The New York Times ran a story on college chastity clubs, with a focus on Janie Fredell of Harvard's True Love Revolution. As a counterpoint, the author interviewed Lena Chen, the Harvard student who wrote about her romantic escapades on Sex and the Ivy. In between when they interviewed her (November) and today's publication date, some jerk she used to date released nude photos of her, and she started cutting back on her blog. On......

--Snow? Tomorrow morning? Surely you jest. We were hoping this long winter was over. Silly us. [WBZ] --The Globe notices female mayors, hears them roar, is surprised. [Boston Globe] --The body of the man who fell in the Sudbury River has been recovered. [WHDH] --An update on the attempt to limit the number of students to an apartment to four. [Brighton Centered] --Is Harvard trying to shake up its ultra-liberal reputation? They've invited Karl......

Harvard University students were surprised to discover that they won't be receiving "party grants," which are exactly what you think. But those halcyon days are over. After a brief struggle over whether or not party grants should continue, it appears that the Undergraduate Council abruptly settled the issue, at least for this semester. From the Crimson: Two Mondays ago Joshua D. Smith ’09 applied for an Undergraduate Council party grant. When he received no word......

More reason for cash-starved college students, especially those in the UMass system, to cultivate the taste for ramen. WBZ reports, "The university's trustees finance panel approved a 3.1 percent increase in fees Wednesday." The hike applies to all UMass campuses, including UMass-Boston. However, UMass-Amherst will see the greatest rise in fees. A press release from the school points out that, compared to the private schools, public education is still a bargain: Last year, the average......

You'd think that Boston College would know to steer clear of controversy after the Condoleezza Rice Fiasco. But Boston College Law School invited Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who won't say that waterboarding is torture, to speak at their commencement, and not everyone is happy about it. As a compromise, Mukasey will get to speak, but he won't get a Founder's Medal from BC. Then again, it could have been worse. They could have invited Alberto......

An MIT student died early this morning in what the AP says was an apparent fall from the fifth floor of the Delta Upsilon fraternity house. Robert Wells was a senior from Ballston Spa, New York. He studied in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and played on the football team. In WBZ's online video, a neighbor described the scene: "The body was laying right next to that car with white towels on it,......

After much wrangling and justifiable concern, Boston has approved Harvard University's plans to build what the Allston-Brighton TAB calls a "$1 billion science complex." The complex was in doubt because the community wasn't happy with a benefits package that Harvard was going to give to the community. A massive science complex will bring plenty of change, not to mention traffic, and Allston wanted something in return. Here's what Harvard offered that met with the city's......

We've been sitting on this one for a while, but it's hard to resist. Bostonist is fascinated by the return of H Bomb, Harvard University's sex magazine. So, what are they doing to bring the sexy to the Ivy League? For starters, they took nude photos. And then they brought in the big guns--former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Now, when you think of sexy politicians, perhaps John Edwards comes to mind. But don't forget that......

The Hasty Pudding, the filet mignon to the Harvard Lampoon's ground chuck, has announced the recipients of its Hasty Pudding award. This year, Charlize Theron is Woman of the Year, and Christopher Walken will be Man of the Year. The Crimson announced that Theron will be honored with a parade and roast on February 7, while Walken will be honored on February 15. Walken has been spotted here recently while filming The Lonely Maiden. And......

At this time of year, all the local colleges are settling in to contemplate who is in and who is out. Kids with stars in their eyes are hoping to go to the school of their choice so they can go on to lucrative careers as doctors, lawyers, and Internet entrepreneurs. An entrance to Harvard might lead to Facebook-esque fame. So no wonder the kids are going all out. Really all out. Recently, Linda Wertheimer......

You'd think with all of Harvard's brainpower they'd be finding the cure for cancer. But instead they looked into a crystal ball and found … nothing. The Crimson reports that psychology graduate student Samuel T. Moulton ’01 and Psychology Professor Stephen M. Kosslyn believe that they have debunked ESP (Extrasensory Perception) by testing subjects and looking at MRI scans of their brains. Yet they found no existence of ESP: According to Moulton, if ESP existed,......

While the idea of living with seven or so people in an apartment that should only hold four sounds disgusting, it's kind of fun and a reasonable option for cash-strapped college students. However, Boston City Councilor Michael Ross wants to put an end to it. Ross wants only four students, max, to live in any one apartment. According to Scott Van Voorhis, he wants his plan to be part of the city's zoning code. The......

It's a hot debate right now. The Somerville Journal posted pictures and video of the annual Tufts Naked Quad Run. The video and pictures are far from titillating. It's tush, tush, tush as far as they eye can see. But some readers, including Tufts students who participated in the Naked Run, were aghast that the pictures emerged, the Herald reported. They argued that it was a private event. The Herald pointed out, though, that taxpayer-funded......

Harvard President Drew Faust has quickly distinguished herself from other Harvard presidents with some recent bold moves. First, she announced that Harvard would improve its financial aid offers, and now she is announcing that she will review the university's expansion to Allston, which had been perceived as a done deal during the reign of past president Larry Summers. From the Globe: "A $1 billion science complex, which will house a stem cell institute, will stay......

Harvard is putting all the money it has (see: "Harvard's Rich, Bitches!") to some truly good use by expanding financial aid packages to students. Here's the details from the AP: The university said it would replace all loans with grants, and spend up to $22 million more annually on aid, mostly targeting middle- and upper-middle class students. Families earning under $60,000 already pay nothing to attend the world’s richest university, with an endowment of nearly......

