As seen in the Washington Square News.

Only one Ivy has managed to escape the bilious spew of this column’s author, and its name is more pretentious than any other in the league: Columbia University in the city of New York. And boy, oh boy, did Columbia students make it easy to end this satire column on a high note.

Ever size up someone on campus to see if they were your “type”? We all have. But Columbia’s women? They say there aren’t any good men on campus – and they’ve had enough of the bullshit (and no, I don’t mean Barnard).

So last week, one of Columbia’s finest sororities, Sigma Delta Tau, took the dating game to the next level – that is, the frighteningly professional level of artificial selection laced with trust-fund enthusiasm – to invite Janis Spindel, author of “Get Serious About Getting Married: 365 Proven Ways to Find Love in Less Than a Year” and founder of Janis Spindel Serious Matchmaking, to help them unlock the secret behind “finding handsome and successful men in New York – and, more importantly, how to marry them,” according to the Columbia Daily Spectator.

“My fees start at 100K,” Spindel told the Spectator of her service. “Ivy league, brunette, Jewish, whatever you want, I’ll get her.”

Well, good to know there’s only a Maserati-sized bill and some applied Darwinism standing between a Columbia gal and a good man. Spindel didn’t stop there, though, responding to a question about dating outside of one’s religion: “Jewish men will date shiksas. They won’t marry them. You don’t want to set yourself up for something you’re not going to finish.” The same went for interracial dating, according to the Spectator. “You’re in New York. Find someone from your own tribe.”

Have mercy! It seems our uptown neighbors are having some serious troubles finding affluent, eligible members of the “power elite” – at least from their “own tribe” – and they’re ready to pony up the cost of their entire undergraduate education to remedy the problem.

(Boys, it looks like you’re out of luck. Here’s a new idea for a mascot: The Columbia Blue Balls.)

According to the national Sigma Delta Tau website, the sorority was founded on March 25, 1917, as “a sorority which would respect the individuality of its members, especially religious minorities.” So what could be more in line with the sorority’s mission to provide sisters with “intellectual, philanthropic, leadership and social opportunities” than offering the services of Ms. Spindel?

Good to know Columbia’s sororities are sticking to their pledges to diversity. Sigma Delta Tau: Respecting the individuality of its members since 1917 – just remember to write a big check and keep to your own tribe. Don’t any of those Barnyard girls have anything to say about this?

Now NYU, I know you’re shaking your head: those elitist bastards. Though Columbia claims to have diversity, in reality students are just mating at their own lunch tables. But don’t be too presumptuous, NYU – it’s time to look in the prejudice mirror and realize that NYU violet is only a few shades away from Columbia blue. And it doesn’t take an actual Greek community to make desperation come out and rear its Ivy-covered head.

NYU, like its Ivy older brother, is a hotbed of diverse homogeneity – so what should we do to help our poor, outnumbered sorority girls find eternal love? Spindel’s already made her mark uptown, and God forbid we get caught copying an Ivy. That’s why I propose that ABC bring their hit show “The Bachelor” to Washington Square for next year’s “The Bachelor: Hipster and a Loft.”

Who wouldn’t want to see NYU’s most desperate brawl for a scruffy, Lower East Side hipster on national television? “Quite frankly, my Chucks are rotting!”

See, we downtown kids like to position ourselves like we’re less rich – and desperate – than those uptown kids. But really, it’s oranges and apples, American Apparel V-necks and Ralph Lauren polos. Different look; same function. Ever compare the posts of BoredAtBobst.com and BoredAtBaker.com? You could swap them without knowing the difference in stupidity.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

So, to appear less calculated but still find true love, we need a game show to play matchmaker for us. Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. Chris Harrison, Chris Harrison, catch me a catch.

That way, our proud but few sorority girls will be able to meet the Goldman Sachs investment bankers of their dreams – all in the name of love (cough cough), I mean a piece of that $25 million year-end bonus.

How else could a girl pay for that cavernous loft on Grand Street after graduation?

So that, my friends, is a true mark of NYU’s Ivy envy – the desire to be as upper-crust and exclusive as our upper-town neighbors but resolutely deny the motive. And I should know – three months after I toss the mortarboard at this year’s commencement, you’ll find me soaking in the August heat uptown at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Mmm, sweet hypocrisy indeed. Envy is a dish best served with irony.

Andrew Nusca is a columnist for the WSN. E-mail him at opinion@nyunews.com.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

In the Ivy hierarchy, the University of Pennsylvania is a little lost. For starters, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report place Penn in the murky space behind Princeton, Harvard and Yale, but arguably ahead of Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. Being stranded in Pennsylvania doesn’t help either – as the southernmost Ivy, it’s a little hard to feel a part of the crowd. If Harvard is the Ivy family’s overachieving big brother and Cornell is the whiny runt at the end, Penn is the quiet one in the back, pushing up its glasses as it finishes its chemistry homework. Plus, there’s that whole state-school-name-confusion that they’ve got to deal with (which we at NYU understand all too well).

