First, the only reason to declare the neighborhood "blighted" would be to hand it over to the school:

And second, shut up, Columbia:

[Full ruling via NYT]

First of all, the only people besides Harvard-Yale grads who have anything invested in this ritual are their hangers-on, asshole bloggers (me), or sports writers, who think they have a really great narrative on their hands by writing the same narrative they do every year. Watch. This year's filing by ESPN, penned by one Mr. Tom Lakin:

It is, after all, the 126th installment of a tradition that began back in 1875 with a 4-0 Harvard win. In the years since that first meeting, the legend of The Game has grown. Perhaps best known is the 1968 contest in which Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie an undefeated and heavily favored Yale squad — a result immortalized in The Harvard Crimson student newspaper by the famous headline "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29."

In 2008:

Before two of the nation's oldest universities had a field to play on, they were eager to prove which school was superior in the rough-and-tumble new sport of football. Since 1875, the Harvard-Yale rivalry has emerged simply as "The Game."...And with Satuday's tilt at the Yale Bowl the first time since 1968 both Yale and Harvard come into The Game unbeaten in league play, the rivalry game will determine the Ivy title.

And in 2007:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — The current Yale and Harvard players have heard all about the tradition of the venerable rivalry and are preparing to make some history of their own. Meeting No. 124 is Saturday and the stakes are as high as they get with the Ivy League title up for grabs. Both teams enter with 6-0 conference records. The last time that happened was 1968 and Harvard famously rallied from 16 points down in the final 42 seconds to tie Yale, spoiling Yale's perfect season.

So, yeah: basically, the same shit every year. Big old tradition for people who don't normally care about football to care about football. These people don't have time for football! Between all the awesome regattas and going to one of a handful of schools getting a degree from now maybe matters, football's mostly bullshit to them until they own a stake in whatever team is smashing the Bears this week. To the rest of us, it's interesting only if you've really seen Big or The Dark Knight that many times, and there's nothing else to watch on TV. Because the Harvard-Yale game, as far as football goes, sucks. This is not an opinion so much as it is a general consensus.

This young gentlemen seems to think this year's hyperbolic announcing of the Yale-Harvard game might be a bit much.

As in, straight-up stupid. Because, yes, going to a game in New Haven is just like seeing a game anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. You don't need to watch football or sports or even have been to the south to understand this. One palpable difference is: at the Harvard-Yale game, this guy has a better chance at scoring than either of the teams.

Needless to say, the situation in the SEC is slightly different. Like security! At Old Miss, they have issues with people wearing costumes. I mean, sure, Yale has people in "costumes."

But real football games don't mess with things like facepaint, or the asstacular body suit pictured above. Oh no, these guys go all out:

Woah, there, buddy! Went a little over the edge with your sporty spirit, no? Just slightly. KKK guys, showin' up to Old Miss games. At least the Ivy crowd would pick up on this kind of irony, and dress as Marxists, or something. What'd security at the Yale-Harvard game look like today?

OH ZHHOOOZHOOPUPPY.

Yeah, but Ivy Peeps can get hard, too, motherfuckers.

When they're not busy farting out the inevitable air of disappointment over the uninitiated. Observe the sad and sober:

A first-time drinker's disappointment, maybe? Next time we suggest an ether-soaked cloth. Because this isn't exactly the riotous assembly the rest of College Football gets to see every Saturday. Oh no. This is something else. The easily intimidated should gird their loins:

Who's skiing, today, right? The most accurate assessment might come via comparative basis. Granted, your high school football team may not be running world economies, but at least they can run an audible.

There is, however, culture to be had! And Yale-Harvard has a competitive spirit, to be sure. While inflatable bulldogs loom over alumni old and young, the youngest are trying to get drunk enough to black out—but inevitably puking—while rumblings and remembrances of competition not yet had or had too often result in the vicious pejorative shouting of whose school is better. It results in things like this. NSFW, especially if your work has a thing against assholes being incredible assholes and bad apings of The Departed:

And astute observations!

In SECspeak, this translates to EAT SHIT AND DIE YANKEE even though a rival school might only be thirty minutes north of another. Lost in translation, again and again. Other dispatches emerge:

I'm not sure what that means, but then again, I didn't go to Yale. Or Harvard. But I bet it has something to do with the enormous networking opportunities that present themselves at these things. Next year, I'm dressing as this guy and not leaving until I've closed a lower rate on my Visa. Or at least my dry cleaning bill.

