Should old flame wars be forgot: 2008 in 'Prince' comments

It's New Year's Eve, and instead of writing my Dean's Date papers or battling the latest New England snowstorm to drink awkwardly with people from middle school whom I don't remember, I'm bringing you the 'Prince' year in review*, based on our most-commented stories**. After the jump, the eight that mattered in '08.

#8: Tenure road rough for professors (54 comments)
It might surprise you to learn that tenure is kind of like Bicker, except that, in the case of tenure, being in a sorority doesn't help you that much.

#7: NOM was the top donor to fund Proposition 8 (59 comments)
My main reaction to this was to say "nom nom nom" aloud several times and visit the LOLcats website. But $1.8 million is nothing to mess around with.

#6: Freshman hit at BlackBox event, fight ensues (61 comments)
Oh and by the way, the guys who beat a girl up were Bloods.

#5: University grants Chabad chaplaincy (64 comments)
This was a really big deal ... I think? As a Gentile, I am confused by the whole Chabad saga ...

#4: Students rally for ironic 'Princeton Proposition 8' (81 comments)
The other response out of Princeton, N.J. to Proposition 8.

#3: Weinstein ’09 endorses Weinberg '11 for USG VP (106 comments)
Cripes, I just don't have the energy for this one. It happened so recently and it took up so much time that I cannot summon the will to care.

#2: Investigation into alleged admissions bias expands (296 comments)
I suspect that many of our most commented stories are kept alive by two or three commenters, but no one so far has approached the heroicism of Yale College Dad. The comments thread is basically YCD vs. all comers, and many of his posts are the length of entire 'Prince' columns. If you were wondering what happens to the kid in your precept who writes Russian novels on BlackBoard, here is your answer. By the time the commenting died down two months later, Yale College Dad was referring to himself in the third person using an acronym. Internet trolls, this is your role model for 2009.

#1: University band harassed by cadets at Citadel (582 comments)
This one wasn't even close. After our band went to the Citadel, did some really rude things (or didn't, depending on whom you believe), got beat up (or didn't, depending on whom you believe,) everyone retired to the intertubes to flame each other and thereby win the true moral victory. This story also set a record for the number of comments we had to delete as in-a-pro-pro — seriously, the deleted comments alone (135) would beat out all but the top two most commented stories on this list.

So there you have it: 2008 in 'Prince' comments. Notice any themes? I see gays, Judaism and people getting beat up. Happy 2009, everyone.

*This is only since the advent of our new website in early February-ish, so before that, I don't know. But we don't publish that much in January, anyway. Or get that many web hits. (Well, sometimes we get a lot of web hits in January. But I digress...)

**I was going to do it based on web hits, but the problem is that whenever something gets linked to by a blog, our web hits go nuts and it's not really a good barometer of what got the most discussion on our campus.