The Daily D's Shameful Censorship: the Saga of ''The Kicker''

By Scott Judah | Monday, April 15, 2002

Life imitates art. When that which we think fiction is actualized, the result cannot be but irony. And when the artist suffers fates foreseen in his work, the situation becomes more complex—still perhaps ironic and funny, but the effect is one of dark humor, even tragedy.

In his comic strip 'The Kicker,' Fred Ware routinely lampooned smug administrators and their unchecked and arbitrarily-wielded power, lazy bureaucrats who dodge responsibility and accountability, and—to greatest effect—a campus held hostage by the minor deities of political correctness. And it was funny, usually. But when the Daily Dartmouth suspended his strip, Ware found himself sunk in a sea of power-obsessed, agenda-driven editors, bureaucratic double-talk, and PC-madness—and it wasn't funny at all. The laughable conduct of the Daily Dartmouth staff and the ironic injustices inflicted upon Ware comprise just the sort of story that would be featured in his strip—and itself makes for the ultimate 'Kicker' cartoon.
Panel 1: The Kicker

Fred Ware '03 first published 'The Kicker' during the 2001 summer term. Despite the admittedly shaky artwork (which more resembles the study hall doodling of a middle school student than 'Calvin and Hobbes'), the strip's adept humor and politically incorrect sensibilities struck a chord with students. Sure, Ware picked the lowest-hanging fruit—from Dartmouth Dining Services to the inaccessibility of economics professors—but he also aimed higher, smartly thwacking the College's anti-Greek crusade and its concomitant hypocrisy—subjects traditionally tackled only in the Daily Dartmouth's occasional letters-to-the-editor section.

In the latter vein, Ware sketched an eerily parallel Dartmouth, populated by analogues of the most sinister and buffoonish College's administrators and their subjects, the hapless, helpless student body. 'Cassie the Wicked Witch of the North-East,' for example, cleverly satirized the ineptitude and baseless rage of the widely abhorred Office of Residential Life Assistant Dean for Greek Affairs Cassie Barnhardt. 'President Right' recurred in the strip, embroiled in not-so-outlandish plots to ruin the Tubestock summer festival and being kidnapped by entrepreneurial students who quickly realized the difficulty in ransoming him off to alumni—nobody's buying. In another sequence, President Right plays Monopoly against a randomly-chosen student as a publicity stunt. Because it's a Dartmouth version of the game, 'Free Parking' costs fifty dollars.

One memorable strip opens with Cassie, the Wicked Witch of the North-East, incanting the College hymn that Safety & Security inspections of fraternities are undertaken solely to 'protect students.' The witch happens upon a Greek house ablaze, and her chanting turns to alarm for students' safety: 'What?! There's beer at AD!' The fraternity, of course, burns to the ground.

In a strip from last year, the Kicker confronts the College's housing hypocrisy: 'President Right, I have a question. You say we don't have enough money for a new dorm. Yet we have enough money for increased UGA funding, residential cluster advisors, more S&S officers, administrators to decide how much beer's allowed at parties, deserted dance clubs, and several 'moon bounces.' I don't understand the College's priorities.' To which Right bellows in response, 'Students might be homeless, but by God, they will have structured social options!'

Ware goes so far as to thank Wright in a strip for 'making my job the easiest in the world.' This pulls Ware into camp of the political cartoonist despite his paneled medium. It is Ware's sharp topicality that drives the cartoon. 'The Kicker,' the character of that name, a hardly-veiled Ware, is rendered so thinly as to preclude his being compelling. 'The Kicker' strikes a balance between continuity and punch, though definitely leaning towards the latter—it's a college strip, so why not?

Ware isn't just a witty social commentator and cartoonist. He is an exceptional athlete, a two-time all-Ivy punter (hence the name of the strip) for Dartmouth's team, having received the honor last year after a unanimous vote. He is the only player now on the roster to have started every game possible in his career (29 straight) and holds school records for his punting average in a season and punting average over a career. Unlike most Dartmouth cartoonists of late, Ware is a brother at a fraternity, Gamma Delta Chi.