It sure ain’t easy being boring, old Penn.

In contrast to the vibrant Philadelphia culture surrounding it – and I’d know, you’ll find “Philadelphia” stamped on my birth certificate – life on the Penn campus is so dull that the best and most shocking bit of news that campus rag, The Daily Pennsylvanian, could come up with as a funny spoof of regular news coverage in this year’s edition of their annual joke issue was a 10-hour elevator shutdown in one of their dorms. Er, “college houses.”

Published last week, the article explained how those modest (yet inventive!) Quakers trapped in the lift created a Facebook group titled “Help! I’m stuck in the High Rise elevators!” to MacGyver their way out of the situation. Spearheading the imaginary effort was an alumnus who, afterward, pledged $50,000 for further investigation into the problems.

$50,000 for a broken elevator? We should be so lucky!

The solution was clever, indeed, but the story is a completely believable one at Penn. So it’s no surprise that one of the most thrilling stories this week at Penn was, well, fake.

Once again, this little piece of journalistic genius got the little violet cogs in my brain going. Penn might be boring as hell and might have to make this shit up, but extracting money from alumni stuck in elevators ain’t a half-bad way to build up the endowment. Think about it: Penn has an endowment of almost $6 billion – paltry compared to Harvard’s $29.2 billion, but still three times as much as the roughly $2 billion NYU’s got tucked away in a gilded treasure chest in the Washington Square Arch. If they can sucker 50 grand from an alumnus for kicking it in an elevator for a few hours, why can’t we?

Just think about how many elevators NYU has!

To keep our “perstare et praestare” on and surpass Penn’s endowment, we should do just that: have a series of high-profile, big-ticket dinner extravaganzas all over campus, invite those generous trustees and alumni, and rig the elevators to kick out just as they’re fumbling for their checkbooks. Just picture it: Trustee chairman Martin Lipton is headed to the Rosenthal Pavilion on the 10th floor of the Kimmel Center for some kobe beef and a glass of rosé when the elevator just plain quits. “Harumph! We’ll never beat the Ivies at this rate! Better write a check to get these fixed.” Bam – $1 million down, a few thousand more to go.

At least it will work better than kidnapping and ransoming their children. Maybe.

We can start with the elevators in Carter Hall, 194 Mercer and the Bronfman Center and work our way up from there. Plus, no other Ivy can match our elevator prowess (make room for a friend!) – so trapping alumni in elevators for cash is a strategy that can exclusively put NYU ahead. We won’t be No. 34 on those pesky rankings anymore!

And since we have hundreds of thousands more alumni than any Ivy, it could be a pretty lucrative tactic. At that rate, we can change that $2.5 billion goal we’re shooting for into at least the $4 billion goal that Stanford, Cornell and Columbia have pledged. Maybe more.

That, my friends, is playing with the big dogs. Watch out, Quakers! We’re on your tail with our underdog moxie!

Andrew Nusca is a former news editor, spitting Ivy bile every week. Tell him where to shove it at opinion@nyunews.com.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

Sneetches. The Lorax. The Cat in the Hat.

No, that’s not what you saw during last night’s drug trip and I don’t need a tissue, either. I’m referencing the animated bliss of Dartmouth’s new addition to their Baker Library: a study room named after 1925 alum Theodor Geisel – known on the street by his rapper alias “Dr. Seuss.”

Yes, I’m serious. No, green eggs and ham aren’t allowed (but I’m sure they’ll make exceptions if you recite your work in anapestic tetrameter).

The campus rag, The Dartmouth, reports that the room “features colorful, framed book covers, a display case offering information about Geisel’s life and excerpts from some of his most famous works.” A large portrait hangs on the wall, and the display case contains a Dartmouth graduation hood, reproductions of Geisel’s books (because the big D is all about authenticity) and a stuffed character from one of his stories – all designed to “allow students to read in comfort and in the company of characters that may take them back to their first days of reading.”

A warm, cuddly step for the coldest Ivy in the family, who in recent years has bolstered its image and made headlines with its anthropomorphic yet unofficial mascot “Keggy the Keg” (Dartmouth is really a more Disneyfied “Big Green”). Now all 4,000-odd students can count their red fish and blue fish together in harmony, forgetting about the 18 inches of snow they trudged through to get there. I wonder if there’s space for snowshoes next to Sam-I-Am?

Dartmouth’s Seussilounge 2.0 got me thinking – hey, NYU’s got an enormous prison block of a library, why can’t we have a study room dedicated to one of our most beloved alumni?

