We’ve featured many a sports-related rivalry in weeks past, but what would College Candy be if it were not for our strong, beautiful twentysomething female readers? With that in mind, let’s pit legendary women’s colleges Barnard and Wellesley head-to-head (er, tit-to-tit?).  All my single ladies…

1. Mascot Matchup

Barnard- Millie the Dancing Bear is the official mascot for Barnard College, but given the athletic consortium between Barnard and Columbia University, Barnard athletes are lady Lions.
Wellesley- School pride is exclaimed in enthusiasm for the Wellesley Blue–simple, but true!

Three credits to: Barnard which has not one but two mascots!

2. Terrific Traditions

Barnard- Pre-meds (and their roommates) the world over dread the required organic chemistry final exam, a rite of passage about as painful as, say, childbirth.  On the evening before the exam, called Orgo Night, the boys from the Columbia band march over to the Barnard quad to play music to disrupt Barnard girls’ studying.
Wellesley- Every year, the course of the world’s most prestigious marathon, the Boston Marathon, snakes through the Wellesley campus. Known to runners as the “Wellesley Scream Tunnel,” the deafening shrieks of Wellesley girls cheering can be heard from miles away. Classes are canceled on the day of the marathon, and many girls stand roadside with signs offering kisses, bottles of water, and a whole lot of school pride.

Three Credits to: Wellesley, since kissing sweaty strangers is about as type-A collegiate as it gets!

3. Where to Find the Boys

Barnard- Literally across the street from Columbia University and the Union Theological and Jewish Theological Seminaries, Barnard girls are a stone’s throw from all types of co-eds.
Wellesley- Wellesley has cross-registration privileges with MIT and has a bus that travels between the two campuses several times a day. Another bus travels into Boston every hour.

Three credits to: Barnard…where being across the street beats being across town.

4. Ass-kicking Alumni

Barnard– Joan Rivers, Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls)
Wellesley- Hillary Clinton, Diane Sawyer, Madeline Albright

Three credits to:  Wellesley for boasting TWO secretaries of state. Seriously, would you want to mess with either of them?

5. Acceptance Rate Agony

Barnard- 28.5% for the class of 2012.
Wellesley- 36% for the class of 2012.

Three credits to: Barnard, no question!

And the diploma goes to: Barnard! It seems the sun shines a little brighter on Barnard’s Morningside Heights campus in New York.

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Zimbabweans headed to the polls this past Saturday (March 29th) in a historic vote challenging President Robert Mugabe’s 28-year iron grip on the presidency.

The challenging party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), announced soon after the polls closed that they were in the lead. According to the BBC, as of Monday night, (March 31) they claimed that their candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, had won with 60% of the vote.

While Mugabe has intimated that he will honor the people’s decision, the delay in announcing the decision has many fearing the worst.

Nana Ampofo, an analyst for Global Insight, told the BBC that; “It’s still not clear that the election results are fixed but there are definitely reasons to be concerned.”

Rumors abound of election rigging:

According to the UK’s Sunday Mirror, the Zimbabwean Government ordered nine million ballot papers despite the fact that only 5.9million people were in fact elgible to vote→ to some this smells of ballot box stuffing.

The Economist notes that in one location, African monitors found that 8,500 voters were registered with addresses that turned out to be vacant land → to many this signifies Mugabe’s use of so-called “ghost voters”

As of Tuesday (April 1), while there were still no official results, members of Mugabe’s party are increasingly hinting at a run-off election in the works. According to Zimbabwe’s election law, if no one wins wins 51% of the vote, a run-off must be held.

In many ways it may not matter if the vote was rigged or not. If Mugabe is declared the winner after such a long delay and amid such rumors there will be violence.

Riot police can already be seen around Harare, seen as the seat of the opposition to Mugabe.

Mugabe has long been a thorn in the international community’s side. Secretary of State Rice stated on Saturday that,

“His [Mugabe’s] regime is a disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and to Africa as a whole.”

During his tenure, Zimbabwe’s economy has plunged deeper and deeper into crisis—the country now has the highest inflation in the world at 100,000 per cent and the lowest life expectancy worldwide at merely 37 years.

Can you tell me who the current secretary of state is? Or who the Defense Secretary is?

I bet not.

But I would place money on the fact that you could name me at least two celebrities who are pregnant, the latest color of Britney Spears’ wig or the name of the diet that Jessica Simpson is currently on.

We are pretty pathetic my friends. According to an article in the New York Times, today’s youth is not news savvy. We don’t watch the news like our parents did when they were our age because we have more than one TV in our homes. When our parents are watching about peace talks in the Middle East, we are watching Engaged and Underage or Entourage.

When our parents are reading the Times or USA Today, we are reading Us Weekly or In Style.

When our parents are surfing CNN.com or watching a clip of Barack Obama’s speech on YouTube we are perusing perezhilton.com or watching the clip of LiLo snorting cocaine.

In fact, in a recent survey, only 16% of 18-30 year olds said they read the newspaper on a daily basis.

Today’s current affairs really need our attention as what happens today will most certainly affect our futures (so cliché but true). With a political race starting, the threat of terrorism affecting us on a daily basis and the attempt of peace talks in the Middle East, it is time for us to focus less on the fact that Dina Lohan is getting her own show and more on the fact that we can do something to help global warming or find a way to get involved in the new political campaigns.

I love celeb gossip and fashion just as much as the next person (probably even more so) but after reading this article, I realized that while I can rattle off the latest fall fashions and celebrity news, I am pretty embarassed about my lack of knowledge of current national/world news and politics.

So let’s change that! Click on the links above, grab a latte and read up! Now you can impress your professor, your parents and even that cute guy in the bar. It is possible to know about both poltics and Paris.