[2] The blog covers the "follies" of Ivy League schools, such as a Princeton University class president accused of setting a squirrel on fire, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student who turned out to be in prison, and a Yale Skull and Bones member arrested for burning an American Flag.

The younger Beam had covered a Brown University professor who wrote prolific letters to the editor in The New York Times.

Five days later the elder Beam covered the same story in his column, without attribution, leading to humorous but well-publicized complaints of plagiarism.

[7] Beam has written for the online magazine Slate and The New Republic, and his fellow Columbia graduate Nick Summers is an editor for The New York Times.

Adam Clark Estes, a former editor at IvyGate, was criticized for making fun of the death of a Cornell student who had died due to swine flu in 2009.