A member of the NYU revolutionary vanguard alerted us to the pie-ing, and her note is reprinted in full below. The victims were Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and Robert Spencer from "Jihad Watch," both of whom were there to talk about how there is apparently a Jihad, threatening America? Did you know about this?

Anyhow the kids were not about to let this intolerance of opposing viewpoints stand, so they interrupted the guys with a pie assault. Spencer himself writes about his close brush with whipped cream here. One eyewitness account says the two speakers "ended up largely unscathed." Our tipster tells us that the revolutionary cameraperson assigned to film the pie-ing for propaganda purposes "was tackled by security at the very beginning and didn't get any footage."

How are we supposed to repel the Jihadists if our military-age youth can't even stage a proper pie attack? Very troubling indeed. Full revolutionary press release-type thing below.

Islamophobic Warmongers Pied at NYU!

Tuesday, November 17, 7:15PM

NYU students disrupted a university event this evening featuring Robert Spencer from "Jihad Watch" and Elan Journo from the "Ayn Rand Institute for Individual Freedom." Students called out the panelists for their Islamophobic, warmongering hate-rhetoric, shouting and launching pies at the speakers. One student was detained, and several were escorted out of the building.

The event, entitled "The Jihad Still Threatens America," encouraged viscous Islamophobia and promoted aggressive military intervention in majority Muslim nations. Speaker Elan Journo actively promotes devastating attacks on Iran, claiming that "victory in World War II required flattening cities, firebombing factories, shops and homes, devastating vast tracts of Germany and Japan.... Victory today requires the same: smashing Iran's totalitarian regime and thus demoralizing the Islamist movement and its many supporters, so that they, too, abandon their cause as futile." Fear-mongering comments such as these promote the expansion of US imperialism, and contribute to the wave of anti-Muslim hate that is sweeping our nation.

The pieing came on the heels of an anti-hate sit-in hosted by the Islamic Center at NYU. The event was a response to NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan's recent article entitled "Going Muslim," a new term he has coined in the vein of "Going Postal" (article available at ).

While it is disturbing to see hate being expressed on such institutional levels on our campuses, the students' refusal to be silent is an inspiration to us all.

[Pic via]

In much the same way that "emergency fallback" jobs have now become aspirational, emergency fallback schools are now out of reach for you, the average jerk. The New York Times reports that whereas NYC's six f'n humongous two-year colleges have always accepted everyone, at all times in the past, now they've had to put early deadlines on enrollment and turn thousands of applicants away. "I've never seen anything like this," says Laguardia CC president Gail O. Mellow. "We used to pretty much be an open door."

Unemployment is the new underemployment, and a G.E.D. is the new associate's degree. And associate degrees are the new bachelor's degrees, and bachelor's degrees are totally worthless.

Education is priceless.
[Pic via]

Meet Lionel McIntyre (pictured), an "Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the Founding Director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University." According to the Columbia Spectator and the NY Post, he went out to a bar on 125th St. last Friday night with Margaret Davis, a white female colleague, and practiced community development by technically assisting her with a sucker punch in the face:

The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white...McIntyre, who is known as "Mac" at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.

Dude Lionel McIntyre we hope you were really drunk, for your own sake. Judging by all the sources cited, this is an accurate report of what happened. Professor McIntyre is a veteran of the civil rights movement but appears to have descended into either a serious drinking problem or total bitchassness.

The Ivy League Punch-Edginess hypothesis has failed.

40% of 18-24 year-olds are now enrolled in college, which is higher than ever, although the increase is 100% due to a rise in community college enrollment. And 85% of those same kids are finishing high school, the highest rate ever. And more men are enrolled in college than ever, and more whites are enrolled in college than ever. Blacks and Latinos are both slightly below their all-time enrollment highs, but Latinos are finishing high school in record numbers.

Damned if I can think of a good angle on this.

[Read the full Pew Center Study, for class.]

After receiving your own totally worthless liberal arts education in an institution of higher learning (weed joke), you may have assumed, based upon your rudimentary, worthless understanding of economics, that a sever economic crisis would cause people to pay less for education, since they would understand that going to college puts you in debt and will not get you a job. Wrong you are. US college tuition went up 6.5% last year. Shows how good your college was, sucker.

A New Jersey lawyer had a pimp for a client; while the pimp went to jail, the lawyer took over his pimping business, and gave freebies to a bunch of law enforcement types. You might think the legal system would overlook this sort of thing, because the man was from Jersey. But no.

