Since the New York Times published a Style section feature last week on the Ivy Plus Society, a nationwide business-network-cum-dating-service for Ivy Leaguers, bloggers have been stumbling over themselves in the rush to ridicule the apparent snootery of the young alums of the Ancient Eight.
(Click here to read the Times’ original story, “The Dating Game, Ivied and Pedigreed.” The Ivy Plus Society is an alumni club with chapters in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Members must hail from an Ivy League school or comparably prestigious institution — think Duke, Stanford and MIT — and are invited to parties and happy hours on a weekly basis. In the words of the Times’ writer, Katherine Bindley: “Its premise is that like attracts like, that in the big heartless city there is a place where a potential mate will understand your allusions to Andrew Marvell, or at least Sex Week at Yale.”)
“Vox Populi,” a blog at Georgetown, had this to say: “Ever wonder what the most toolish among us do with themselves after graduation?… they join the Ivy Plus Society!While the group is ostensibly a business-networking organization, the Times makes it clear what the real point of Ivy Plus is: finding suitable mates for super-status-conscious elitists.”
And New York Magazine’s “Daily Intel” continued: “When looking for the perfect first mate, to use a seafaring metaphor, which you would understand if you were the right kind of person, today’s Ivy Leaguers like to cast their nets a little bit wider. But not too wide. Tri-named Yale grad Jennifer Wilde Anderson understands the subtle boundaries people of the higher castes have. That’s why she has formed the Ivy Plus Society, a social club that encourages the mixing of Ivy League graduates with schools of the same grade.”
The Huffington Post took an interactive approach in their response to the Times’ article, asking readers whether they think the society is “snobby or smart.” Participate in that poll by clicking here.