That’s why I urge John Sexton to introduce the “M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Unbreakable Village in the Water,” a fortified study enclave dedicated to the ’92 Tisch alum situated directly in the center of the Bobst atrium. Surrounded by a moat filled with mystical water, the new addition will allow students to study together in a watery blue world, shielded from oncoming onslaught by alien assailants in 360 egocentric degrees.

Just think about it: Students can spend their time making inroads in their thesis work until – suddenly! – the plot twists and current NYU student Haley Joel Osment appears, steals their first draft, rolls it up a big joint and settles into a couch as his eyes glaze over while listening to Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” (Muse frontman Matt Bellamy is warbling and quivering his hips just thinking about it).

After all, which other member of our esteemed alumni could possibly bring such comfort during a late-night study session in Bobst?

Martin Scorsese? Spike Lee? Adam Sandler? Hakan Yalincak?

Nay, I say. If there’s any single alum I wanna study with, it’s Shyamalan. I don’t want to just study with the man – I want to hear voices with him. I want to lean back, savor a hoagie and recall everything that the man has done for my beloved Philadelphia while I watch crop circles appear and wait for the scrapple to finish frying.

What’s more, Shyamalan undoubtedly embodies the overachieving, look-at-me pomposity that is the core and key to the Ivy gold. So what better inspiration as an NYU student rising up to the Ivy challenge?

So let’s start building that new room, NYU. Order up those life-sized Paul Giamattis right away.

Wait – Giamatti’s a Yalie?

Fuck.

Andrew Nusca is a former news editor, spitting Ivy bile every week. Tell him where to shove it at opinion@nyunews.com.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

I’ve mentioned in a previous column that Cornell is the odd man out in the Ivy League. Founded in 1865, Cornell is the youngest in the Ivy family, and proponents of birth order theory would say that being the pampered youngest child leads to dependence, selfishness, irresponsibility and manipulation.

So what could possibly be more indicative of Cornell’s attention-whore attitude than launching a fucking satellite?

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Cornell is going to launch a fucking satellite. Into space.

They’re breeding little Richard Bransons over there, I swear.

According to the Cornell Daily Sun, the Cornell Satellite Team won an Air Force-sponsored competition last week, earning a free ride into space for their creation.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s a serious case of youngest child syndrome. Allow me to analyze the symptoms:

Dependence – Long pampered by higher education (“That’s OK, baby, you’re an Ivy.”), Cornell needs everyone, including its older brothers, to pay attention. “Look at our big ol’ carnelian and white satellite! Look at the teeth on that bear! Ferocious!”

Selfishness – What isn’t selfish about launching a satellite? “We’re doing it for science.” No, you’re doing it so you can say, “Look at my fucking satellite.”

Irresponsibility – Cornell’s satellite is designed for “in-orbit inspection” – that is, using one satellite to inspect another while in space. So instead of cleaning up some of the trash orbiting the earth, Cornell’s created a satellite that takes pictures of another. It’s like extraterrestrial CollegeHumor. It’s worse than your drunk roommate with a camera phone.

Manipulation – Of course, all of this satellite-launching business is done under the premise that this will benefit science and society at large. Sure, they might say it’s intended to help prevent disasters like the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy, but c’mon – we all know Cornell really wants to spy on its older brothers and see who they’re sleeping with. Or quite possibly take over the world and reign supreme, forcing everyone else to wear “Ithaca is Gorges” T-shirts as state-mandated uniforms. Big ones. Big red ones.

My recommendation this week is pretty obvious, NYU: We need to launch some shit into space.

Founded in 1831, we’re older and theoretically wiser than our Ithaca brethren, so we need to have a nose up on them. After all, who else enters a competition where the Air Force challenges each team “to think of a problem and to solve that problem by building a satellite and developing relevant technology?” At that rate, I think NYU has a problem with stank-ass Uggs and should invent a satellite to vaporize those things off the feet of every freshman who walks through the arch.

But you know what? No matter what we do, those Ivies don’t think we’re good enough, even if we beat Harvard and all the others again as the school students actually want to attend (fourth year in a row – funny how blush is the color crimson! And carnelian!).

So I propose a new solution, NYU: We need a Death Star.

NYU needs an impervious violet Death Star of epic proportions named Gallatinia that fires violet lasers at all comers, destroying every Ivy Leaguer who bitches that NYU “doesn’t belong.”

So what’s that, little bro? You have a satellite?

Well we have a fucking Death Star. Chew on that, Big Red.

Andrew Nusca is a former news editor, spitting Ivy bile every week. Tell him where to shove it at opinion@nyunews.com.

UPDATE:
My response to comments in response to “Cornell’s satellite, or, a desperate cry for attention”
By andrew nusca

In the spirit of fairness, I’m not going to respond to individual comments, but I would like to clarify what “The Ivy Torch” is all about for those readers who mistake the column for an objective source of information:

“The Ivy Torch” is a satirical opinion column intended to poke fun at the Ivy League and the Ivy-aspiring culture at NYU. It is written in a style similar to that of Gawker Media blogs, and is intended to lampoon both Ivy League schools and NYU equally. It is purely for the entertainment of its readers. Ever since Newsweek named NYU one of 25 “New Ivies” in 2006 and the university received more applicants than ever as the Princeton Review’s #1 Dream School, NYU and its students have felt the pressure to “size up” as one of the nation’s premier universities.

