Ivy League Murders, #Harvard, #Yale, #Columbia, # Dartmouth #Princeton, #Brown, U of Penn, #Cornell.  Two “crime-heads” joined forces to create a podcast in which they explore the dark side of the Ivy League — including the murders of Yale students.  Laura McDonald and Sarah Alcorn, a Harvard graduate, founded the podcast “Ivy League Murders,” in which they research, discuss and comment on violent crime on Ivy League campuses. The podcast was founded approximately a year ago, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The weekly episodes explore everything from murder, kidnappings and mystery, as well as power and privilege in the justice system; they invite listeners to take a closer look at what lurks beneath the surface in the Ivy League.   “Human nature does not care if you have an Ivy League degree,” McDonald said. “Greed, jealousy, lust — we see these characteristics in all socioeconomic groups.”  The podcast began as a passion project for both McDonald and Alcorn with 10 original cases, and has since grown into a weekly podcast which Spotify describes as an exposé of  “the most haunting cases to spin out of some of America’s most elite corners.”   McDonald and Alcorn went to high school together at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet their paths never crossed, until about two and a half years ago, when Alcorn’s daughter asked to adopt a kitten; their search led them to McDonald’s door.   “As a [private investigator], I was the most crime-obsessed person I knew and then I met Laura, and she’s much more, or at least as much, of a crime-head than I am,” Alcorn said.   According to the two podcasters, McDonald had the idea for the podcast but wanted a partner to work with. Fittingly, Alcorn is a private investigator by trade; McDonald’s idea immediately caught her attention.   “She was the seed, I was the soil and [the podcast] grew,” Alcorn said.   According to the hosts, spending their childhoods in Cambridge, next to Harvard Square, led them to grow up with great curiosity as to what loomed behind the Ivy League gates.   Their shared passion for true crime then sparked further questions about the more nefarious happenings on Ivy League college campuses.   “It’s that curiosity that brought about this podcast,” McDonald said. “People think that being in a certain educational and economic status shields you from certain types of personalities or people.”  In fact, according to both hosts, the Ivy League schools are unique in that they provide a “pastiche of privilege,” and many assume that as a result, students at Ivy League schools are exempt from the horrors of violent crime.    However, the podcasters emphasized that this impression is false. With the research and the commentary they present in the podcast, Alcorn and McDonald demonstrate that students, alumni and affiliates of Ivy League schools are also afflicted by the same human faults of obsession, jealousy, greed and anger which may lead to violent crime. Indeed, the hosts outlined the podcast’s goal as being that of exposing these realities

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