Being an athlete and a member of a Greek house made Ware stick out among the Daily Dartmouth's contributors and editorial staff, and his brashly contrarian views made the difference even more clear. In hindsight, editorial interference—that is, censorship—was probably inevitable.
Panel 2: The Censor

Not counting the occasional strip 'misplaced' by the Daily Dartmouth's editorial staff (most notably a Homecoming Issue strip critical of the Student Life Initiative), Ware's first encounter with censorship came at the beginning of winter term. The strip began with a girl berating Ware's Kicker character: 'I mean you're a kicker, have you even ever gotten a date?' His reply is, at first, shocking: 'Well, this one time I used the date rape drug.' The girl is horrified and runs away, and our hero is left alone, confused: 'I don't know what the big deal is, all it did was make me sleepy.'

For a sensitive subject, Ware pulled an innocuous gag. The editorial board at the Daily Dartmouth, however, thought otherwise, deciding that the mere mention of the phrase 'date rape drug' was unacceptable (outside of op-eds written by Women's Resource Center programming interns, that is). In the end the editorial board backed off and reached a compromise with Ware; the strip would run if 'date rape drug' were replaced with the less provocative 'sleeping pills.'

This substitution didn't just diminish the impact of the joke—it eviscerated it. Reading the censored version in the D (and being unaware of the chicanery going on behind the scenes), I scratched my head in puzzlement, asking myself if 'The Kicker' had lost its deft touch. The editorial board's intervention had had its intended chilling effect, and Ware had learned his lesson. He would back away from pushing the comedic envelope.

But censorship would rear its head again, this time when Ware tried to slip the 'd word' into a cartoon.

What word could be so offensive that the Daily Dartmouth would not run Ware's strip given its presence? The Daily Dartmouth is, after all, a paper accustomed to letting it all hang out with sexual and drug-related matters. Readers may remember the Daily Dartmouth's publishing last year of the uncensored—save for the names—Sigma Report on its website (and the Daily D even coined the unfortunate and inaccurate 'Sex Papers' to bring more sensation to the story). What single word could really be so impermissible?

The word in question was (cover the children's ears) 'dork.' In a strip titled 'The Continued Adventures of Prospect Pete,' Ware's plucky pre-frosh confronts a Dartmouth Trustee with tough questions. 'Let me get this straight,' he asks, 'Trustees decide what social options students have, right?' The Trustee responds in the affirmative, as she does to each of his successive propositions. 'To become a Trustee, you need a crazy GPA,' Pete continues. 'To get a crazy GPA, you need to be a complete dork. If you're a complete dork, your experience with social options is pretty limited. Don't you see a problem?'

The Daily Dartmouth's editorial board sure did. By their edict, 'dork' would have to be replaced; otherwise, the strip would not run. Being helpful, the board suggested an alternative, that Ware substitute the phrase 'study all the time' for 'be a complete dork.' And, considering the wide variety of other terms for the male genitals (which 'dork' has largely outgrown, anyway) published in the Daily Dartmouth, the board's qualm is all the more puzzling. Would anyone not offended by 'penis,' 'shaft,' and 'cock' (all used in the paper) be bothered by 'dork' (which, incidentally, has been used at least 13 times in the Daily Dartmouth since 1993)?

Again, Ware reluctantly agreed to the change and the Daily D published the neutered strip. And so Ware and the Daily Dartmouth continued their uneasy partnership through the end of February.
Panel 3: 'The Kicker' Gets 'The Boot'

In all of three of its panels, an Arab Muslim, a cowboy, and an Indian sit before a bar. In the first panel, the Indian laments the decline of his people: 'Once we were many—now we are few.' In the second, the Muslim notes the rapid spread of his religion: 'Once we were few—now we are many.' Finally, the cowboy leans back and offers his explanation: 'Well that's cuz' we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet.'