But in the end, a winner must emerge. And today's winner was a come-from-behind defeat by Harvard. Let the celebrating begin. With Batman fans:

The Dark Knight would like you to get home safely, you second-rate sissies! A 14-10 victory IN YO FACE. More! The Harvard Law Dean of Students' Twitter Feed would like to feed into your insecurities over and over and over Yalies. Even they gotta get in on the action:

And Yale fans, like any good sports fans, prepare to riot at the failure of their warriors. Cop cars, turned over! Terrible taunting! Emotionally scarring and physically dangerous situations, yes? Yes!

We all have our own private consolations. Because, really, though, all college football ends in the same result, no matter who it is winning, no matter your school, your degree, your color, age, race, sexual orientation, tax bracket, building clearence, byline or birthright, we really truly are all the same when it comes to the endgame of a football victory: some straight-up homoerotic manlove, as fans rush the field.

Granted, these fans won't be getting arrested today, like everyone else's, but then again, they're not tearing down goalposts, either. Hell, they might get to play on "special teams" for an hour or two. A higher, deeper education, indeed. Note the young man in the left-hand corner of the picture, though: he knows, oh yes, he knows the truth of the situation. Yale-Harvard games, like their students, are just different. In the best ways possible.

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.

Back in August, six lab workers drank coffee from the same coffee machine, and each fell ill almost immediately. One even passed out. They were all treated at the hospital. Investigators found that the coffee had been spiked with sodium azide, a preservative used in the labs that oh by the way is deadly. This news didn't come out until yesterday, when the Boston Herald broke the story. But hey, maybe this was just some sort of accident thing?

"An accident? Sodium azide is a poison," said David M. Benjamin, a toxicologist and Chestnut Hill-based clinical pharmacologist. "Absolutely not."

Whoa, okay, excuse us! Not everyone here is a toxicologist, Mr. Benjamin. Harvard is still being weirdly tight-lipped about the investigation of, ahem, Attempted Murder Most Foul. For PR reasons, doubtlessly—they saw what happened at Yale in the Annie Le case. Although they do note they're "installing more security cameras" in the medical school. So if you med students are gonna fuck there, fuck quick.
[Pic via]

There's a terrible recession on, okay, and Harvard has lost billions of dollars, and who is suffering? The Harvard Student Hobos. Consider their deprivations: Athletes must buy their own sweatsuits! Faculty members must buy their own cookies! Students in far-flung dorms are being forced to walk upwards of ten minutes just to reach campus—and they must buy their own breakfasts along the way! Excuse Harvard students for being surprised to find themselves in the slums of Lagos or somewhere similar!

"Students generally feel that if you come to Harvard, for what you're paying, you should probably have the right to a hot breakfast," said Andrea Flores, a senior who is president of the Undergraduate Council. "They want to preserve the things that are at Harvard that you can't get anywhere else."

Things that are at Harvard that you can't get anywhere else: Breakfast. Alrighty. The people most affected are Harvard athletes, who must now stumble home from practice and pass out due to lack of nutrients. Luckily Harvard athletes sucked already so nobody can tell the dif. (Except you, Matt Birk!).

"I think the [budget cut] process can hopefully be done peacefully." YEA PROBABLY SO, *snicker*.

As if the name weren't complimentary enough. Naturally, the Sunday Styles is all over this kind of thing, as they're trying to cash in on the breathless outrage that Cintra Wilson's readership will strike back with. Now remember: there are eight Lvy league schools. In fourth grade, when I was a wee Gawker Weekend writer, I created a nice mnemonic device to help me remember: YA BRO! CORNPENN PRINCE HARVARD IN THE BROWN MOUTH BIA (That's Yale, Brown, Cornell, UPenn, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia). For extra points, guess which four are regularly written off by the other four; there are multiple answers.

These eight schools churn out the most important people in the universe; these are the people who all think Ayn Rand was right and also, the people who think Ayn Rand was completely full of shit. Our titans of industry! Our politicians! Our innovators in science and technology! Our Keith Gessens! Etc. But what happens when you start tainting the pool of connections with their lessers? Washington University? Ughghghhh. I'm feeling peaked. Alastair, I need to sit down. Hang on to your hats:

Washington U? Really? Yes, that's where the "Plus" comes in (but only if you attended medical school there). The Ivy Plus Society has taken the concept of an Ivy League alumni club - promising communion with fellow members of the elite, or even a leveraging of old school ties - and enlarged the magic circle to nearly two dozen other universities and graduate schools.

