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.

It wasn't enough for Franco to sleep in class at both Columbia and NYU, where he is currently getting his MFA in creative writing (we have one too, James!), now he's going to go to Yale to get his doctorate in English. At least that's what a close reading of the subtext of this article told us. Let's just hope he doesn't get anxiety of influence from Harold Bloom, whom Franco seems to have an inappropriate man crush on.

Speaking of influence, the Yale newspaper has no problem at all ripping off Bop! (the article is below, or you can read it here). Is this supposed to be ironic? Because there is nothing that seems tongue in cheek about the big sloppy kiss of an interview where Esther Zuckerman does everything but lay down and ask Franco to father her children. She loves Freaks and Geeks! She's seen all his movies! She writes Esther Zuckerman-Franco in little hearts on the cover of her binder for Post-Colonial Structuralism and the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop seminar!

We shouldn't be too mean to her, because we love him just as much, especially now that he's trying to bridge high and low culture with a role on General Hospital. The first promo for his stint on the show came out yesterday, and it looks amazing. He plays an "artist whose canvas is murder." So he's a highbrow artist on a lowbrow soap. He's an A-list actor in a D-list genre. He he plays a character named Franco. META! Harold Bloom just let Franco into his PhD program just based on this stunt alone. PS—9 days and counting until it starts!

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.

You may recall that last month Yale University Press refused to publish images of the controversial cartoons *in a book about the cartoon controversy*. Because they were scared of offending the type of religious fanatic that would find this book, hop a plane to New Haven, and burn down the Yale University Press headquarters. Even repeating that story is giving us palpitations of rage.

Anyhow, now the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, is coming to make appearances at Yale and Princeton in the name of Free Speech. Good for him! You know what else? The cartoon did kind of suck! Were you offended by it? Go tell him that, at his appearance! Go tell him his cartoon sucked and was not funny and that you were offended by it! Call him an asshole if you must! Just don't kill anyone. That's what free speech is all about.

Fuck you, Yale University Press. See?

Various news outlets have been turning up scooplets for a week now. Investigators reportedly say that Clark sent Le a text message the day she went missing, asking to meet her to discuss work issues. Later, as police were searching the lab building for Le's body, Clark reportedly aroused their suspicion when an investigator saw him hastily "trying to hide lab cleaning equipment that they discovered contained blood spatters." They also say that lab swipe card records show Clark moving around to several different rooms where he normally would not go around the time of the crime (including the room where Le was found). The DNA match—if true—would seem incredibly incriminating.

Reported DNA Match [Hartford Courant]

[The] final piece that led to his arrest Thursday morning was the discovery that evidence in the ceiling and in the crawl space where Le's body was found contained the DNA of both Le and Clark, according to the law enforcement official who spoke to The Courant on the condition of anonymity.

The Green Pen [NYDN]

Clark did not want to be just some guy who cleans mouse cages, so he distinguished himself by always signing in for work with a pen that used green ink. Every day, including the day of the killing.

Investigators believe he dropped the pen at the scene and was unable to retrieve it after it fell into a crevice.

An Accomplice?

We would take this one with a large grain of salt at this point, since all the evidence of it is the following, from today's NYP—and this bit of news would be everywhere if it was solid. So take it for what it's worth.

The Yale lab technician busted yesterday in the murder of brilliant grad student Annie Le may have had help hiding her body — and there could be another arrest, it was reported last night.

Cops are interrogating another employee who works in the lab where Raymond Clark allegedly killed Le, sources told Hartford TV station WTIC/Fox61.

[Pic: AP]

Police (and media) had been staking out the Super 8 motel where Clark was staying; police went in shortly before 8:30 this morning and took him into custody. Since our last roundup of Raymond Clark news yesterday—when, honestly, even the vaguely incriminating things sounded like they could have had plausible innocent explanations—he's now looking a bit shadier. In hindsight. Today's newest factoids:

Clark's Sexual Assault Allegations in High School

In 2003, Clark's high school girlfriend told police she wanted to break up with him but was scared of what he might do. The New Haven police chief has refused to discuss this case so far.