This cartoon would end The Kicker's run with the Daily Dartmouth.

Like the SLI announcement three years earlier, this death sentence was unexpected, irrational, and cloaked in double-talk. I opened the March 4th issue of the Daily Dartmouth expecting 'The Kicker' as usual, but in its place was an ominous bulletin, 'To Our Readers.' It read as follows:

'A comic strip entitled 'Laces Out' by the author of 'The Kicker,' Fred Ware '03, was printed in another student publication last week. The strip in question had been rejected by The Dartmouth earlier in the Winter term, and Ware later resubmitted the strip elsewhere without the knowledge of this newspaper.

'Since cartoonists are members of the op-ed staff, comic strips are accepted or rejected on the same basis as op-ed submissions. The Dartmouth does not choose or decline to print submissions based on the ideas expressed therein—the decision must be based on the author's ability to present a coherent piece that adequately addresses the complexities of its subject matter.

'The editors of The Dartmouth felt that the strip in question was an inadequate treatment of a sensitive, complicated issue. We respect disagreement with this stance, but we cannot allow the editorial decisions of another publication to force us into association with a piece that we decided was inappropriate for these pages. As such, The Dartmouth is suspending Ware from its comics page for 10 full weeks of publication, starting immediately.'

I found the message pretty confusing overall—later in the day I watched a friend reread the notice three times before inquiring if I had 'any idea what this means'—but the consequence was clear: Ware was suspended from The Dartmouth for a full term. He wouldn't be able to publish 'The Kicker' until his senior year—and I wouldn't be able to enjoy another 'Kicker' cartoon until after my graduation.

It is possible to decipher some parts of the Daily Dartmouth's explanation. 'Another student publication,' along with 'off-campus publication' and 'conservative publication,' are the Daily Dartmouth's cryptic code-words for The Dartmouth Review, which had published the 'Laces Out' strip from Ware in its March 1 issue.

The explanation provided in the bulletin of the rejection of Ware's cartoon is contradictory and meaningless: 'The Dartmouth does not choose or decline to print submissions based on the ideas expressed therein . . . The editors of The Dartmouth felt that the strip in question was an inadequate treatment of a sensitive, complicated issue.' This is a purely semantic distinction that does little to obscure the fact that the Daily Dartmouth's editorial board, contrary to its pious claims, does engage in content censorship.

And the board's claim that a strip must 'present a coherent piece' is ludicrous by their own standards. Has no one on the Daily Dartmouth's editorial staff read Dan Colzard's impenetrable 'Lazaro' which the paper regularly publishes?

What was it then that had been so unprintable about this cartoon? In a March 5 email to Ware, the Daily Dartmouth's president John Teti '03 explains that 'we had outright rejected the cartoon earlier in the term . . . the D did not want to be associated with a cartoon that approached a complicated issue in such a simplistic manner.' Maybe I'm missing something, but I always thought the whole point of a political cartoon is to take a 'complicated issue' and condense it down to just a few pictures and words for comedic effect and emphasis; approaching issues in a 'simplistic manner' is inherent to the medium. By Teti's logic, the paper ought not to publish any cartoons (including the syndicated ones it runs, like Doonesbury and Dilbert) and, for that matter, many of the op-eds and columns that it now accepts.

Still, the Daily Dartmouth's outright rejection of the strip was surprising—after all, the editorial board had allowed all of Ware's cartoons to run so long as certain changes were adopted. But this time, no compromise, however insipid the result, had even been offered—apparently the board considered the strip so offensive as to be unsalvageable. To whom, though, is the strip offensive? The cartoon's target is the cowboy, representative of U.S. policy towards Native Americans in the past and (potentially) Muslims in the future. The Daily Dartmouth has run countless 'Doonesbury' cartoons that are far harsher toward our nation's government (President Bush, a particular subject of scorn, is regularly depicted as no more than a floating cowboy hat; his father was simply a point of light). What was so uniquely inappropriate about Ware's cartoon? Did the Daily Dartmouth's editors even understand the point of the strip?