This can be seen in fellow classmates, many of whom applied to Ivy League schools when in high school — some even choosing NYU over one. Though the “Ivy League” status is limited to a handful of the nation’s oldest universities — first and foremost a sports league designation, let’s not forget — the cachet associated with the name is desirable by any top university excluded from it.

“The Ivy Torch” is not intended to make any argument neither for nor against the Ivy League or NYU. Students can debate the merits of what defines an “Ivy League” school — star-studded alumni, number of applicants, endowment, percent of applicants admitted, test scores and so on — until the cows come home. In reality, we should all question the value of such exclusivity when virtually everyone can agree that Ivy League schools as well as NYU and many other universities churn out top-notch students every year. This arbitrary exclusivity is precisely what fuels the crass humor behind “The Ivy Torch.”

Furthermore, it must be noted that as the author, I am stepping aside from my previous, objective duties as news editor to write this column. “The Ivy Torch” is intentionally ludicrous and makes no claim that it presents a complete argument, if any at all. As the author of this very satirical column, I do not represent the views of NYU, WSN or even myself. The column’s only purpose is entertainment, and judging by the passion in your comments, I can see that I’m succeeding at least in part.

Thank you and please continue reading and commenting,
Andrew Nusca

P.S. If you’re looking for “serious” opinion writing from me that is grounded in fact and experience, visit my media criticism blog “The Editorialiste.“

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Opinion, The Ivy Torch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

You know, I really didn’t want to end up writing about sex again, but “whoops we had slaves” Brown got jealous of all the attention I gave Harvard last week and busted out the old whips.

Er… Right.

Recently, Brown’s Queer Alliance (which admittedly sounds like one of those cartoon supergroups made for educational public-service announcements) threw a “Starf*ck” dance, an event that attracted national attention last year when the least bombastic show on television, Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” aired footage of a “Sex Power God” party shot by one of their own producers. With “guys kissing guys and girls making out with girls,” intrepid Fox producer Jesse Watters described the festivities as “pure debauchery” and “the wildest party [he'd] ever been to.”

Sex. Power. God. I didn’t know Prince was a Brown student!

Unfortunately, this year’s Queer Alliance advertisements for its “Starf*ck” party were indeed fair and balanced, which is about the last thing someone wants in a good sex romp. The ads were so pitiful, it’s like the Alliance named its party after a Nine Inch Nails song (“Starfuckers, Inc.”) but had to omit the “u” in the name because the record store down the street would only let them buy the censored version (and they were none the wiser.)

What’s a good attempt at provocation without a nice “fuck” in the title? At the party, did everyone actually sing together, “I want to f*ck you like an animal?”

The imagery wasn’t much better. Allow me to describe a recent advertisement: On the left, a girl and guy, not quite making out, but close enough to assume the message is “I want your hot, pasty body.” In the center, a guy with eyes half open watches (perhaps too much pot?). Just below him, another guy and girl embrace, but there is no lip action and the raciest part of the whole ad is his hand over her breast, holding it like a Brown running back holds a football (2-5 in the Ivies in 2006, go Bears!). To the right of this couple, another guy (who looks suspiciously like a Crosby, Stills and Nash roadie) stares on, wondering if he left the oven on.

Woo. Racy. Check please? This kind of shit happens on the C train all the time. Hell, this kind of stuff happens in the line waiting to get into Webster Hall. And we all know the kind of folk who frequent that STD-laced dungeon.

Nevertheless, apparently Brown’s sex parties get fairly out of hand – 24 students needed medical attention for alcohol consumption at a November 2005 party.

Wait a second – you mean to tell me no one’s actually having sex? And they’re really all just playing beer pong in their underwear? Talk about a libido killer: You can get more action playing “seven minutes in heaven” as a thespian in high school. No wonder Brown’s own Daily Herald called the recent party “tame.”

But with all this faux sex flying around, I’m wondering, what exactly about this party screams “queer”? Maybe I’ve been at NYU too long, but there’s nothing really “on the margins” (to use the words of Alliance president Mike DeLucia) about two fellas swapping spit.

In fact, show me some pictures of some serious sexual flogging at Brown, and then I’ll believe you – and abstain from making “brown bear” jokes. In the meantime, I think Brownies (aw, how cute) have just been reading The Symposium a little too much.

