Oh It's On, Big Red. It is ON

Recently, our colleagues at the Cornell Alumni Association have encouraged some friendly trash talking about the MIT Alumni Association, all in a bid to garner more Facebook likes than the Institute.

It seems MIT has set the gold standard among the alumni associations of Ivy+ institutions (the Ivy League plus MIT and Stanford, in case you weren't aware such a distinction existed), and Cornell is gunning for numero uno. As of this writing, MIT had 7,483 likes and Cornell just 5,831. Cornell keeps posting on Facebook and tweeting about how they are closing in on us.

MITers, are we going to stand for this?

Let's show Big Red just how much we love big numbers and accumulate even more Facebook followers. Like our Facebook page and spread the word to other members of the MIT community.

What is Ivy Plus you ask? Members of the MIT Alumni Association staff meet annually with our colleagues from other institutions of similar caliber to swap ideas and best practices. Our counterparts from other schools are a great bunch of people, full of useful and at times innovative ideas, and we welcome this friendly rivalry. We have great respect for the Cornellians, who are really into social media. Taking the top spot from us means a lot to them.

But I would be remiss if I didn't offer some friendly observations. Let's take a look at just some of what the Cornell community has been saying about us.

First, about Doonesbury. What you call cheating, referring to the online straw poll MIT hacked, we call an innovative solution to a challenge. It's not our fault we love to solve problems with finesse. Plus, you've got the guy from The Office. He has a lovely singing voice.

Second, is it really a burn, Cornell, if you're the ones comparing yourselves to us in the first place? It's not like we even noticed we were number one. But now that you mention it, we're happy to fight for it.

And I bet we can do it without fancy computing tricks.

But I make no promises.