Fuck. You know some Freemasons are gonna be pissed. First, slavery's abolished. Then, the new Dan Brown book. And now this?! The founder is some real-estate lawyer from California, blah blah blah, she wants to bring people together. Honestly, sometimes I think the people who put together networking events are compensating for not having robust social lives of their own. Or maybe their lives are too social! Either way, you know they think Facebook is the greatest. Well these people remember when Facebook left Cambridge to include them, too. USC, suck a dong:

Ms. Anderson said that the "plus" institutions - including Stanford, Duke, M.I.T. and West Point - are those with a "natural affiliation" with the Ivies, in addition to top business, law and medical schools. "If you wanted to describe these schools, these are all highly selective, academically rigorous institutions," she said, although social reputations also come into play. "The Duke people are so much fun. There's just some schools you want to make sure you include."

Sadly, the aforementioned Chico State didn't make the cut. The Times subtly notes the entire angle here is as a singles thing, and really, who goes to singles events but Jews and Mormons? Ivy Leaguers meet their people at their typical feeding grounds: Dorrians, etc. Finally, they just cut the shit:

To the cynically inclined, Ivy Plus is a meet market for the pedigreed. One young Dartmouth graduate, declining to give his name, said: "It's a singles party masquerading as a networking event. Look around, it's clusters of guys and girls just staring at each other."

But come on, New York Times. It's obviously not just a singles thing, like every other networking event. It's something bigger than that.

"It's an environment where it's easy to talk to new people and you have some shared common background," said Jennifer Wilde Anderson, the founder of Ivy Plus. "You can say: ‘Hi James, you went to Harvard? My brother went there.' Or, ‘You went to Dartmouth? I remember when we used to sail there and the awesome Dartmouth regatta parties.' "

OH BITCH YOU DID NOT JUST GO THERE. We all know they don't really have regatta parties at Dartmouth. That'd be like talking about the football at Duke: sure, it exists, but nobody actually knows about it or gives a shit. Dartmouth's not Yale enough for that, even though Yale would say they're not Princeton enough for that. GOD. The outraged are already beginning to speak:

This is what you get for promoting the assimilation of Ivy blood, New York Times. There will be wars over this kind of thing. Haven't you seen Demolition Man? This is far from over. Meanwhile, while they're not tazing anyone outside of the Ivy Plus who tries to gain entry (yet), they're still being called out:

Michal Albanese, a sales executive for a fashion trade show who graduated from Brown in 1999, confirmed that the list did breed insecurity in some at the group's last party. A couple of guests were called out for not having gone to Ivy Plus universities, she said, and one gentleman began rattling off his other accomplishments.

"The guy went to, like, Illinois," she said, trying to recall the college.

"I don't remember," she added. "But his friend kept saying, ‘You're not even a plus.' "

Burn him at the stake. Remember Facebook, people. Remember Facebook. Never forget. First they came for the networking events, and I didn't speak out. Etc.

The Nation has come up with a fun way to make money when you're a cash-poor lefty mag, which is to just auction off any old crap they can get their hands on. Current auction items include a set of tires (value: $450) and a copy of Fighting Bob LaFollette: The Righteous Reformer (value: $23). Next week, the staff of The Nation will sell their own blood plasma.


Jack Shafer writes a true column about what inspires such epic coverage of Ivy League murders: Love of the Ivy League on one end of the media, and hate for the Ivy League on the other end. Jack, you left out "Genuine concern for the victim by the bloodsucking media bastards."


Apparently some citizens of America are urging Good Morning America to hire energetic money-chaser Suze Orman, as a face that they want to see on their television screens shortly after waking up? I will never understand Americans.


Politics are dividing American bloviation! National Joural asked its panel of "Congressional and Political Insiders" (whatever) to tell them which columnists are the most influential on their own thinking and Thomas fucking Friedman won, for fuck's sake. I assume these are the same "Americans" urging a major network to hire Suze Orman as morning news pep-squad leader? Anyhow the most divisive columnist was Charles Krauthammer, a psycho beloved by Republicans but not much at all by Democrats, who named Bob Guccione as their Most Admired Hero.