So what should we learn from Brown this week, NYU? For starters, it might mean that to have a sex party – and no, that inebriated night at Odessa was not a sex party – you need attractive people (well, I’m sure we’ve got Brown beat on that – just Google “Brown” and “deer-in-headlights-boy” to see one of the Brown Queer Alliance’s finest advertisements). It might also mean that, you know, you actually have to have some sexual relations. With all those free NYC Condoms, NYUers are good to go at any street corner. It could mean that “alternative” lifestyles are in the eye of the beholder – and for Brown students, this is when a shirtless man stands near another shirtless man and a woman wearing a strapless bra.

Clearly, Rachel Kramer Bussel isn’t syndicated in Rhode Island.

But I’m disappointed in you, NYU. With a quick Facebook event search, it seems the sex scene here – at least, the public one involving a large guest list and not your private ménage-a-quatorze – isn’t really happening. And spring has already sprung! So take some notes from Brown, NYU, and show those Ivies who the sexiest in the Northeast really is.

It’s not like you haven’t already copied their term papers.

Andrew Nusca is a former news editor, spitting Ivy bile every week. Tell him where to shove it at opinion@nyunews.com.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

Disappointed that they weren’t the first Ivy snagged by snarky journalists, those exhibitionists at Harvard University had to go along and get naked for an article in The New York Times Magazine titled “Campus Exposure,” drawing the curiosity of this columnist and many others.

In the 5,000-plud-word March 4 feature, Harvard’s H Bomb magazine was one of a selection of sexualized, student-generated “literary” publications spotlighted as “a fact of campus life.” If you haven’t heard, H Bomb is a self-proclaimed “literary arts magazine about sex and sexual issues” founded by Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg and Camilla Hrdy (who, by their powers on the Scrabble board combined, are Captain Planet!), and is for all intents and purposes pornography meets The New Yorker in a way Tom Wolfe could only dream of. The pair are out to rebel against those Puritanical attitudes in Cambridge in exchange for the dawning of the age of Aquarius, or something like that, and they are doing it with the $2,000 rubber-stamped approval of Harvard’s undergraduate student government.

Yet the point concerning the relatively unsexy nature of the reputation of Harvard students still stands. Sexy Harvard? It’s not just politically untenable. It’s not apropos at all.

So when the Grey Lady picked up on it, I was intrigued. Harvard?

I don’t know what campus the Times writer, Alexandra Jacobs, has been to lately, but last I read in the Harvard Crimson headlines, people were falling out of dorm windows (first floor, Quincy House), discovering the power of the interwebs by Googling themselves (Nathan J. Dern in a feat of unprecedented technological prowess) and debating – no wait, “extolling the virtues of” – latkes and hamantashen (March 2, Harvard Hillel). For all that the Harvard seal stands for, sex doesn’t seem to be part of it. Yet H Bomb’s version of sex seems to skew more toward the Warholian, art-meets-porn-meets-culture kind of style (dick in a Campbell’s soup can? Painfully brilliant. Sorry, Yale.), and it seems Cieplak-von Baldegg and Hrdy are out to make literature sexy. But, last I checked, The Factory was located on East 47th Street – not in the quad – and closed nearly four decades ago. So I don’t know if I can buy Harvard’s brand of sex.

How about tasteful, then?

Well, the pictures (sorry, “artwork”) aren’t anything a Tischie photographer couldn’t do in the midst of a serious drug trip. Or sober. Depending on the guy. You know what I mean.

OK, so neither groundbreaking nor tasteful. Amusing, at least? How about the writing?

The fine fountain pens of the H Bomb contributors have produced pieces that ponder the big issues in life (“How could anyone continue to use such [free] shitty condoms [from the on-campus counseling service] on a regular basis?”), teaching valuable life lessons that The Learning Channel can’t shake a stick at (“They say sex is a kind of power, and that if you know how to use it, it can make you stronger.”) and waxing poetic (“I carved a snail. I ate like a sinner”).

Let me ask you this – what’s “eating like a sinner”? Devouring a half-gallon of Edy’s Slow Churned ice cream in 20 minutes, or haphazardly munching unborn children while watching The O’Reilly Factor? Either way, it’s not very sexy.

So let’s get it straight: H Bomb ain’t nothin’ but a big bag o’ tame lame expectorated by a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who come to Manhattan on the weekends to get their Manolo Blahniks. “If you aren’t mature enough to tell the difference between playful nudity and pornography, you probably shouldn’t be reading H Bomb,” the editors write. Or, you know, leaving your house.

Looking Washington Square-ward (pun very much intended), it seems the Mark Rothko-fan club we call NYU has a dearth of student-run publications. And, to my knowledge, not one of them is about sex. For a school whose nightclub-turned-dorm Palladium once made it on a list of the nation’s most sexually active dorms, that’s a tragedy. A damn-near blasphemy, really.