After [a detective] spoke to the two students at the school, the girl went with her mother to the police station to talk to him, according to the Independent.

The girl "wished to tell me of an incident that took place; however, did not want it pursued by this department," Washington wrote. "She stated that she had been having a sexual relationship with [Clark] and that at one time [Clark] did force her to have sex with him. The relationship did continue after that incident; however, she is unsure of what he may do as a result of the breakup."

Clark Explains His Injuries [New Haven Register, NYP]

Sources also told the newspaper that Clark bore bruises, scratches and abrasions on his arms and chest, as well as a mark on his right ear and under his eye.

He said some of the injuries were suffered during a softball game, the others were cat scratches, according to the Register.

More From His Girlfriend's Blog

The NYP dug up a more extended 2008 excerpt from the Myspace blog of Jennifer Hromadka, Clark's fiancee.

"Spring is in the air and this time of year it seems that the rumors pop up more than the flowers (at least that is how it is [at the Yale animal-research center where the two work].) I have noticed recently that my relationship seems to be the focus of a lot of these rumors! . . .

I could be a bitch and give it right back cause lord knows some of the 'people' deserve it but I choose to ignore the rumors and try to keep in mind that the people that are the source are a bit jealous.

The Clark Family [NYT]

[Clarification: This is just information, not incriminating information. Okay.]

Mr. Clark grew up in a rented gray house in a working-class neighborhood of aspirations when a nearby factory was humming. Jim Garrett, 65, who lives two doors down, said the house the Clarks lived in deteriorated as the years went by and the factory closed, and eventually Mr. Clark's parents moved out. They went to a condominium in Cromwell, Conn., north of Middletown, where Mr. Clark's mother works in the Wal-Mart across the street.

The Basics

Yale grad student Annie Le entered a school lab building on Sept. 8 (pictured) and was never seen alive again. She was asphyxiated and her body was hidden in the crawl space behind a wall. Clark worked as an animal tech in the Animal Research Center there. [The lab has been a target of PETA in the past, and it could prove consequential in the case; Clark was found with scratches on his body that he's blaming on the animals he worked with, rather than being from a fighting Le.] Based on 700 hours of surveillance footage, police named him a "Person of Interest." They executed a search warrant on his apartment last night, took DNA from him, and released him. He has not been charged.

One lesson in all this: You could theoretically be totally innocent of a crime, but still find everything you posted online end up in the tabloids. So think before you go too crazy on the internet.

Ray Clark's Digital Trail

Ray had a barely-filled-in Myspace page that he hadn't accessed since 2006. It looks like he just used it for a momentary joke, although he probably now regrets writing that he wants to meet "your mom so I can fuck her." His girlfriend, Jennifer Hromadka, also had a Myspace page, though it's been deleted.

The couple also had a wedding page on The Knot that's been hidden. But according to Hunter Walker, who glimpsed much of Ray Clark's online info before it was pulled, it "says that the couple planned to get married on December 20, 2011 and that they have been engaged since New Year's Day 2008.

The E-Mail Trail [NYDN]

Investigators reportedly zeroed in on Clark in part because of emails he sent to Le.

In the e-mails, Clark is said to criticize Le for not adhering to the protocols for tending the mice kept in the basement as part of her lab's ongoing experiments.
Le is said to have responded in a conciliatory tone, promising to keep to the protocols. Investigators wonder if Clark was not satisfied, if resentment suddenly flared to rage, if as crazy as it may seem this was a case of mice and murder.

His Family's Explanation [NYP]

"He did not pass the polygraph test . . . But of course, they don't always run true anyway, especially when you're nerved up asking so many questions," the sympathetic [family] source insisted.
As for Clark's fresh wounds, "He had scratches on his arm from his cat," the person said.
The source said Clark, whom the family calls "Ray Ray," works at the lab along with his fiancée, sister and her husband.
"But he didn't really know [Le]," the source said.
"She left the area before he left that morning. He'd seen her and said, 'Hi' and kept on going."

