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“Harvard”

…A musical number from Les Miserables, of course!

Well, actually, no.

But still, as this Youtube video (via Yale Daily News) attests, it was pretty epic when it happened during lunch in Davenport College (one of Yale’s 12 residential colleges). The clip shows a group of students spontaneously belting out a rendition of “One Day More” as a fight between Harvard and Yale, in light of Saturday’s Harvard-Yale football game (Harvard won). The production even included brass and string instruments!

When can we expect something similar to happen in Rocky dining hall? It would be EPIC and would definitely pump me up for the rest of the day. Perhaps the two opposing sides could be students and grade deflation? That’s the closest thing I can come up with that can be considered our rival.

Yalies even produced their own version of “Where The Wild Things Are” with the Yale football team (complete with Arcade Fire, of course!). It’s pretty hilarious, and it definitely beats Yale’s traditional “Bladderball” event, which was just bizarre. The video after the jump:

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Nov 23, 2009

Things I Wish Would Happen While I’m Eating Lunch…

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Thanks to FMyLife.com, the abbreviation “FML” has invaded our cultural lexicon. In fact, it’s become sort of annoying to hear people say “FML” about absolutely anything: “Today, I woke up five minutes late! FML!” or “I want a mango! FML!!”

But we’ll soon be able to compose and read our very own Princeton-specific FMLs! Umm…FML?

Harvard freshman Jonah Varon recently started College FML, an umbrella organization that runs various college FMLs around the country. College FML, which is not affiliated with Harvard FML, has started about 30 college-specific sites and continues to expand, according to Varon.

Varon told The Ink that he hopes to launch Princeton FML “very soon,” and he’s currently on the hunt for Princeton students to moderate the site. One prerequisite, however: “a good sense of humor.”

The San Francisco native said that he developed the framework for College FML in four days. “The first few sites I launched attracted so many visitors that within a few days my web host disabled my account,” Varon said in an email. “I had to transfer all the websites to a dedicated server, which could handle the web traffic. Since then, the sites have continued to experience explosive growth.”

Harvard appears to have been the first college to have its own FML site, which was started by The Voice (a student group). In the Ivy League, Varon has opened FML sites for Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, and Columbia.

Okay, we guess we’ll admit that we’re sort of excited about this. But one question: will we soon have our own MLIA site, too?

Nov 18, 2009

Princeton FML Coming Soon! Maybe?

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399px-Alek_Wek,_Red_Dress_Collection_2007This fall, Princeton offered a course on the sociological implications of Bruce Springsteen.

Then comes big bad Harvard, clearly jealous, and they’re all, “OK, Princeton, we see your bid for pop-cultural relevance and raise you… The Wire. So real! So gritty! Your move.”

Princeton’s response? “Model Memoirs: The Life Stories of International Fashion Models,” an African-American Studies/Comp Lit class (announced today) that will be taught next semester by Professor Wendy Belcher.

Advantage: Princeton.

Here’s the description from the Registrar’s website:

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Nov 5, 2009

Princeton’s Next Top Model (Class)

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Sad Harvard :(

Sad Harvard :(

Poor Harvard. It can’t seem to catch a break.

After seeing its endowment plummet 27.3 percent last fiscal year (compared with 22.7 percent at Princeton), Harvard revealed over the weekend that it lost a lot more money than just the decline in endowment (which amounts to an $11 billion loss).

The Cambridge school lost an additional $1.8 billion by investing with the endowment the money they use to pay the bills.

Harvard then lost  $500 million more to get out of interest-rate swaps, which the university planned to use to secure better rates to finance their Allston expansion. Instead of seeing higher interest rates, as Harvard had originally bet on, the economic recession pushed central banks to slash lending rates further.

This comes on the heels of Harvard’s decision last winter to issue $2.5 billion in bonds to pay its debts. A month later, Princeton followed suit and raised $1 billion by issuing bonds–but at a cheaper rate–to use as working capital so it could avoid drawing down its endowment further. The difference in interest rates between Princeton and Harvard for their bonds amounts to $6.75 million in savings per year for Princeton.