Le had been missing since last Tuesday; in addition to a body believed to be hers, authorities found bloody clothes believed to belong to the killer hidden above a ceiling tile in a Yale lab. According to the New York Times, local police have begin searching a nearby waste-processing facility for more evidence. Le was to have been married yesterday.

The discovery has set the Yale campus on edge. "I'm freaked," one doctoral student told a Times reporter as he fumbled nervously for a cigarette. He should be: Yale students have demonstrated a disconcerting tendency for turning up dead over the years, often in circumstances that implicate race, class, and sex in a potent Bonfire-of-the-Vanities concoction and usually after some sort of bungling by an incompetent police department and university administration.

Suzanne Jovin
Jovin, a 21-year-old senior from Germany, was found stabbed to death on an off-campus street corner in 1998—she'd been stabbed 17 times and her throat was slit. Within days, Yale identified her thesis adviser James Van de Velde, who had also served as dean of Saybrook, one of Yale's residential colleges, as "one of a pool of suspects" and canceled his classes. The New Haven Police Department confirmed that Van de Velde was a suspect and his career was destroyed, but he was never charged. The murder remains unsolved.

Bonnie Garland
In 1977, Garland, a 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy lawyer, was bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer by her boyfriend and fellow student Richard Herrin at her parents' Scarsdale, N.Y. home. Garland had recently told Herrin she wanted to begin seeing other people. Herrin, a Mexican-American who grew up in the L.A. barrio, fled to a local church to confess. Yale's Catholic community rallied around him and raised funds for his legal defense, arguing for leniency and appealing to Herrin's impoverished background. With the help of a high-priced lawyer, Herrin was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 8 to 25 years; he was paroled in 1995.

Christian Prince
Prince was what his name sounds like: A white 19-year-old fourth-generation Yalie from a privileged family. He was allegedly killed by James Fleming, a 17-year-old African-American child of poverty in 1991 under circumstances that couldn't have been plotted better by Tom Wolfe. Fleming and a friend, looking for money to attend a rap concert, robbed Prince at gunpoint at 1 a.m. in front of St. Mary's Church. After Prince handed over his wallet, Fleming allegedly said, "I ought to shoot this cracker," and did. Prince's body was found laying on the church stairs, his arms outstretched. After two trials suffused with racial recrimination and publicity, Fleming was convicted of armed robbery but acquitted on the murder charges.

Antonio Lasaga
It's not a murder, but Lasaga, a Yale geology professor whose colleagues described him as "Nobel Prize material" was arrested in 1998 on charges of possessing more than 150,000 images of child pornography and molesting a local 6-year-old boy he'd met through a mentoring program. In addition to being a professor, Lasaga was the master of Saybrook. Lasaga pleaded guilty in 2002, and his victim sued Yale last year, alleging that another Yale professor witnessed the abuse and failed to report it.

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.]

According to Joe Pompeo of the New York Observer it is. This is a whole defined style, allegedly, called Trad, and it means very specific things to very fashionable people in Manhattan, sure, but mostly it means that anyone can take one look at you and say "Why doesn't that rich Ivy League prick go fuck his squash racket or something?"

Perhaps you've noticed Lacoste polos, Ray-Ban eyewear, bow ties and hand-sewn camp moccasins on the streets of Billyburg?

Those who embrace the look say subtlety is key.

Subtlety is key to not getting robbed while walking the streets of South Williamsburg in a $595 navy blue J. Press blazer. Or maybe I'm just projecting my own insecurities! Incredibly, the 52 year-old insurance exec quoted in the story who writes the blog "The Trad" graduated from the same shitty little college in Florida that I did. Dude. You know you were drinking cheap swill at the Milltop and wearing Rip Curl shirts and flip flops and pretending to learn how to surf just like every other bum down there. "Trad" my butt.

The New York Times Styles section rightly takes the school to task for the utter ridiculousness perpetrated by a school in financial trouble, one that's only extending its own unique brand of elitism—true, or not, but come on: true—one step further by manifesting it in physical wares. Not that anyone needs to look too deeply into this when they're just flashing their hand, here:

"It's a modern rendition of a classic American heritage," said John Fowler, the creative director. "We want to combine the power of Harvard with the power of a plaid shirt."