Cheating Rumors [NYP]

Ray's fiancee Jennifer Hromadka took to a blog to deny unspecified rumors that Ray was cheating on her.

"My boyfriend, Ray, if you don't know him, has no interest in any of the other girls at [the university research center] as anything more than friends.
"This rumor of a 'fling' is probably the most stupid thing i have ever heard and really is not even worth going into detail about.

What The Neighbors Say [NYDN]

"It definitely freaks me out," said Ivan Hernandez, 22, who lives directly above Clark. "A possible murderer living right under you, that's crazy. I thought he was just a normal guy."
One of Clark's former neighbors in New Haven said he screamed at children and was "very controlling" of his girlfriend.
"Ray was very controlling of his girlfriend," said Anne Marie Goodwin, 40. "He would never let her talk to anyone. I would hear a lot of yelling upstairs."
Clark - a 2004 graduate of Branford High School, who mostly worked with rodents at Yale - "kept a pit bull caged in his apartment," Goodwin said.

According to Hartford's WFSB, the New Haven police sought information about Clark from the Branford police. Previous reports indicated that a lab technician had already been interviewed and failed a lie detector test, but WFSB seems to suggest that the cops don't know where Clark is: His home in Ferry Street in Middletown, Conn., is currently under surveillance, according to several reports, and the apartment building's manager says Clark hasn't been seen since Thursday. Clark recently moved to Middletown from nearby Branford.

The New York Post has also identified Clark as the prime suspect in the case. A family member, though, told the paper they didn't think he is a murderer.

"He'd seen her and said hi and kept on going. ... He really didn't know her."

The family "is very upset," the family source added.

"I know he didn't do it, but I can't understand how anybody would do that in the first place and put her in the wall like that. And they would have had to do it at night because certainly nobody could have done it during the day when everybody was looking."

One of Clark's co-workers at the Yale lab where Le's body was found tells Gawker that Clark has a fiancée who also work at the facility, along with his sister and her husband, "and none of them are at work today."

Yale's staff and student directory lists a Raymond Clark III as an animal technician in the university's Animal Resources Center:

According to a database search, a Raymond John Clark III lives in Middletown at a Ferry St. address.

According to this 2003 speeding ticket issued to a Raymond John Clark III in Wallingford, Conn., he was born in 1985, which would make him 23 or 24 years old.

A Raymond Clark III made the honor roll during the first quarter of his senior year at Branford High School in Branford, Conn., and served as a relief pitcher for the schools baseball team. According to the honor roll, he was a senior in December 2003, and so would have graduated in 2004.

WFSB posted a photo (above) purporting to be of Clark that it says it obtained from MySpace, but the station doesn't link to the page. We're looking for it right now.

With reporting by Hunter Walker

This morning, citing police officials, MSNBC reported that an arrest in the case could come as early as today, and two New Haven papers reported that a technician in the lab where Le worked and where her body was found had emerged as a prime suspect.

But in a brief press conference this afternoon, New Haven Police Officer Joe Avery told reporters that they were "talking to a lot of people" and had no suspect in custody:

"You guys made up the fact that we had somebody in custody, the media in general," Avery told reporters outside the police department Tuesday. "We're talking to a lot of people."

Which is odd, because no one reported that they had a suspect in custody—just that they had a suspect, and that he may be arrested imminently. The New Haven police department seems to be trying to avoid getting ahead of itself on the case, which as it learned in the still-unsolved case of Suzanne Jovin, is usually a good idea, police-procedure-wise.

Avery had no comment on what news outlets actually did report: That a lab tech who worked in the building had wounds on his arms and chest, had failed a polygraph test administered by the FBI, had stopped cooperating and asked for an attorney, and is considered a suspect.

Le's body was found stuffed inside a wall in the basement of the lab building on Sunday, which was to be her wedding day. According to the Register, law enforcement sources say a lab tech who worked in the building had scratches on his chest and arms that he couldn't adequately explain, and failed a voluntary FBI polygraph exam. He has stopped cooperating with the police and sought a lawyer, the paper says.