With Boston as perhaps the world’s foremost college town, a large part of our population is staring down Fall Semester’s final exams. For some, this period is little more than another opportunity to display a sharp mind. For others, however, exam period is one of struggle, frustration, and pain. To this latter group we suggest an alternative: Just go back to high school. It’s been done before… A twenty-five-year old Kenneth Lickiss took a Greyhound......

In October, Boston University threw down the gauntlet and declared plans to expand. Now, Boston College is one-upping BU with expansion plans of its own. BC's expansion plan rivals that of BU. BU said it would put in $1.8 billion, and BC has announced that it will spend $1.6 billion. The BC Heights reports that the money will go to construction and renovation, and 100 new faculty members will be hired. The rest will go......

The Harvard Lampoon has a grudge against the trees at Mount Auburn and Holyoke, and an editor was busted hacking on a tree in October. Now, the Crimson reports that the Cambridge Department of Public Works had to take down the rest of the trees on the same island James Powers allegedly vandalized because they were damaged so badly. Three Japanese maples and a crabapple were removed. Poor trees. If they could be reached for......

H Bomb, the Harvard University sex magazine, vanished for reasons that had nothing to do with scabies. Last year, the people who ran H Bomb lost their status as an official student group. But ">Lingbo Li at the Crimson revealed this week that H Bomb is back in the school's good graces, and they will publish a new magazine on February 14. H Bomb only published two issues, but a new editor, Martha ‘Martabel’ Wasserman,......

Bostonist's post about the hackers at Milton Academy stirred the passions of Milton students and others who felt that we weren't giving the students who got busted hacking (or the whole school in general) a fair shake. They were particularly upset that we claimed students were overprivileged. So, here's their unvarnished words in defense of the school: From lhalpern 10, a Milton Student: check your facts and give milton a break it is a......

When the students of the tony Milton Academy aren't busy getting their freak on, they are hacking into computers and stealing information. David Abel at the Globe reports: A Milton Academy student has been expelled and three others have been suspended for the rest of the school year after they hacked into the elite private school's computer system, changed grades, altered attendance records, and, in one case, gained access to an exam before it......

Two Boston University professors broke the stereotype of uptight, elbow-patched instructors last week when they let their students bring beer to their advertising class. Unfortunately, these cool professors are now in trouble. Angela Marie Latona at the Daily Free Press reports that Lawrence DeLamarter and Dave Schaefer (wait--any relation to el cheapo Schaefer beer?) let students bring beer so they could build an advertising campaign around the product. Their next classes were cancelled. That is......

After Harvard officials attempted to crack down on "party grants" that were funding booze, the school and the Undergraduate Council reached a compromise. The UC will still be able to give out party grants, but the money can't go toward alcohol. Victoria Kabak at the Crimson reported yesterday that "The money may now instead cover the costs of other party-related expenses." The agreement will last until the end of the semester. And the Harvard students......

One of the most famous sights in Cambridge--MIT's Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry--is leaking. MIT is now suing Gehry for negligence. The Stata Center may look amazing on the outside, and it got a shout-out in Doonesbury, but Shelley Murphy at the Globe reports that the inside is a mess of cracks, drainage backups, and mold. MIT paid $1.5 million to fix problems in the Stata Center's amphitheater--which is a rotten icing on top......

--An 18-year-old screamed racist comments at BPD officers working Tuesday's Red Sox Rally. And then he tried to get out of it by saying he was a cousin of a State Representative. The BPD wasn't impressed. According to Michele McPhee, Peter Kouroujian was busted for drinking underage when he took out his anger on police: As police tried to remove Kouroujian, he allegedly screeched, “Hey, you (expletive). Why don’t you do some real police......

The Sustainable Endowments Institute, which is based in Cambridge, has published its second annual College Sustainability Report Card. The Institute issues grades for schools in several green-friendly fields: Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Green Building, Transportation, Endowment Transparency, Investment Priorities, and Shareholder Engagement. The endowment and investment fields are crucial to the report because they indicate whether or not a school is putting its money where its mouth is and investing in......

After definitively telling Bostonist that a scabies outbreak happened at Harvard's Pennypacker Hall, the school's University Health Service (UHS) sent out an e-mail saying might not have been scabies after all. Maybe. The memo from UHS sent Wednesday afternoon states that the results are inconclusive and that the ants in the Pennypacker pants resulted from "unknown" causes. Ivy Gate Blog has a copy of the memo, which says, "As is frequently the case with rashes,......

While most colleges live and die by US News & World Report, the Washington Monthly is offering competition with what's really important--how much the students help the community when they get their diplomas. Here are the three criteria from the Monthly: The first is social mobility: does the school do a good job recruiting and graduating poorer students? The second is research: is the school supporting the scientific and humanistic study that is key to......

A worker at an MIT nuclear reactor facility has been exposed to "higher-than-normal" levels of radiation. Between July 1 and September 30, the worker had been exposed to 80 percent of the total radiation a person should ever encounter in a year. We presume that the worker has been moved to an other department. MIT swiftly issued a "don't panic" statement, saying that the worker is okay. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is inspecting the facility......

A Harvard student got caught trying to cut down trees that weren't his last Sunday morning. James Powers, a Lampoon editor, decided he didn't like trees that had just been planted at Mount Auburn and Holyoke. The Cambridge Chronicle tried to get a comment, but Powers isn't saying anything. He thinks that's funny? Does he plan to pay the city back for those trees? Oh, his parents can probably handle it. Fifty-three people commented on......