Yes: the kung-fu like power grip of an institution becoming less and less relevant with the discovery that a college degree doesn't necessarily lend itself to a fruitful post-college existence so much as it does post-college debt. But Hahhvahhd—with all of its widely reputed Ivy Leage smarts—will use their marketing power to make their brand available to the masses in order to actually make some coin on this thing, right? HBS, where you at?

Oxford shirts start at $165, and sports coats run to $495. The company declined to discuss its projected sales figures.

Heh. Cintra Wilson would be proud. Even better is the official line on this from the school, one that takes allegations of moving their elitist pylons even wider into the field of potential money-givers and high-performance students seeking out results over reputation.

The university, for its part, appears to be growing tired of the attention. "Oh joy, rapture," a spokesman, John Longbrake, said when informed about the subject of this article.

Rapture, indeed! One of the most quotable articles in the history of the Styles section continues when they hit up the Harvard Crimson for their outrage on this. Now: student newspaper, supposed to represent the voice of the students, who are probably pissed off that this education they paid so much for and worked so hard to be a part of is being appropriated by a New York fashion label for mass consumption, correct?

In an editorial last week, The Harvard Crimson wrote that criticism of the line was unwarranted: "It is misguided to blame the university for doing what it can to pay its bills, even if that means allowing Harvard's name to adorn crimson-lined blazers and madras shorts reminiscent of the 1950s ‘good-old-boy' era."

Guess not. Voices of reason, come in!

"Every move to paste the Harvard name on symbols of prosperity, wealth, privilege and class erects a subtle, insidious ‘Members Only' sign at the university admissions office," Peter M. Conti-Brown, a 2005 graduate, said in an e-mail message.

Mr. Conti-Brown served as the undergraduate director of an extensive outreach effort by the admissions office to broaden Harvard's appeal to students from poorer backgrounds.

The barriers were often psychological, Mr. Conti-Brown recalled. "We were going up against 400 years of history," he said. "Without a doubt, licensing preppy clothes with the Harvard brand is a move in the opposite direction."

If anything's made evident by all of these conflicted Ivy League opinions, it's that there's still a healthy amount of discourse on the campus of what to do when you (A) need money and (B) have a reputation you need to shed that you're hard to part with because, hey, even though you're progressive, you still want the power, or at the very least, an impression of having it. So the final question comes down, then, to what it looks like, and if it's even worth buying. You be the judge:

The Ivy League Loan Shark look's gonna go far this season. Not exactly the high fashion of a "hot tranny mess," but perfect for a night in A.C. Buy!

The New York Times says the fancy school for healers was forced to rescind this policy that it put in its handbook and everything, after somebody there, from among the throngs of smart people, figured out it was dumb:

The policy says: "All interactions between students and the media should be coordinated with the Office of the Dean of Students and the Office of Public Affairs. This applies to situations in which students are contacted by the media as well as instances in which students may be seeking publicity about a student-related project or program."

All because they didn't want their students talking to the NYT about how shitty ethics are these days, among doctors! Although the school's dean tried to blame the policy on "the growing prevalence of Twitter." Seriously.
[Pic via]

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!

The "mid-career" adult program is for both ambitious politicians and private sector titans looking to become ambitious politicians.

Past recipients of master's degrees in Public Administration at the Kennedy School include Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Judd, who has a Bachelors in French from the University of Kentucky, is an actress known primarily for always being in a mess of trouble, in movies. Once she receives her degree, she'll join this august list of people who are currently running and destroying the world, and also Katherine Harris and Bill O'Reilly.

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]

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]

It was four juveniles walking around with a toy gun, that they scored rummaging through all the crap Princetonians leave behind as they rush away for the summer. In other news, Princeton students are corrupting the youth with intoxicants!

Police believe the incident stemmed from a bigger problem of kids from town going on campus and rummaging through dumpsters looking for unused alcohol, which campus security says has been on ongoing problem.

These drunk kids wandering around with a "green toy handgun" and a half-empty bottle of Malibu that they filched from the trash caused the entire campus to be on full lockdown for 90 minutes. The lesson for Princeton students: Don't leave behind anything dangerous that could be used for mischief by your inferiors.

[CentralJersey.com. Pic via]