Smashing Pumpkins: Jack-O-Lantern Offense Scandal

By Benjamin Patch | Wednesday, November 19, 1997

At the beginning of this month , the Jack-O-Lantern, a student-funded humor magazine, published a piece entitled the 'Dartmouth Review Dictionary,' a list of seemingly innocuous words, twisted out of context.

Among the more controversial definitions were:

'tol•er•ance (tol-e-rans) n. Willingness or ability to respect people of different races and/or creeds. [usage] Man, I have such a great tolerance, I drank 17 beers last night and I was still sober enough to beat up some Hispanic kids with my baseball bat 'Chubby.'

'coons (koons) abbr. raccoon, a small woodland creature. [usage] I booby-trapped my lawn in case any coons come and wander around my property.'

'spick-and-span (spik-an-span) adj. neat and clean, new looking. [usage] the only people I hate more than Blacks and Jews are those damn spicks and spaniards.'

The issue also included 'Eskimo Pick Up Lines,' a list of satirical propositions by Nat Rink '99. The bulk of the piece was simple double entendre, such as 'How 'bout we play the Commodore Perry Game and you let me explore your tundra...'

However, several items were more controversial including 'I never knew they made beautiful Eskimos until I made you.'

Campus reaction was predictably swift. Less than 48 hours after the publication was delivered to student rooms, there was a meeting outside the Collis Center in which minority students berated the editors of the Jack-O-Lantern, and one protestor was moved to a constant state of tears during her frenzied tirade. An anonymous student also tacked up posters in several dorms which accused Nat Rink of racism.

Wrote one Hispanic student in an e-mail message to the Jack-O-Lantern staff, 'I don't know who wrote that shit but all of your names are on it. That magazine was mean and hurtful and stupid. I hope you all appreciate the PRIVILEGE you possess and the FLIPPANCY with which you can use those extremely hateful words.... If you were looking for a rise, looking for that kneejerk liberal reaction, congratulations — you got it. I was completely offended.'

Several high-ranking administrators also chimed in. In a letter to the Daily Dartmouth, Dean of Freshmen Peter Goldsmith, Dean Steve Cornish, and Scott Brown, Dean of the Tucker Foundation, along with several others, wrote that 'we, as members of the Dartmouth faculty, are saddened by the fact that our community has once again been diminished by the expression of hateful and hurtful language.

'Although we understand that articles entitle 'Eskimo Pick Up Lines' and 'Dartmouth Review Dictionary' were not intended to cause offense, these poorly executed attempts at satire remind us that sometimes good intentions are not sufficient.'

After an initial meeting was held by the Council on Student Organizations (COSO), the decison was postponed an additional week to enable COSO members to further gauge student opinion on the incident.

Under fire, the editors of the Jack-O-Lantern submitted a letter of apology to the Daily Dartmouth, in which they tried to justify their actions. According to the editors, they were trying to 'parody the subtle racism of The Review.'

In their words, 'we hoped to accomplish this by showing that taking words with specific, non-racially-oriented definitions, and twisting them to fit a racist ideology is in fact as reprehensible as twisting news events to represent a similar ideology.

'We feel that at the very least, The Review tends to print certain events or quotes out of context, in order to portray either minorities, homosexuals, or women's rights groups in a negative light.'

Two editors of TDR, in response to the attack, sent a letter to the Daily Dartmouth which read: 'In their November 5 letter to The Dartmouth, the editors of our campus 'humor' magazine revealed the same penchant for malicious defamation that has lately delivered their publication into common disrepute.

'Panicked by the implications of their own actions, these editors have since attempted to pass the charges of racism from themselves and onto us. '[T]he Review,' they alleged, 'tends to print certain events or quotes out of context, in order to portray either minorities, homosexuals, or women's rights groups in a negative light.' Such pernicious accusations are not only false but, much like the inflammatory 'Dictionary,' unjustifiable.

'The Jack-O-Lantern purported to parody 'the absurdity of The Review's subtle racism.' Instead, its editors only perpetuated the same stereotypes they claimed to find in the writings of others.'

Earlier messages from a student leader of a Hispanic student group to the Jack-O-Lantern staff concurred with The Review's statement.

The student wrote that, 'I know that you are pretending like it is the Dartmouth Review who says these things, but I have never seen these things printed in the Review, nor have I ever actually heard any Reviewer ever say them, and I actually do know many of them.

'Yeah, yeah, who was that who printed these racist jokes? YOU DID.'

After the Review's statement ran in the November __ issue of the Daily Dartmouth, Jack-O-Lantern Head Writer Eric DelPozo '99 sent an angry e-mail message to the Executive Editors entitled 'It is better to keep your mouth closed and be judged a fool, then to open it up and remove all doubt.'

In his missive DelPozo wrote, 'Regarding your letter to the editor of the D today, with all due respect, the cowardice and incorrectness of your groundless claims and ad homonym [sic] attack on the Jack-O Lantern shine through brilliantly. I would hardly say that our publication has plummeted into the type of 'common disrepute' that plagues yours; nor am I able to see our 'penchant for malicious defamation,' as you call it, for popular opinion seems to dictate that that would belong to The Dartmouth Review as well.

'I am sure you two are very intelligent and nice people, but politics is certainly not either of your game.

'I implore you to think twice before you say things simply for the sake of saying them, because in the end it is the two of you, and by induction the entire Review staff, who end up looking like the big loser, and serve to make the reading public as distrustful of your ideas and the manner in which you express them as it has ever been.'

When the Review contacted Jack-O-Lantern President Kevin Goldman over the phone, he refused comment to all questions.

Minutes later, he e-mailed the following message: 'it looks like The Review is trying to run a story on our situation. Please tell them nothing but no comment.'

Though the official COSO judgment has yet to be passed down, preliminary reports suggest that the Jack-O-Lantern will be forced to face serious scrutiny for all future issues, and submit an in-depth report of the incident in order to continue to receive College funds.

Smashing Pumpkins: Jack-O-Lantern Offense Scandal

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