Six women in NYC "have been charged with submitting fraudulent documents - including forged police reports and court orders - to portray themselves as victims of domestic violence in an apparent attempt to jump to the front of a long waiting list for government subsidized apartments." A woman who wants to be an abuse victim? That's crazy! The recession does crazy things though. It really does.

Police saw a Massachusetts man "carrying a suspicious bag." Hey, they asked him, what's in that suspicious bag? Oh, just my wife's sex toys, he said. But then the police looked inside the bag and really it was full of stolen goods, and not even one sex toy. Disappointed? Sure, they probably were, but that's how it goes in a recession like this. Sometimes you get the bag full of golden dildos, and sometimes you get surprised.
[Pic via]

According to a survey from the University of Michigan that polled therapists on college campuses around the country, "over 90 percent" of college counseling services are "seeing an increase in the number and severity of students with mental health problems." With all of the bad performance art, binge drinking, and meaningless political "activism" that goes on at colleges these days, it wouldn't be surprising if students were going nuts, but the experts say they don't actually think today's collegians are crazier than previous generations.

Daniel Eisenberg, who directs the Healthy Minds Study, says the spike in mental health issues on college campuses may be due to "better screening and earlier diagnosis of mental illness in high school." All of this extra counseling might not be such a good thing though. Mental health professionals have a lot to do with the college ADD drug epidemic. Maybe so many students are rushing to the shrink and claiming to have serious mental health conditions because they all want to score Adderall.

Colleges See Rise In Mental Health Issues [NPR]

Yes, MIT, that bastion of nerdier education, has been paying student bloggers to yap about their campus experience. Though the posts range in topics — Star Wars is boring! Bacon's a great garnish! — the school's convinced individual outbursts help give prospective students a realistic view of the institution's world. Other colleges, like that blasted Vassar, are also bringing bloggers into their admissions fold, but still there are some who disbelieve.

Art Rodriguez, some admissions official at Pomona, remarks: "...There's always the concern about the political ramifications, that bloggers may open up an issue or topic that starts something negative."

Yes, well, there's that; and then there's the fact that the internet is EVERYWHERE! Even if schools don't incorporate bloggers, potential freshman will still see all the dirty truths posted by non-endorsed internet rats.

So, if you ask us — and, tacitly, you have — all schools should be sending out armies of pre-approved bloggers to counter all the negatrons on the horizon. Until you run out of money, which will happen.

Image via id-iom's flickr.

Rather than being provided large plastic trays upon which three or four separate plates covered with—respectively—salisbury steak, cajun fries, and soft-serve ice cream, our young scholars will now have to select only the amount of food that will stack upon a single plate. Then, they will need to transport that plate to a flat cafeteria table some yards away before returning to the buffet to fill yet another plate with more foodstuffs, repeating the process until they cannot choke down one more green bean or industrial-size vanilla sheet cake morsel before returning to their dorms to nap.

Among the expected benefits of this new policy: the calories burned by students walking back and forth from the food-obtaining area to the food-consuming area may be enough to shave several ounces off the famed "Freshman 15," knocking it down to the "Freshman 14.7." With their newfound spry limbs, unencumbered by the fat of that last plate of nachos that the tired student decided would not be worth the sweat of carrying back to a far-flung cafeteria table, our college community members will doubtless feel energetic enough to team up to form environmentally-concerned student clubs and create safe spaces for women there, on the newly-slimmed college campuses. As well as bone more.

As long as colleges don't start fucking with kids' god-given right to make six sandwiches at the sandwich station at lunch and wrap those sandwiches in napkins and smuggle them out of the cafeteria to be consumed later that night, after smoking weed, we have no problem with this.
[Pic via]

The best part of this video is when Harvey tells the reporter how "Animals. And vegetables. Belong. On the yard!" (At Harvard). And then a little later his eyes flash with excitement and he says how historic this whole cow-grazing business is: "We're gonna hear more about that in about ten minutes here."

He's about to tell you some shit. About cows!

[Boston.com via IvyGate. Pic: Flickr]

1. The Aspiring Teacher's Pet

Dear Dean,
I am passionately interested in Computational Fluid Dynamics, but at the same time I am deeply involved in an international Peace movement known as "Seeds of Peace," as a volunteer as well as a Peer Support Leader. I would like to go to a university where I would have the opportunity to focus on both engineering and leadership development to enable me to influence the peace process between India and Pakistan. If i were to be admitted, is Harvard the right place for me?
My question
- Sahir Zaveri

2. The Current Teacher's Pet

Dear Dean Fitzsimmons,

I'm a current student at Harvard, and I love it here. Thank you for accepting me.