The New Haven Independent says the lab tech "allegedly had an unrequited love interest in Annie Le," citing a law enforcement source.

Police yesterday found bloody clothes stashed above a ceiling tile in the lab; officials have said that the clothes didn't appear to belong to Le and are working to connect them to the tech.

In an indication that the cops have settled on their suspect, the results of Le's autopsy are expected to be announced today at 3 p.m. Officials had previously withheld the cause of death "in order to facilitate the investigation."

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.

Le went missing missing last week, when the California-bred pharmacology student "disappeared" from the medical lab where she's been working. Now, almost a week later, police say they think they've found her stuffed inside of a wall of that same lab:

"It hasn't been positively identified as of this time," Reichard told reporters Sunday night. "However, we are assuming it is her ... so we are treating it as a homicide."

State police found the body at around 5 p.m. Sunday in an area of the building that houses utility cables that run between floors. The building is in the Ivy League school's medical complex, about a mile from the main campus.

This is a shame. The 24-year old's parents emigrated from Vietnam to give her a better life and, from what we see, provided it. Yet, despite all of their mutual efforts, she ended up a victim of this great nation's killing fields. There are no known suspects.

Yes, we Americans — and, in fact, all Western dwellers — are taught that we should aim for schools like Harvard, Yale, Brown and, if you must, Vassar. Yet, in a sad testament to our nation's increasingly depressing economic situation, all four of those schools are losing their economic prestige.

Harvard announced today that their endowment amounts to a paltry $26 billion, which is down 30% since last year. Yale also faces a 30% decline: their endowment fell from $23 billion to $17 billion. Brown's also suffering with an endowment that's 27% less than this time last year. Meanwhile, the president of that school's former love, Vassar, sent out a letter to graduates, including this editor, announcing that the storied institution — Jackie O went there!! — has lost nearly the same percentage of its precious, precious piggy bank.

Of course, the schools are trying to put on a happy face. Jane Mendillo, CEO of the Harvard Management Company, insisted that the school's maintaining its fiduciary poise:

In navigating the past year's storm, we developed greater financial flexibility, strengthened our investment team, sharpened out focus and positioned both HMC and the endowment to be robust, steady and, importantly, poised to benefit from growth in the world's economies.

Um, really? We weren't economics majors, but last time we checked, there's no real growth in the world's economies. But, way to teach us a lesson in positive thinking!

So, what does this all mean? On the surface it means that these schools — and others — need to tighten their fashionable belts. On a deeper level, it means that Harvard et al. are fast on their way to losing their elitist charm and becoming poor pedestrian schmucks like the rest of us. And, honestly, it serves them right. Well, Harvard, at least. As Vanity Fair pointed out last month, the school embarked on a wildly excessive expansion plan, one that left them in the whole financially and embarrassed generally.

Rather than revamping dorms and building new graduate campuses, these schools should have been focusing on improving preexisting services, like teaching. (The Vassar president's letter encouraged students to visit a newly redecorated dorm, then discussed how staff needed to be cut. Silly!) The downfall of the nation's premiere schools serves as an indictment, this writer thinks, of the nation's irrepressible desire to link public image with private spending.

But, sadly, we need these schools to make sure our nation's children can compete with international competitors and save us from an even sadder, more pathetic future. Hey, did anyone here read Catch-22? This is kind of like that. Kind of.

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.]

It doesn't matter if you're black or white. Or gay or straight. What matters is that you're single, and the happy couples of the Weddings and Celebrations section of the Sunday NYT aren't. Professional P.Y.T. Phyllis Nefler's on the case:

Sometimes I hate it when the Times goes slumming. It's like the Vows editors have set up a Microsoft Outlook alert that periodically reminds them to interrupt the typical rotation – your renegade dating columnists-turned-wifeys, your power lesbians, your affable foreign dignitaries – for a solemn celebration of How The Other Half Lives.