Ware thinks not. 'They never understood the cartoon,' he says. 'They just saw the word 'Muslim' and a depiction of an Indian, and rejected it out of hand for fear of offending these groups.' His accusation of gross irrationality on the part of the Daily Dartmouth is hardly incredible—the 'dork' fiasco stands as compelling evidence.

When they rejected the 'Laces Out' strip, the editors of the Daily Dartmouth never warned Ware not to publish it elsewhere. This is what makes their decision to suspend Ware for two and a half months so especially unjust. By having the cartoon published in the Review, Ware was apparently guilty of violating the Daily Dartmouth's otherwise-lax 'exclusivity policy.' This policy, which, according to several newspaper staff, is not written down in any comprehensive form, is a vague, arbitrarily enforced directive which forbids D staffers from contributing to other campus publications so as to prevent 'conflicts of interest.' Which campus publications are germane to this policy is apparently at the discretion of the Daily Dartmouth's president, and has consequently changed over time. For example, there was a time when the Jacko humor magazine was interdict for D staffers, though it is not allowed. The Daily Dartmouth has shared several staff with the Dartmouth Free Press, an overtly left-leaning publication, and the Dartmouth Contemporary, a book review magazine. The policy seems only to prevent Daily Dartmouth staffers from contributing articles to the Review.

None of this was articulated to Ware during his time contributing to the Daily Dartmouth, and Teti admits as much in a March 3 email to Ware: 'You were unaware of the situation [the exclusivity policy], and it was my responsibility to detail the policy for you beforehand.' In another email from two days later, Teti goes further: 'While you were violating that policy by having your cartoon published in the Review, you were indeed unaware of it, and we had failed in our responsibility to fully inform you of it. You believed that since we allow our cartoonists to contribute to the Jacko as well, that the same must go for all publications. This was a mistaken but reasonable assumption.' Nonetheless, Ware's punishment would stand. His 'reasonable' actions were punished with his work being silenced; the editorial board neglected to penalize itself for having 'failed in our responsibility.'

Even Teti's explanation, though, is at odds with the Daily Dartmouth's 'To our readers.' According to that piece, Ware was suspended not for publishing in the Review ('another student paper'), but for publishing a cartoon that had previously been rejected by the Daily Dartmouth. The published explanation states specifically, 'We cannot allow the editorial decisions of another publication to force us into association with a piece that we decided was inappropriate for these pages.' Had Ware published his cartoon in the Jacko, the explanation implies, the infraction would have been no less grave. Meanwhile, Teti, the Daily Dartmouth's president, singles out publishing in the Review specifically as the reason for Ware's suspension. Either the Daily Dartmouth is being dishonest with readers who read its 'To our readers' note, or the paper's own editorial board failed to understand its own policies—assuming, of course, that its exclusivity policy exists in any hard and fast form. Moreover, had the strip's initial rejection by the Daily Dartmouth been widely known, the only association its publication in the Review would have forced would have been the Daily Dartmouth's explicit disassociation with it.

Scott McGee, the attorney who represented Ware pro bono in his post-suspension dealings with the Daily Dartmouth, is even harsher in his assessment of the Dartmouth's public explanation. 'I have read and re-read that statement and have reviewed it with my partners and with others, including Dartmouth faculty and Dartmouth alums. No one could make any sense of the statement. It is an affront to common sense to suggest that the Dartmouth Review's publication of your cartoon somehow forced an 'association' with the Dartmouth, especially in view of the fact that the Dartmouth's decision not to publish the cartoon was not a matter of public knowledge—that is, until the above notice made it so.'

The flimsiness of the Daily Dartmouth's justification for Ware's suspension is compounded by its own Opinion and Editorial policy, which clearly states: 'any other column, letter or cartoon is the work of the attributed author and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Dartmouth.' By the editorial board's logic, while a cartoon appearing in The Dartmouth does not necessarily reflect The Dartmouth's views, a strip appearing in a different publication 'forces an association.'