Now it all makes sense why Harvard has had to lay off 275 staff members, stop serving hot breakfast in the dining halls, close one of its libraries, and halt construction on its Allston expansion (there is literally a giant hole in the ground where the new science building is supposed to be).

At least Harvard’s faculty members will still have cookies at their meetings. Oh wait, nevermind.

(image source: flickr.com)

Oct 19, 2009

Harvard can’t stop losing money

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800px-Nassau-hall-princeton.JPGFOUND in the Harvard Graduate’s Magazine of 1917:

James Hibben, Princeton’s 14th President, was in Cambridge to receive an honorary degree from our rival up north.  During his acceptance speech he tells this awful story…

“In the year 1802, Nassau Hall, the oldest of our college buildings, and at the time the only college building, was burned, and there was a loss not only of the building, but of the library and all of the philosophical apparatus, as it was then called.  The Board of Trustees made an appeal to the friends of Princeton that in the hour of her distress they would come to relief.  The first response to that appeal, and the first contribution to our necessity, came from Harvard University.  Not only that, but the then President of Harvard, President Willard, appointed a committee to collect funds in Boston for Princeton.”

That’s right: NASSAU HALL – Old Nassau, our Nassau, the building we give praise to, sing to, salute to – WAS REBUILT WITH HARVARD MONEY.  Will you ever be able to look at it the same way again?

image: Dmadeo

Oct 19, 2009

A Crimson Key To Nassau Hall?

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Staples+Easy+ButtonImagine a Princeton student saying that the academics here are just too darn easy and that the school should get harder. Why yes, please deflate our grades even more! And can we tackle another JP or two while we’re at it? This, I promise you, is something no Princetonian would ever utter.

Which is why I was so fascinated to read a recent article written by a Harvard senior about his school’s academics, and why he believes Harvard should be harder(!).

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Sep 28, 2009

Harvard Student Says Something a Princetonian Would Never Say: College Is Too Easy!

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Apparently hats are not required for the number one school in the country

Apparently hats are not required for the number one school in the country

August is upon us! Ah, the Sunday of the summer months, freedom mixed with the creeping inevitability of the school year. Personally, we’re with Dave Plotz and his zany plan to rid the world of this month once and for all! But August or not, we’re still here at The Ink summer news desk, wading through the Sea of Media to bring you the finest Princeton news. In this week’s edition: Princeton locks down another 1/9th of the Supreme Court, West Point beats us in college rankings, Robbie George still doesn’t like gay marriage, Harvard tries to recoup some of its endowment via haberdashery, and WE GET MONEY FOR FUSION!!!

  • One more time, for the people way up in the nosebleed seats: SONIA SOTOMAYOR CONFIRMED! That’s right, Princeton’s getting another Supreme Court justice. We’re tired of this story, and you probably are, too. But just in case, wise Latina t-shirts.
  • It’s not all sunshine and rainbows on Nassau Street – Forbes bumped us down to number two on its “America’s Best Colleges” list. The usurper? West Point! Seriously? Seriously. Putting us number two seems to be something of a fad for major publications, with the Forbes bump following last year’s dethroning at the hands of US News and World Report. But we were kind of hoping Steve-O (commonly known as Malcolm “Steve” Forbes ’70) would keep the homerism going longer than just the one year, but as they say up in Montreal, c’est la vie!

George, Harvard, and Fusion post-jump!

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Aug 10, 2009

Week in Review: August 3 – August 9

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Slow week here at the Ink desk, but we’ve scrounged around some bits for you. This week’s theme is “disappointment.” Princeton gets beat out in two things it holds most dearly: being compared to Hogwarts and making money. There’s a band called Princeton, but not at all related to the university. Also, we reconsider the Derek Zoolander Center for Ants.

You can tell this is Cornell because Harry is about to jump out that window

You can tell this is Cornell because Harry is about to jump out that window

  • IvyGate brings us our first disappointment of the week, a list of the “5 Campuses if you want the Harry Potter Experience.” Katherine Cohen, one of those newfangled college application counselors, compiled the list, and seems to have used no method or reason to make the choices she did. Yale made the list (alright), and so did Cornell (what?). Cohen’s reasoning: “Like competitors in the TriwizardChallenge, Cornellians wear their red scarves when they compete against their Ivy League rivals.” Uh, cool, I guess. This might outrage Whitman kids, what with their Harry Potter nights and all, but come on guys, this is a blessing in disguise. We hope high school students don’t seriously consider “the Harry Potter experience” when applying to colleges. Oh, wait, what’s that Ms. Cohen?