I don't have any questions.
- Julia

3. The Angry White Man (Veiled)

How does Harvard's admissions process reward diversity without committing a type of reverse discrimination against potentially strong candidates who lack any diversity?
- Luke

4. The Angry White Man (Unveiled)

If someone is white, heterosexual, and Christian do they stand any chance of getting into Harvard? Thanks.
- Joe

5. The Angry Rebuttal to the Angry White Man

Dear caucasian applicants. It's extremely interesting how you can all automatically assume that anyone who is colored is automatically less deserving of admissions into Harvard. I graduated from Harvard Class of ‘00.

I'm a Hispanic female with a disability. Neither of my parents finished grade school, much less high school. I grew up in a household where my parents' combined income was less than $30,000. I could certainly have checked off multiple "diversity" boxes, and I did.

But I also scored a perfect score on the SAT's, graduated salutatorian of my class, was class president, went to Nationals in Academic Decathlon, and found time to volunteer. I was able to do all of these things despite my disadvantages. Perhaps that doesn't jive with many of your perceptions of Hispanic females, but you should all stop blaming your inability to get into Harvard on everyone else. Many of my colored classmates happened to work very, very hard to get where they are. They certainly didn't have parents as obsessed and narrow-minded as the ones here on this board.
- JOLT

6. The Crazy Parent

Hello,

My children are in elementary school now, and I am almost panicked about trying to get the "right" education for them in order to go to an institution like Harvard. We are not rich by any means, so we are trying to set a path that will open up possibilities for them. What can we do to get them going in that direction?

Thank You,

George Pfeffer

7. The Guy Testing Out His College Application Essay

Dean Fitzsimmons,

Let me tell you my brief story. I was quite honestly an immature kid not ready for college out of high school. I wasn't a particularly good student in high school, and it followed me to the state school in Alabama I attended for three years, failing most of my classes, and never amounting to much grades wise.

However, since then, I've grown up. I've moved to Atlanta, where I've worked in a Congressional office, worked on the executive board of my local Young Democrats chapter, and am currently on staff for a city-wide council campaign. All the while, I've been going to school full time at the local junior college making all As (with a couple of Bs) and I'm re-taking the SAT in January. In short, I've grown up, and I've put together a record as an achiever in both the classroom and the community since my first try at college.

I want to transfer to an elite school where I can be truly challenged and prepared for my next step, law school. In all honest, what would be my chances to be admitted to an elite institution as a transfer student on the less than traditional path.
- Joshua Smith [Ed.—Your chances are slim without copy editing.]

8. The Person Dumb Enough to Ask a Good Question

Why is college so expensive?
- sminister

9. The Local Yokel Who Also Wants to Ask President Obama About the Broken Stop Light on Her Corner

Why did you only admit 1 Scarsdale H.S. Senior last year?

SHS is supposed to be one of the best public highs in the nation.

The local newspaper runs the issue highlighting recent grads/schools. I am aware some seniors dont submit their names/schools…but 1 seems low.

Back in 80s, 6+ SHS grads headed to Havard

Worried my school taxes are being wasted!
- $

10. The Sane Person

Dear Dean Fitzsimmons,
Don't you think it's absurd that all these people are obsessed with getting their kids into Harvard?
-John.

[Full Disclosure: We did not read all 788 questions. Feel free, though.]

Kate Levant is in art school at Yale and she came up with this "art" project and Yale shut it down for being, hmmm, too edgy, and we don't want a rerun of this whole abortion blood fiasco and things! Stare into the abyss, of art! Kate told New York mag about her taboo idea that was too hot, for Yale:

I wanted to do a project where the Red Cross would come into the gallery space and conduct a blood drive. There's something really amazing about the regenerative aspect of donating, and I'm interested in how such a personal thing for a donor has an immediate anonymity.

In a non-Ivy League art gallery setting this is known as a "blood drive." BANNED.
[Pic that Yale does not want you to see, via]

To reiterate: this book, entitled The Cartoons That Shook the World, is about this cartoon controversy. But Yale told the author that it was banning not only images of the cartoons themselves, but also three other classical representations of Muhammad which were to be included. This is their reasoning, according to the NYT:

John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was "overwhelming and unanimous." The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.

So now books are no longer including any content that is "freely available on the Internet?" Time to shut down the publishing industry. The images are offensive to some people. And? Books are published about Nazis, and lynchings, and genocide, and include copious images of awful events. That is called "communicating information," and it's what books do.

