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Drake Fijis : "Our letters are sacred"
Columnists - opinion
Hansen: Wisecrackers, vandals trade offenses
By MARC HANSEN
REGISTER COLUMNIST
December 14, 2004
The Drake students who write and edit DUIN, the campus humor magazine, can find humor in almost anything.
But when a small band of frat boys went around ripping a page they deemed offensive out of every copy they could find, nobody on the staff was laughing.
DUIN comes out once a semester and specializes in offending people. Hope Donovan, a senior from Rockford, Ill., is the editor. I asked her what she liked about her publication.
"I love its potential to stir up controversy and test the boundaries of free speech," she said. "It provides an excellent opportunity to do humor writing. No classes here teach that. I like how it brings humor to any topic it touches."
Few subjects are off limits. On the cover of the new issue: two frames from the famous Zapruder film. The background isn't a grassy knoll, though. It's a Drake dormitory.
First caption: "Oswald's bullet left Kirk 336 at 12:01 p.m."
Second caption: "A second shot was fired from the student union."
Appalling? Clever? Both?
I doubt Donovan would quibble with any response, as long as there is one.
Some of the material in DUIN - nobody could tell me what the name meant - is awful. Some is awfully clever. Pick up the April edition and see "My Short Affair with Trudi Holst," Andy Windsperger's take on deathly impersonal mass e-mailings.
And much is so raunchy, coarse and crude, a mainstream newspaper columnist cannot begin to describe it.
"Bored with nudity yet?" Donovan asks from her introductory column in the "National Geographic" parody last spring. "We didn't think so. That's why we've been a top publication for 116 years despite writing articles about trail mix and archaeology."
I included that paragraph to prove there were at least two features in DUIN that could be described in a mainstream newspaper column.
The administration rarely gets off easy. At least twice a year, David Maxwell, the university president, bites his tongue and asks himself why Drake helps finance a publication that's always making fun of him. But that's academic freedom for you.
"The administration has a fairly hands-off approach," Donovan said. "To my knowledge, they've never told DUIN we've gone over the line. But we can't be displayed in the admissions office because it might be offensive to prospective students."
Copies are quickly scooped up, which means tuition-paying students must like it. But not the ones who complain about their fees helping cover costs.
Twice a year, without fail, somebody goes away mad. It's been like that since the start-up in the mid-'90s.
The "Soup for the Soul" edition either mocked the major world religions or offered dumbed-down interpretations. The old "hey, it's satire" defense went over the way it always does. Boundary stretchers make enemies.
Until this time, though, nobody skulked around campus methodically violating the tenets of free speech.
Donovan, a writing-and-drawing double major, is an offbeat sort who loves a good joke. To her, this was no joke. They put a lot of time and effort into this.
The story in question was an innocuous flight of fancy, "Why I Shaved: My Encounter with the Hairy Dimension," by Ross Nervig.
As part of the graffiti-style page design, an editor used the Greek symbols for Phi Gamma Delta. According to fraternity decree, the letters can be used in seven places only, and none of the seven is a campus humor mag.
Who knew? Not Donovan. Not her staff. Maybe there should be a course in forbidden Greek symbols.
"Our letters are sacred," a fraternity member wrote in the campus newspaper, the Times-Delphic, "and we value them to an extent that likely cannot be understood outside Greek Street. We hope that in the future, DUIN will be more cautious with any and all inferences that may offend individuals or groups in more than a humorous manner."
I figured Donovan would flood the next edition with sacred fraternity symbols, but in a disappointing display of maturity, she told me the matter had been resolved.
The fraternity members responsible for the page-tearing apologized in a letter to the Times-Delphic editor and agreed to pay $350 to reprint the spread in the vandalized copies.
An editorial writer said the incident was handled honorably and equitably, and college life resumed.
While the FIJIs - did I just break the law? - who admitted their mistake seem like decent guys, I would advise the DUIN staff to reject their advice.
Work hard to improve, but do not turn cautious. Why publish a cautious humor magazine? But that's just me.
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