But I'm also an enormous sap. There used to be this commercial with a girl whose mother takes her to McDonalds as a reward for finishing a book by herself for the first time, and then the guy behind the counter hands her a menu in Braille, and I mean, I can't even describe the spot without significant emotional turmoil. So as you might imagine, this tale of a homeless ex-con marrying a drug-addicted single mom at the behest of her cherubic 5-year-old was quite the tearjerker at the Nefler household:

I could actually just boil the whole thing down to its first and last sentences ("Paul Sousa never imagined he would marry downriver from where he camped out many nights as a homeless child growing up with an alcoholic mother. … It was the first wedding he had ever attended.") and you'd see what I mean, but then you'd miss this:

Yet the couple couldn't get too serious. Twelve-step programs always counsel participants to avoid big decisions in the first year of sobriety. Still, she stayed sober and "the red flags were turning into pink hearts," he said, laughing. But one day, Alannah, now 5, told Mr. Sousa, "Paul, I want you to be my stepdad."

He teased her: "What do I have to do? An application? Interview process?"

She looked at him and said confidently, "You have to marry my mom."

It's genuinely touching, and it makes many of the other announcements seem enormously snobby and superficial in comparison. Luckily, snobbish superficiality is exactly what we're here for. Win-win! Onward.

I'm convinced Woody Allen wrote the script for the marriage of Rebecca Rosenberg and Justin Soffer, who met "at a benefit party at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan." They both have jobs that don't really exist in real life (the bride is a "freelance writer and video producer of marketing and promotional materials" and the groom is "a vice president of subscriber marketing at Travelzoo.com") and there's even a generation gap, which was exposed in the wake of a Charles in Charge reference gone bust. The first time they met, they decided to go in on raffle tickets together. Do I need to tell you if they won?

True confessions: I have a soft spot for the surprisingly many geologists and scientists that the Times trots out each week, so I should note that while Naomi Levin and Benjamin Passey both "rock" – thank you – they are no match for Jordan Garner and Dominic Colosi.

These 23-year old recent Yale graduates could not bear to leave New Haven (which, by the way, is a city on the move!); both took jobs at the university, she as a "collections assistant in the vertebrate zoology division of the Peabody Museum of Natural History" and he as a "research assistant on mass spectrometry at the university's Earth Systems Center for Stable Isotopic Studies." Man, how come all of my friends are just dumb old analysts?

Speaking of friends, in the interest of full disclosure I should note that I know this bride, and she is wonderful and lovely. And she also knows how to pick em: "the bridegroom is a maternal great-great-grandson of Levi P. Morton, the vice president under Benjamin Harrison, and governor of New York from 1895 to 1897. The bridegroom is also a direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of the colony of New Netherland."

Elsewhere this weekend, Amanda Congdon – remember her? - married the director and editor of her vlog (her celebrated rack is not visible in the photo, unfortunately); Dick Cheney's former social secretary, who must have had a pretty light work load, married a National Security Council staffer; someone's dad literally wrote the book on Economics; the grandaughter of the ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Panama, Pakistan, and Iran kept it international and married an Australian; and once again a well-executed neg (this one in the Bahamas) led to lasting bliss, proving that Mystery really is a modern genius.

In this weeks faceoff, we explore which of two blonde Sewanee graduates has entered into a union that is worth more to society:

Jennifer Sonfield and John Wolf

The bride works for Ralph Lauren and looks like she works for Ralph Lauren: +3
The groom graduated from Stanford: +2
The groom's father "is the founder and a managing partner of European Property Partners, an investment firm that focuses on the French real estate market": +2
The bride's parents own a furniture store: -1
It's in Hilton Head: +1
The groom is a principal at his real estate firm: +2

TOTAL: 9

Claire Nicoll and Edwin Lescop

Bride is at the ideal marriage age (25): +2
Bride graduated summa cum laude and received a masters in elementary education from Columbia: +6
The groom is studying for his MBA: +2
It's not at an Ivy League school: -1
The couple got married at the church where the brides father is a priest: +2. Man, that's really taking the Scary Father in Law concept to the next level, no?

