Headached and frostbitten, Harvard students are still trying to figure out what went wrong. Another year of heightened party restrictions and generally pitiful party behavior in Cambridge proves once again that even though Harvard outscored Yale in The Game, Yale still scores more in general. Harvard kids managed to screw up their own pep rally by getting too rambunctious during a Girl Talk concert. To boot, Crimeds botched the 40-year-old Crimson-YDN pigskin challenge by failing to show up to the game. They even refused to open the doors of 14 Plympton St to let the Elis in for a drink.
The Crimson Crazies can blame the Boston Police Department for cutting this year's tailgate short, but the Girl Talk incident is unforgivably the fault of the fun-starved students who organized it. (Really, putting Greg Gillis on a flimsy stage with a PA system is like putting a hungry tiger in a preschool playground.) Meanwhile, the hope that ever-tightening restrictions in Boston and Cambridge might pull the focus back to the football also turns out to be a bit bogus. From the looks of it, there are just as many police officers on the field as gridiron giants. For all the buzz and hullaballoo, this year's 125th anniversary of The Game succeeds, yet again, in stirring more nostalgia than cocktails.
Check out some pictures from the festivities along with B-list celebrity gossip after the jump.
Anonymous Yalies railed against the "invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as the Bronx" in a Monday New York Post article. Mrs. Harrison DeSilver (according to New York Magazine's Daily Intel, this is the name of an architecture firm upstate and not a well-chosen pseudonym) says:
I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx
The article contains more grousing about the Bronx as well as descriptions of the Yale Club's exclusive accommodations (beds! a gym! a place to eat! a basement dungeon!). Daily Intel's analysis of the article suggests that disgruntled club members are actually upset about sharing facilities with the UVA Club and the Dartmouth Club and not the occasional plebeian wedding. Daily Intel says:
The tabloid cries snobbery! Except they've got it all WRONG. It makes the Yale Club sound racist or something, because presumably they're not talking about all of the Yale alumni up in Riverdale. But total strangers can only usually use the club when there are weddings or other major events. They're not the ones in the swimming pool or at the gym. No, club members are annoyed by a different kind of crowd — non-Yalies who get in with reciprocal agreements from Dartmouth and UVA. Elis don't have a snobby Bronx problem, they have a perfectly understandable safety-school problem.
Are Yalies upset about sharing their facilities with Dartmouth and UVA grads? Maybe. But in the Post article they're mostly upset about "weddings being shipped down," "the practice of renting out rooms to the public," and outsiders staying overnight and using up all the space.
Last Thursday, the Yale Daily News rained insulting (and aged) statistics onto the campus's crowd of Obama supporters. The title of YDN staffer Divya Subrahmanyam's article alone could reap the scorn of anyone who's ever worked on a campaign: "Double take: Months of canvassing, 430 votes to show for it?" The article goes on to calculate the underwhelming performance of Yale for Obama workers according to a 2002 formula by Yale political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber.
Yale's Obama faction was not pleased. The flurry of disgruntled comments on the article can pretty much be summed up with phrases like "I'm overwhelmingly disappointed by Divya's article," "And your point is????," or "What a terrible, thoughtless, and irrelevant article." Others point out the YDN's hypocrisy in undermining the efforts of some when the paper celebrated the work of canvassers in Virginia the day before. But Nathan Tek '09 has a point:
just because it makes you feel bad doesn't mean the research is bad or that the article is incorrect. grow up, Dems.
None of which stopped Yale for Change, which sent out a passive-aggressive group email including the word "appalled," accusing YDN of destroying democracy and freedom as we know it, and demanding an apology:
The paper never covered our efforts on election day, only here, an article that demeans our work. It says nothing of the overall ground operation of the campaign. It denigrates civic engagement. It ran a news analysis piece without running the news. There are any number of problems that I have with the story, and I imagine the same is true for most of you. ... We asked [YDN editor] Tom [Kaplan] to issue an apology, but he refused.
So goes this now classic yet always tired battle pitting poor reporting by Ivy dailies against the soft-shelled emotions of students. Check out Yale for Change's email and some good ol' fashioned fact-checking after the jump.
According to the Yale Daily News, Lanman - who is a junior at Yale - read an story entitled "Brangelina" in People, and it "amused Lanman so much that he was compelled to write a song, and after that, direct a music video." The music video has catchy backing beats, high production values, and features copious amounts of semi-disturbing pelvic thrusts.
Is "Brangelina" better than "95 Theses"? Yalies, readers: weigh in!
Earlier this month, Maureen and I linked to a series of Yale Daily News articles devoted to "WHITE GUILT," the enigmatic message sprayed rather artlessly on Dwight Hall at Yale, and on buildings at two prep schools nearby. Given the graffiti's vagueness, it is not surprising that literally everyone that was interviewed by YDN could not understand what the vandal was trying to get at, especially since Dwight Hall, which is the Center of Public Service and Social Justice, and whose message, according to its website, is "to foster civic-minded student leaders and to promote service and activism in New Haven and around the world."
This past Friday, a person under the pseudonym of "White Guilt" emailed us claiming to be the perpetrator behind the graffiti:
From: White Guilt <whiteguilt@[redacted].com> Date: Oct 24, 2008, at 2:39 PM Subject: MAUREEN O CONNOR AND JAMES YU! To: tips@ivygateblog.com
I love you!
