The quick and dirty about what's been going on around the Ancient Eight (and some other schools too).

It’s only been a few days since we entered 2010, but it’s already a rough one for Yale. Iran recently listed the University as one of the subversive organizations allegedly responsible for the unrest following the nation’s “elections” last June. Apparently, Yale is one of 60 organizations involved in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plot to spawn civil unrest within Iran’s borders.

In other news, Peru is now suing Yale University for failing to return various artifacts taken from the Machu Picchu site years ago. It all started between 1911-15 when Hiram Bingham III (such a Yalie name) rediscovered the ancient city of Machu Picchu and began shipping things he found back to New Haven. Yale has now asked a court to dismiss the case based on a statute of limitations issue under Connecticut law, even though there is no such statute of limitations issue under Peruvian law. Again, such a Yalie move.

Also, The Yale Daily News’s blog reports that Harold Bloom, the famous academic and Shakespeare scholar of The Western Canon fame, has sadly canceled his two seminars this semester due to a severe illness and hospitalization since December.

And finally, if all this hasn’t been bad enough for Yale, the fine art auctioneer Christie’s is apparently selling a human skull that the Skull and Bones Society once used as a ballot box. Now there’s an artifact we wouldn't want.

At Stanford, The Stanford Daily—the campus’s largest and most widely circulated publication—may have engaged in a little collegiate money laundering. According to a recent investigative report in The Stanford Review based on The Daily’s IRS Form 990, the publication declared a cash balance of $517,022 in 2008 and then proceeded to transfer more than half the money to a subsidiary non-profit organization called The Friends of The Daily Foundation in order to simulate an $80,408 deficit. With the apparent deficit, The Daily then applied for and was granted $50,000 in student fees from the Stanford Student Senate, which had no idea about the large “gift” The Daily had made to its subsidiary organization.

The University of Chicago experienced its own controversy when it sent prospective applicants a sample admissions essay last month. Unfortunately, the chosen piece was written by a particularly amorous applicant, who confessed to feeling full of “that gooey sap you feel late at night” whenever he thought of his dream alma mater. Some students thought it was clever, others found it apalling, and some wanted to cry because it made them think their own essays weren't original enough.

At Princeton, students are back at school for reading period and exams. Ah yes, remember the days when that used to be us? But now, for everyone at home, lying in comfortable armchairs next to the fireplace with nothing to do, it's time to point fingers and laugh. A writer for The Daily Princetonian tries to defend post-break finals, but we're unconvinced.