May we repeat: This book is *about* these cartoons. But Yale University Press will not print the cartoon, because religious fanatics once went crazy over them.

Donatich says he fears "blood on my hands" if he publishes them. First, this is a preposterous fear, as many other experts point out in the story—the images have been shown everywhere by now. Second, John Donatich, you have zero respect for academic freedom. You live in fear of imaginary bogeymen. You value the idea of the possibility of upsetting religious zealots more highly than you value your own author's right to publish freely. Why don't you just resign?

[Or go to work for a newspaper? The NYT didn't publish the cartoon either.]

This "Princeton Review" would like you to "register" to read their listicles and probably dump who knows how much illegal porn onto your computer, but luckily IvyGate copied and pasted all their content. Look at this blatant traffic-whore scandalmongering linkbait:

Least Happy Students
1. Merchant Marine

Knowing the uproar that would cause amongst Merchant Marine boosters worldwide! And on top of that my alma mater has some of the worst food in all higher education?! What about the bagels?!

Journalism!

Yesterday the NYT introduced us to an entire industry of motherfuckers who rip off (hopefully only) rich people by selling them advice on how to get their spawn into the breathtakingly expensive school of his or her choice.

While the going national rate for such work is about $185 an hour, a counselor in Vermont and another in New York City are among those who charge some families more than $40,000. Their packages might begin when a child is in eighth grade.

"It's annoying when people complain about the money," the Vermont-based counselor, Michele Hernandez, said. "I'm at the top of my field. Do people economize when they have a brain tumor and are looking for a neurosurgeon? If you want to go with someone cheaper, or chance it, don't hire me."

Our sincere hope that anyone hiring these people must have far, far too much disposable income already(here's a pretty modest price chart)—and the fact that these counselors inevitably steer kids towards schools that segregate wealthy lacrosse progenies from the rest of society—are the only thing keeping us from complaining more vociferously, on the internet, about their existence. Luckily for them.

Look, here is a place called "IvyWise" that offers packages costing more than $40K to, what, tell your kid to be smart? They also consult on nursery school admissions. As usual, our anger at Fake Ass Job hustlers is superseded by our envy that they thought of this first. Fuckers.
[NYT. Pic via]

One day in 11th grade, Mr. Romaine got up and sketched out, on the chalkboard, the average expected debts and earnings of two theoretical people: One, who left high school and went to work immediately as, say, a plumber or something; and another who went to college, and started earning only after they graduated and paid off their loans. And hey, a SmartMoney editor (not Mr. Romaine) did the same thing in a New York Post editorial today, proving that college is a huge scam:

[College grad] Bill will have higher pay than [straight-to-work after high school] Ernie his whole life, starting at $23,505 after taxes and peaking at $56,808. Like Ernie, he sets aside 5%. At that rate, it will take him 12 years to pay off his loan. Debt-free at 34, he starts adding to the same index fund as Ernie, making bigger monthly contributions with his higher pay. But when the two reunite at 65 for a retirement party, Ernie will have grown his savings to nearly $1.3 million. Bill will have less than a third of that.

Art history sucks, Bill! And this is assuming that college grads can still get far better jobs these days, which, ha. A/C repair, people. It ain't going anywhere.
[NYP. Pic via]

In France, it's always been a god-given right to retire at age 60, and spend the next 40 years taking it easy in a countryside chalet, at the expense of your younger taxpaying brethren, who themselves are only employed 25 hours per week, in cafes. So now the president is talking about raising the retirement age as high as 63(!) which he calls "inevitable."

Just another reason we're superior to the French. We haven't had to worry about retirement age increases for years, because we all know we'll be begging for Wal-Mart greeter jobs when we're 80 and desperate to buy our medicine. Only young people are worried about work over here. That's mostly because, now that they've closed all the factories, Midwest kids are being forced to go to "college" rather than go work at the plant for the rest of their lives. Sure, it's a sacrifice, but dental technician or firefighter beats Taco Bell counterman, in most situations. "Call them Generation R - Generation Recession," suggest the NYT. Instead, let's call them Generation MCKWFYLACJLUCKAH: Middle Class Kids Wasting Four Years Laying Around College Just Like Upper Class Kids Always Have.

College kid or retiree, everyone right now is fascinated by that box full of $40,000 in cash that was left at an auto dealership in Florida, and has been totally unclaimed. "That's mine," says America, simultaneously. And the recovery begins.
[Pic: Getty]

The idea is Unithrive, the almost sneeringly unnecessary privileged-people-helping-the-privileged online startup that allows "needy" (not really needy!) Harvard students to ask the idle rich for loans. So they don't have to ever work at all for one single minute!