NYU, it seems we’re at a crossroads. Boston University informally has Boink, a full-on pornographic endeavor; Vassar College has got the “smut and sensibility” of Squirm magazine; the University of Chicago has Vita Excolatur; and three Ivies have joined the sex pub orgy: Yale’s got their instructional SWAY (Sex Week at Yale! Woo!), Columbia’s got the unfortunately-named Outlet, and Harvard has the aforementioned Ana’s Nin-esque snob-job H Bomb. What’s an Ivy-envious Violet (Ms. Bobcat, if you’re nasty) to do?

Well, we can rely on our own hip form of snobbery, that’s what. So let’s publish art without nudity and call it porn. Cultural pioneers, there’s the upper hand in this predicament.

A publication that markets sex without any obvious reference to human anatomy or the current lexicon that involves sexuality – genius. It’s progressive. It’s more elitist, snobbish and coy than full-frontal nudity and monochrome, off-center close-ups combined.

In fact, let’s go even further – let’s eschew paper altogether. To pursue the true NYU brand of sexual vérités, we should all hop on the L, stroll north to Greenpoint and get aroused by a big pile of dirt in the corner of an empty loft. That, my friends, is sex. It’s art. And by not telling anyone about it – hell, it’s going on right now – we’ve elevated the publication of art sex to an experience of elitist nirvana.

God, we’re such trendsetters on campus, aren’t we?

As seen in the Washington Square News.

Yalie Sam Heller trusts in Yale’s exceptionalism, but he thinks sometimes Yalies let their elitism allow it to get away from them. Well, at least that’s how he starts the piece “Elitism isn’t enough: You have to act on it,” for his latest biweekly Yale Daily News column, “I Die a True American.”

According to Heller, Yalies make cash bets on who will be first to be elected to Congress and then recall, fondly, how they “rolled naked down the stairs” back at New Haven. “Whatever the reason, it’s sometimes difficult not to sniff at our contemporaries at schools that are merely good, students who don’t have electronic card access to manicured courtyards and who aren’t preternaturally confident that they’ll be captains of industry within 15 or 20 years, max … though, nothing brings you down to earth quite like a Bentley kid smashing your face into a wrestling mat.”

Pity. Apparently, Yale is the only Ivy besides Dartmouth not to have an NCAA wrestling team. Heller, who wrestles for a club team, believes that despite the many ways “ivy-laureled god-kings” can reinforce their superiority (going by “senator” in an instant messenger screen name, tattooing a “massive family crest” across a chest, etc.), the best way to do it is to pummel some kid from Valley Forge Military College who failed out of his previous school – instead of quietly resigning himself to the fact that he’ll be his competitor’s “boss’s boss.”

(By the way, Heller – in a flourish of my own elitism, “family” crests do not exist. Crests are granted only to individuals, and the United States doesn’t recognize them.)

Heller actually lost to the Valley Forge kid (who got his face smashed now?). But he decided then and there – OK, after he checked his trust fund to make sure he’s got enough to buy the victor’s college – to write a column that included a greatest hits list of Yale achievements and mildly pondered the notion that Yalies need to prove their worth: “We’re eventually going to go head-to-head with these kids, and it’s going to be as equals.” And what about after graduation, Heller? “We have to demonstrate genuine leadership above and beyond test scores.”

That’s right. Heller hasn’t challenged the idea that Yalies think they are exceptional and entitled to lead your life as an adult. He merely challenged the method as to how this will be accomplished.

Sound familiar, NYU students? It’s clear that we don’t have the Revolutionary history of most of the Ivies. (Except Cornell – the jury’s still out on how you managed your elite spot. With our founding in 1831, we’ve got 34 years of history on you.) But surely we establish our elitism in different ways. “New Ivy”? We scoff at such established hierarchy. We’re not happy being No. 2, you know. So we reaffirm our purple-powered superiority by raising our tuition ever higher; wearing much cooler clothing (because you thought the “Rugby” store was sooo cool until you realized it was just the next incarnation of Ralph Lauren); listening to much cooler music (we heard of them before you did – and they’re total sellouts now that you’ve heard it); insisting that the color is really “violet” (like crimson is to red – get it?); and basking in the glory of being America’s reigning “No. 1 Dream School” three years running, while admitting fewer Ivy rejects than ever.

Well, maybe not that last part. But we have more spots to fill than you do. Honest!

So maybe the “NYU” acronym doesn’t quite have the cachet of a one-word name that just reeks of Ivy elitism. Hmm.

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell?

Meet Gallatin.

Andrew Nusca is a former news editor and contributing writer for WSN. E-mail him at opinion@nyunews.com.

Excerpts from Sam Heller’s column
“Elitism isn’t enough: You have to act on it”
Published in Yale Daily News March 2, 2007

“Whatever the reason, it’s sometimes difficult not to sniff at our contemporaries at schools that are merely good, students who don’t have electronic card access to manicured courtyards and who aren’t preternaturally confident that they’ll be captains of industry within 15 or 20 years, max. Speaking from my experience at NCWA Regionals last weekend, though, nothing brings you down to earth quite like a Bentley kid smashing your face into a wrestling mat.”