Although none of my students have listed being a “muggle” on their resumes, many students have wanted to attend a campus that is reminiscent of what they have read or seen in Rowling’s books.

    Alright, Cornell, you can have those.

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Jul 26, 2009

Week in Review: July 20 – 26

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i iz andover

i iz andover

Forbes.com posted a story yesterday about an earth shattering discovery: there are these crazy things called “prep schools”!

Perhaps we’re being assholes, but isn’t the existence of prep schools, like, pretty much common knowledge? We half expect Forbes to write about something called the “Ivy League” and “parochial schools” next week.

In addition to a slideshow of some prep schools, the piece offers wonderful insights such as, “The Ivy League is still the Ivy League.” The rest of the article can basically be summed up as such: Prep schools are private! They can be famous! They have pretty campuses! Rich people go there! But so do poor people! They have famous alumni! They send their kids to the Ivy League! But so do public schools!

The most obnoxious part of the article is at the end:

But at the end of the day, writing Harvard or Princeton on your résumé really does mean something. So does what prep school you attended.

Okay, we can only hope writing “Princeton” on our résumé “really does mean something.” Because with grade deflation and the Great Depression 2.0, we’re just sure our prep school education will come in real handy.

(image source: forbes.com)

Apr 7, 2009

Forbes Magazine discovers something called “prep schools”

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225px-jim-kimToday’s New York Times ran an article heralding the new Dartmouth College president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim (full story here). What caught our attention, though, was the headline: “Dartmouth Selects Its New President from Harvard.” An Ivy League president with ties to (gasp!) a different Ivy?

There’s something unique about that Crimson, though, that makes the Times’ college-cum-university presidential supercenter inference especially apt. Kim’s hiring will make three out of the seven Ivy League presidents educated at some point at Harvard. For those of you at home keeping score, Penn’s Amy Gutmann got her B.A. from Radcliffe and her Ph.D. from Harvard and Brown’s Ruth Simmons received a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Granted, Dr. Kim is inextricably linked to Harvard: in addition to working as an official at Harvard Med School, he got his Ph.D. in Anthropology and his M.D. at Harvard. But the article buries that fact that Kim also went to Brown undergrad, in the same paragraph that mentions his football prowess at his Iowa high school (he was a quarterback).

What consolation is there for us at Princeton? Well, three out of the seven Ivy presidents have at some point taught here: Gutmann, Simmons, and of course Shirley. So we’ve got that going for us.

Mar 3, 2009

Those Incestuous Ivies!

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Someone had too much at breakfast

Someone had too much at breakfast

Larry Summers, head of Obama’s National Economic Council and once-beloved Harvard president, attended yesterday’s “fiscal sustainability summit” in the White House. For the event, Obama convened over a hundred policy makers and intellectuals to discuss bipartisan approaches to deficit reduction.

If anyone was wondering why Larry was a bit quiet during the whole thing, well, the Financial Times reports that “Lawrence Summers . . . fell asleep on the podium.” Falling asleep in the audience is understandable, sure, but the podium? It’s enough to make Rick Santelli mad!

The good news for students is that apparently Harvard’s unofficial motto now extends to the White House: “The hard part is getting in.”

(image source: huffingtonpost.com)

Feb 24, 2009

Making Harvard Proud

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fitzgeraldOn the occasion of tonight’s Oscars, here’s a December piece from Slate.com that looks at “how F. Scott Fitzgerald decided where to send his characters to college.”

The impetus for the article stems from the omission of Harvard references in the Best Picture nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is based off of Fitzgerald’s short story. In the story, Benjamin Button is a Harvard man, though in the film, he is Brad Pitt, so, like, whatever dude.

(image source: slate.com)

Feb 22, 2009

Slate.com: “Harvard, Yale, or Princeton?”

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