TOTAL: 11

Our key takeaway? Blond Sewanee graduates are pretty boring. Especially when compared to the drug addicts, who, by the way, are expecting their first child together. Now if you'll excuse me, it's getting a little dusty in here.

[Ed. This is a good shot of Congdon's rack. Enjoy.]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Wait a minute? What the hell is going on here? This is a "secret society" meeting at Yale?! Shouldn't Jessica be getting Eiffel-towered in a pool of goat's blood by dudes wearing Venetian masks or something? What kind of lame-ass "secret society" is this anyway? This looks more like a meeting of the Applewood Magnet High student council at the library than it does a meeting of any sort of "secret society." Dear God does Yale f-ing blow, as does the Ivy League in general, if this is their idea of a "secret society" meeting. Is it any wonder that the presidency of George W. Bush was such an abortion? Bush was a member of the Yale "Skull and Bones" secret society. Maybe if he had experienced a real "secret society" in his youth, the guy wouldn't have sucked so hard.

Seriously, how pathetically lame is this? And to think that all of you Ivy snobs were crying about how disgraceful it was for Obama to be speaking at a public school (Oh, the horror!) like Arizona State's graduation ceremony, instead of say, Dartmouth, or Brown. Say what you want about the twats at Arizona State, and they are twats, glorious, smelly, gaping twats, but I can guarantee you one thing—-If they were to conduct any sort of secret society meeting at that school, they'd do it right and have torches burning, the chantings of Gregorian monks blasting though the sound system, mounds of cocaine laying around all over the place, at least one farm animal being slayed, and people having sex all over the place, dirty, filthy, hedonistic, unprotected orgy sex, because that's how you do "secret society" meetings in the real world, assholes!

I saw Eyes Wide Shut, dammit!

Jessica Alba Visits Yale Secret Society, Members Panic and Leak Pictures from Inside the Hall [IvyGate]

Blount is an associate at Casey Quirk, an investment management consultancy, which pays even junior staffers six-figure salaries. (The firm tells its clients how to tell their clients how to manage their money, or something like that.) His Sig Ep brothers are no doubt breathlessly excited about the news — though their description of Blount as a "hottie" leaves their judgment in question.

Update: Apparently Blount was hot in college, according to the Yale Rumpus! Also, he seemed to have horticultural leanings, nudge nudge, wink wink. We think that's how frat boys make marijuana jokes, at any rate.

There's more! The April 2005 issue of Rumpus reported that Blount got rejected from Yale's business school until Barbara's dad wrote him a letter of recommendation — after which he got accepted with one year of free tuition. Also, he belonged to the Yale Potato Sack Relay Team secret society.

(Photo of Bush by New York Social Diary; Blount by AP/Scott Applewhite)

Jesse told the US Air people his Xbox was gone after his flight last December, but got only "weeks of 'an unconscionable 'run-around.'" Now he wants "non-economic distress" damages of up to $1 million. I mean, it wasn't just the video games, okay:

"That thing was my DVD player," Maiman, a junior film studies major, said. He was the 2006 Madeira High co-valedictorian.

Even more importantly, that console was a protector of his classmate's mental health. Yale student Noah Ziggy Gentele wrote an essay for the 2007 New York Times College Essay Contest noting that after he arrived at college, he suffered "an existential crisis once a month." But his friends saved him. Including Jesse Maiman!

Jesse Maiman, a brilliant young man with whom I will be living next semester, took it upon himself to become a master of all things Nintendo Wii since buying one on a drunken Saturday evening last spring. (You may laugh, but the conversations that have transpired in that room–sober and otherwise–rank among the best of the last year).

The Wii paved the way for the Xbox, which doubtless continues its invaluable contribution to ending existential crises. One million dollars shall be the barest minimum necessary to salve the scholars' psychic wounds. Pay up.