“It would’ve been easy then to resort to facile elitism, to convince myself that, while I might’ve lost to him by a major decision, I would be his boss’s boss. But, despite my conviction that I was a real world-beater, when it was just me and Valley Forge’s Mike Morrin on Sunday, he won.”

“When only two of 21 candidates for president attended an Ivy League school as undergraduates and two more were in Ivy graduate programs (thanks, Ivygate), we need to understand that we’re eventually going to go head-to-head with these kids, and it’s going to be as equals.”

As seen in the Washington Square News.

A recent undercover piece in the New York Observer highlighted the “unethical and inappropriate” conduct of Princeton University’s eating clubs – for example, at the University Cottage Club’s annual lingerie party, where male students, a la a recent Saturday Night Live skit, were nude but for boxes covering their genitals. The Observer’s piece criticized the eating clubs for using race and affluence, among other factors, as criteria for membership.

Step One: Cut a hole in a box.

Step Two: Put your ursine junk in that box.

Step Three: Thanks to an esteemed pedigree and a trust fund that would make Solomon blush, attend one of Princeton’s insular eating clubs and try, unsuccessfully, to make any of the well-affiliated, lingerie-clad Keira Knightley body doubles open the box.

Though such a situation would make anyone – Ivy League or not – lose his appetite, the New York Observer’s Spencer Morgan sucked it up, purged and went undercover (in a box?) as a WASP to find out the “real scoop” on Princeton’s variety of fraternity. The findings? Race, sex and pedigree play a part in the selection process of these clubs, and – oh God – one year, they actually let some no-legacy black girl in! Because she was prettier than a white girl!

What scandal!

Just a day later, four writers from The Daily Princetonian (totally independent from the university, they say) saw to it that the truth came out – that the Observer scooped them on their own turf, and that the reporting was “unfair” and “sensationalistic,” according to the people who frequent the clubs.

“The fact that specific sophomores were named and used to serve someone’s agenda against the club is infuriating. They’re just kids. They’ve done nothing to deserve this,” former Ivy Club president Wyatt Rockefeller told the Princetonian.

Actually, Wyatt, they did plenty to deserve this. They paraded their junk around in boxes at an eating club and allowed pictures to be taken of it.

Another anonymous Tiger (grr) e-mailed Morgan, claws extended:

“I have read finer pieces of reporting in high school newspapers. Your article, which I can only assume was meant to be a titillating gossip piece rather than a devastating exposé of the university eating clubs, relied on very few facts but rather depended heavily on innuendo, hearsay and questionable sources.”

Don’t we all love reading high school newspapers in our free time? Besides, I think our e-mailer just wanted to use the word “titillating” in reference to an article with the aforementioned bear-in-a-box image. The bullying letter continues, courtesy of the IvyGate blog:

“Perhaps you were just the sad kid in high school who kept to himself, but occupied his time ranting about what all the other kids were doing that was so wrong.”

Ah, so the truth comes out. All the cool kids were really skipping class to have their drivers take them shopping at Upper East Side boutiques, do lines off the edge of a Jackson Pollock canvas and get away with it because dad and the dean were “tight.”

Or was that the Olsen twins? Oh, never mind.

Either way, it’s clear Princetonians don’t want to be labeled as elite racists. But let’s not assume they all are – after all, one club was kind enough to admit its token minority for the year. Here at NYU, we’re so diverse and populous such racism is impossible. At our urban, counter-culture university, equality means every club has a token Caucasian! Elitism is a team contact sport, and we should all be equally free to conduct our own “Find the Illegal Immigrant” searches!

It seems that with seven times the enrollment of our second-closest Ivy neighbor – and by neighbor, I mean “God, did you really have to take New Jersey Transit?” – our deft strides toward Ivy-level elitism and exclusion ensure that even our Greek population is marginalized (and ridiculed, and pushed as far away from campus as possible). Eating clubs? Ha! We’ve got the Torch Club, so exclusive that lowly undergrads never even see the alumni who frequent it actually eating there. What’s that? Princeton banned secret societies? Well, our Red Dragon Society is so secret its own members don’t know what it’s for.

OK, so maybe we don’t go so far as to cattle-brand our students on campus. But watch out, Princeton. We’ve turned exclusion into an art – which is much more pretentious than a tradition.

Plus, no one at NYU would dare show up to a party mimicking that overblown Saturday Night Live skit. “Dick in a box”? Please.

Wait, Andy Samberg is a Tisch film alum? Shit.

Well, at least we know you need to wear clothing to surprise anyone by opening that box.

Andrew Nusca is a contributing writer and former news editor for WSN. E-mail him at opinion@nyunews.com.