"I have friends who would spend 10 hours a week when they are not in class working at a coffee shop or in the dorms," said Mr. Kushner, 24, referring to time that he considered wasteful. "I think the most special thing about college is not just what you do in class, but what you do out of class."

Haha, that money quote almost justifies the fact that Allen Salkin thought this god damn idea worthy of a full Sunday Styles section feature in the paper of record. But, buried deep, there's this:

So far, the alumni have lent about $4,500 to the nine students who have uploaded profiles.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Yea...that's less than Kushner would have had to pay to hire a PR firm to try to shop his little startup to, like, Inside Higher Ed. But he got a feature in the NYT for free! The real losers: the rest of the world.
[NYT]

Reed has been hit by the recession, like everyone, but what they did differently was to allow a reporter to sit in on their budget meetings, foolishly. This year, they regret to inform you that you cannot attend because you are the variety of hippie who does not have wealthy parents:

Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the college did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight.

What would Reed College semi-alumnus Ry Cooder have to sing about that?! $50,000 may seem like a stupidly high price to pay to attend the type of school that doesn't give grades and forces you to take juggling as a PE class and sends acceptance letters "in haikus by email" and is generally a place where hippies go to smoke herb and eat vegan cafeteria food and work on their motorized couches for the Renn Fayre and join the Reed Kommunal Shit Kollektiv, but look at it this way: it is a stupidly high price to pay. Thank your lucky stars, poors.
[NYT, All about Reed. Typical Reed pic: Flickr]

If you said "Race," you are the winner of a black-and-white cookie! Let's face it: any highly publicized incident involving black people in white academia has a racial subtext; in the Ivy League, more so; at Harvard, more so; and when Harvard starts being charged with racism for kicking out a black student in connection with a campus murder, no, you did not imagine that faint whiff of racial overtones, undertones, and mid-tones.

Quick factual recap: 21 year-old Justin Cosby was shot to death in the basement of a Harvard dorm. He was found carrying a pound of weed and $1,000 cash. Jabrai Jordan Copney, an out-of-towner, was charged with killing him. Harvard senior Chanequa Campbell (pictured) was friendly with Copney, and was barred from graduating as a result of her connection to the crime; she charged it was because "I'm black and I'm poor and I'm from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way."

Now a former Harvard student has written an article called "Why Black Harvard Won't Speak Up For Chanequa." Its thesis: Although Harvard's black community usually reacts strongly to racially charged issues on campus, they didn't in this case. That's because they're not so sure Chanequa Campbell is all that innocent, allegedly!

Campbell was active in Harvard's Black community. She was a member of the Black Students Association and Association of Black Harvard Women, and participated in the production of the annual fashion show put on by Harvard's Black Community and Student Theater (BlackCAST), and the Tribute to Black Men awards dinner. However, Campbell was dogged by persistent rumors that she was involved in campus drug dealing, rumors which, in light of the murder, have done little to help her credibility with fellow students.

"People are pretty sure she did something, they just don't know what," said a Black classmate in Campbell's graduating class, who requested anonymity. "We can't rally behind somebody we don't necessarily believe in."

Now, we should keep in mind: the fact that someone is black, and a classmate of yours in college, does not necessarily mean that they represent any greater "community," or, indeed, anything more than their own opinion. A surprising number of people forget this! (Until you go on vacation in France or some shit and somebody asks you to justify George W. Bush's foreign policy. You're an American! This is a rough parallel, for white people). That said, the writer, Ashton Lattimore, didn't have too much trouble finding at least one person ready to scoff at Campbell's allegations of racism:

"Students feel, to some degree, like she's trying to sell Black people up the river," Campbell's classmate said. "It's like she gets busted, and suddenly it's a fight for freedom. People feel like she thought she was going to get Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton up here, and all she got was a bunch of n****s looking at her like, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?'"

The story also hints that black student groups don't want to risk their own political capital backing a student who might really be guilty of something bad, which could jeopardize their own standing. But who knows?

So, it's good somebody wrote this story, so we can talk about it now, and then stop talking about it! If Chanequa Campbell's really not guilty of anything, then everybody should rally to her defense; if she is guilty of maybe having shady friends or helping to sell weed or whatever, hey, that's college for you. As long as she's not truly responsible for the killing, she's just another college kid who fucked up. Her fuckup just had more awful consequences.
[News One. Pic via]