excellent analysis from our predecessor, Adam (he lives on!).

    And, for what it’s worth, read the full, earth-shaking YCC email after the jump.

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