As seen in the Washington Square News.

Living in Brooklyn is like the buzz cut to Manhattan’s mullet – Manhattan might be all business in the front and all party in the back, but Brooklyn’s the place you’re going to want to crash in the end. With rents still less than Manhattan and apartments twice the size – plus an actual, God’s-honest-truth sky – there’s something relaxing about coming home to the BK. It’s still mostly residential, there is a growing downtown (with skyscrapers!) and a wealth of landmarked neighborhoods. I live in Clinton Hill, which is a beautiful enclave of fantastic architecture and brownstones on every block. It used to be a rough area decades ago (it’s the former home of the Notorious B.I.G., and Myrtle Avenue had the nickname “Murder Avenue”), but it’s currently made up of black professionals, housing projects and hipster students who consider Williamsburg expensive. All in all, the area is mostly families and students, and the low-rise feel of it means I can see Manhattan’s skyline standing on the street…as well as sunshine.

FAST FACTS
Price per month: $2,000
Occupants 3
Utilities: $263/month ($80 electricity; $60 gas; $125 cable, internet and phone)
Commute to campus: 30 minutes
Subways: take G north or soutth to: L, E, V, A, C, F

As seen in the Washington Square News.

NYU’s College of Nursing will hold its first-ever commencement exercises today for its students after nearly 75 years as a division of the Steinhardt School of Education.

Elevated to the stature of a college in September 2005, the College of Nursing will see Dr. Antonia Novello, the state health commissioner, deliver the graduation’s keynote address. Of the 289 graduates, 175 students will receive bachelor’s degrees, 97 students will receive master’s degrees, nine students will receive doctoral degrees and eight students will receive advanced certificates.

Dean Terry Fulmer said in an e-mail that students picked Novello to deliver the keynote address.

“They said, ‘Dean Fulmer, we want you to ask Antonia Novello,’ and I did,” Fulmer said. “She is a wonderful physician and an excellent choice for the first commencement keynote speaker.”

Fulmer said a number of prominent figures in the field will also be recognized for their achievements. Judith Giuliani, the managing director of Changing Our World, Inc., will receive the New York University College of Nursing Humanitarian Award in recognition of her outstanding humanitarian effort on behalf of New Yorkers. Registered nurse Susan Bower-Ferres will receive the Distinguished Clinical Leadership award for outstanding contributions as a clinical leader and Novello will receive the Helen Manzer Award in recognition of outstanding leadership on behalf of improved health for the American people.

Judith Haber, the dean for Graduate Programs and Ursula Springer Leadership Professor in Nursing, said in an e-mail that the graduation is a “historic event that celebrates the proud history of the NYU Nursing program.”

“As one of the premier nursing programs worldwide, NYU Nursing alumni around the globe will mark this special event as one which recognizes the scope of national and international leadership and influence,” Haber said. “As a double alum (’67 MA, ’84 Ph.D), I am thrilled to be participating in this momentous event at which the first class of future nurse leaders is graduating from the NYU College of Nursing.”

The opportunity to become a college “evolved” from the installation of new Steinhardt administrators and Steinhardt’s “own introspection and search for a new dean,” Fulmer said.

“The timing was right to ask the questions: ‘Is this the right time to reposition nursing in the university? Is a college of nursing at the College of Dentistry a way to enhance the research and scholarship of nursing?’ ” Fulmer said. “The answer was ‘Yes.’ ”

Fulmer said enrollment is up this year for all programs, most of all the undergraduate program, with over 900 undergraduate applications this year, an increase of 24 percent from 724 applicants in 2005. More importantly, the college is seeing an increase in applications from around the country and internationally — a significant change from the traditionally high amount of applications from the tri-state area, Fulmer said.

“Nursing is being re-discovered as a profoundly gratifying career,” Fulmer said. “Over a quarter of this year’s incoming undergraduate class is coming to the nursing program having already completed one or more post-secondary degrees.”

Higher enrollment is partially due to “enhanced visibility” that allowed the college to recruit what Fulmer called “the best students from across the nation and the world.”

“Being a college strengthens our status as the premiere place for faculty recruitment,” Fulmer said. “Nationwide, nursing research faculty understand NYU now has a stronger, more committed nursing program as a college headed by a dean — and it makes the students feel terrific. They love it.”

Edit Meier, a junior in the School of Nursing, is also pleased by the school’s new independent status and graduation.

“Especially now that there is such a need for nurses, I think it puts the school out there for what it is,” she said. “And it’s a huge honor for the students, professors and the school as a whole to be recognized for all of that.”

Fulmer said the college’s first commencement is only the beginning of many great things in store for nursing students.

“The future for the College of Nursing and the nursing profession as a whole is bright indeed,” Fulmer said.

The College of Nursing’s commencement exercises will be held at 11 a.m. in the New Amsterdam Theatre at 214 W. 42nd St.