New Book To Look At Ivy League Life

Be careful, Harvard students: we have a spy in our midst. Author Sean Michael Green will be interviewing and researching at Harvard this month in preparation for his new book, which aims to paint an accurate portrait of campus life at the eight Ivy League schools.

Harvard marks Green’s seventh stop on his Ivy League tour, which began during move-in weekend at Cornell last August and will conclude at Princeton’s May graduation.

Green’s book—tentatively titled “What I Learned in College: A Year with the Ivy League”—will present a comical and witty narrative of the author’s experiences at each school, according to a press release from Green.

However, as Green states on his website, “The book is not an exposé, nor is it seeking scandal.”

At each college, Green relies on his interactions with students for invitations to sit in on classes, hang out at parties, and participate in activities. Moreover, at each college, Green has been able to shadow particular students and even sleep in their residences to get a better idea of what their ordinary life is like.

He described his upcoming book as “a project of love.”

“The way some people follow sports is the way I follow higher education,” he said in an interview.

But Green does not like every institution of higher education.

“I have a definite bias against really shoddy, fly-by-night operations calling themselves colleges,” he said. “I am really all about the Ivy League schools.”

But referring to his venture into New Haven, Green told the Yale Daily News in November, “The first thing I saw when I got out of my car today was two homeless people fighting over who would ask me for money.”

Nevertheless, Green ended up enjoying his stay at Yale and described it on his website as an “oasis in the middle of an otherwise depressing area.”

Many Harvard undergraduates say they are open to what Green is doing but have reservations about what he can learn in the short month that he is here.

“Its hard to get a notion of what Harvard is all about. I’ve been here seven months and I’m still trying to figure it out,” said Charles C. Young ’08.

It was this feeling that angry students had at the University of Pennsylvania after an article in the student newspaper quoted Green saying Penn “was definitely a low point” in his college tour.

Many students lashed out on the paper’s online discussion board, with one Penn student calling Green “a huge fucking loser.”

Green, to be fair, agreed to a follow-up visit to Penn.

This is not Green’s first book on college-related topics. He has previously written about making the transfer from the military to college in Marching to College: Turning Military Experience into College Admissions and is the author of numerous magazine articles on the same subject.