Thanks for the (small) love tap there on my Yale graffiti. I have another project in mind that goes beyond the scope of writing "white guilt" on a (oops...) center for civil justice. It's true that I am just a stupid bored kid, like some media types have said. Probably the dumbest thing ive done yet is getting in touch with you. However! I wasnt expecting media attention so that's encouraged me to expand the scope.
As kids who attend Ivy League schools, I'd like to know what issues you think are being ignored in discussions both inside and OUTSIDE classrooms? What are some classes YOU would like to see taught in Ivy League schools, like yale? I think this project is going to get a lot of attention if its sucessful so I want to do a lot of thinking about its intention before I go through with it. I stupidly pulled the trigger too early last night so theres gonna be some more Yale media attention and it cant happen for a while... Anyway, I'd really appreciate your input and I hope I dont regret getting in touch!
"If you havin' Church problems then don't blame God, son... I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain't one."
It's not a new joke, taking Jay-Z's "99 Problems" and using it to reference Martin Luther, but Writer-Director Alexander Dominitz, Yale '09, creates such a flawless music video from the concept that I don't effing care. For real, Yale's student run Bulldog Productions has rolled out one of the most hilarious YouTube videos that I've seen in a long time. Except for the opening sequence, "95 Theses" was shot on Yale's campus, mostly in Saybrook, Branford and Davenport Colleges. The costumes were courtesy of the Yale Theater Department. And yes, those old guys are professors.
Oh, and just in case the talent and vision it took to pull off this amazing little video aren't already making you sick with jealousy, Yale actually paid for the production, which received the Peter Schtack Fund for Filmmaking (granted by the Master and Dean of Saybrook College). So next time you're using school funding to conduct research that involves way too many hours of Excel spreadsheets and SPSS, remember that the cool kids at Yale are getting funding to make badass historically-accurate rap videos. Damn you, cool kids, damn you.
You can also check out their website for cast bios and more information: 95ThesesRap.com.
IvyGate doesn't usually cover individual student theater productions. This is mostly because we aim to report things you want to read. But when a tipster told us Yale was running a Batman musical, we were intrigued. A musical based on "The Dark Knight," set to U2 and various 80s power ballads? We couldn't resist.
"Darq Knight: The Musical" was written by Marshall Pailet and James Pollack, '09, with help from Tessa Williams, '10, and Emma Barash, '11. It ran Thursday through Saturday at the Off Broadway Theater (I'm guessing this is a Yale student venue). In an email, Pollack said the show's premise is a hypothetical collaboration between Chrisopher Nolan and Bono.
The tipster describes the plot:
The overarching plot was the same as the real Dark Knight movie set to 80s music. Of course there were many flourishes such as the characters were Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes instead of a Rachel (And Katie was dating Lord Xenu). Alfred was sexually attracted to Bruce/Batman, Bruce was a 6’7” skinny white guy, and batman was a much shorter African American guy. The three had a moment singing “With or Without You” together. And Morgan Freeman narrated the entire thing.
I hope you all understand how awesome this show must have been. After the jump, more pictures and the playbill.
Photos (above and after jump) are by Charlie Croom, '12.
8:01: It’s starting! Everyone is cheering. This is going to be a long hour.
8:02 Apparently all of the characters are going to visit Yale. Time to pile into their town cars and tell their maids to pack some argyle sweaters in their monogram luggage.
8:03: Oh, snap. Serena just claimed that “Yale is for overachieving bookworms and preppies.” Um…just Yale?
8:05: “I heard Marc Jacobs named a purse after her” –Dorota, the housekeeper, on Serena. Because we can’t all be BryanBoy.
8:08: Chuck Bass wants to bone a bunch of women’s studies majors. A girl in the lounge whoops and yells “Barnard!”
8:09: Apparently Chuck has a very different idea about the "freshman fifteen" than most of us.
Barely legal hottie Emma Watson (aka Hermione Granger, aka Harry Potter's First Boner, in the movies about the kid whose penis is now available for public viewing on Broadway) toured Harvard yesterday and is now wandering the street of New Haven, according to students who spotted her this morning:
Saw her walking around with one of the head tour guides, and now she's in the admissions office having an interview. Once I muster the courage (read: creepyness), I'll take pictures from the bushes or save her from being run over by a bus or something.
In the absence of Miss Watson, Harvard has been entertaining a handful of other celebrities. An operative informs us:
Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are currently at Harvard as well. Rumor has it that one of Demi's daughters is looking to apply. And also JoJo was here like two weekends ago I'm just learning. As opposed to Emma and Demi's daughter, she came just to party (allegedly) and was sighted at a couple final clubs.
Eh, who cares about Rumer or Bristol or whoeverthehell Ashton is awkwardly fathering these days. Let's obsess about Hermione Granger a little more. Since Emma's Grand College Tour appears to be heading south, we predict a Columbia appearance tomorrow (plus partying in NYC for the weekend?) and Princeton next week. Squeal!
Budding paparazzi, get your shutters ready. Next time, we want pictures.
Headached and frostbitten, Harvard students are still trying to figure out what went wrong. Another year of heightened party restrictions and generally pitiful party behavior in Cambridge proves once again that even though Harvard outscored Yale in The Game, Yale still scores more in general. Harvard kids managed to screw up their own pep rally by getting too rambunctious during a Girl Talk concert. To boot, Crimeds botched the 40-year-old Crimson-YDN pigskin challenge by failing to show up to the game. They even refused to open the doors of 14 Plympton St to let the Elis in for a drink.
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IvyGate is camped out in the Barnard quad, watching (and liveblogging) Gossip Girl along with a bevy of enthralled Barnard girls. And yes, this is the episode 
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