It would be nice to clear these matters up with a member of the Daily Dartmouth's editorial board, but, despite his March 5 email claiming that 'I am happy to explain the decision to anyone who asks,' Teti refuses to talk. He has declined multiple interview requests.

Prior to his publication of the 'Laces Out' strip, Ware had been a model contributor to the Daily Dartmouth. He had never missed a deadline nor violated (knowingly or otherwise) any newspaper policy. Yet, upon his first infraction (its status as such determined post-hoc), against all reason and precedent, Ware was punished severely. Why the Daily Dartmouth's editorial board's response?

To Ware, the answer is simple. 'They wanted to get rid of me. This was the easiest way to do it—so it looks as though it's my fault, not theirs.' I asked Ware what he thought of the Daily Dartmouth's published explanation and its claim that the paper's editors were concerned with their reputation and credibility. 'If the D really was interested in their credibility, they wouldn't have suspended me in the first place,' he says. 'If they kept me on staff, I would not have cooperated with this damaging article. Any person with any logic would see that this article is much more damaging than my remaining on staff. Therefore, the D's credibility was not the only thing on the D's mind when it suspended me, and other forces were at work.'

But what were these 'other forces?' One Daily Dartmouth staff member, who asked to remain anonymous, observes that 'the D has its own agenda built by a small group of generally anti-Greek people who act like they enjoy it when they get differing opinions but really want to structure the campus in their own little way.' Another Daily Dartmouth staff member, who also requested anonymity, echoed these sentiments: 'They are not down to earth and they spend their Dartmouth careers pandering to ultraliberal sensitivities,' he said. 'I can't stand those people.'

There may have been internal conflict from the outset. Even better, the Daily Dartmouth's editors are described by their co-workers the very kind of self-righteous, power-hungry discontents Ware relished mocking in his strips. The publication of the 'Laces Out' strip may simply have been the most readily available opportunity the Daily Dartmouth's editors to rid themselves of 'The Kicker.' In an email sent to Ware before the editorial board meeting that would decide his fate, Teti wrote, 'Right now I am leaning toward a two-week suspension (i.e. the kicker would start running again in the second week of spring term) with an explanation on the comics page in Monday's paper of what is going on and why. I'm going to sell this to the rest of the directorate at tonight's meeting and see what their thoughts are.' Given that the compromise punishment was a ten week suspension, the board's thoughts must have been nearly unanimous—and extreme.

The Daily Dartmouth's conduct towards Ware since announcing the suspension has been petty and bullying. First the Daily Dartmouth claimed that it owned the copyrights to all 'The Kicker' cartoons it had published. Teti informed Ware in a March 3 email: 'You should know that The D has copyrights on the comics, so you need to ask permission if you want to use them somewhere else.' Ware contends that the rights are his, given that he had neither been paid by the paper for his work nor agreed to any contract giving over rights to his strips. Why the Daily Dartmouth cherishes the rights for a comic with which it doesn't wish to be associated is anyone's guess, but, nonetheless, Ware has been forced to enlist the help of an attorney to win back the rights to his comic. Teti has gone so far as to accuse Ware of instigating a popular uprising against the newspaper. 'I understand you are conducting a campaign to get popular support or College arbitration for the cancellation of your suspension from the D', Teti wrote to Ware in an email. Teti has since move on to overt threats: 'Right now, you have a situation in which you can pursue other things for 10 weeks and come back after that. You can't make that better, but you can make it worse,' referring to Ware's efforts to secure his ownership of 'The Kicker.' Ware, however, has proven that he could indeed 'make that better' by simply leaving the Dartmouth for good. He is now a contributor to the Review.

As inscrutable as the motivations of the Daily Dartmouth's leadership throughout all this may be, the injustice of their actions is plain for all to see. One Daily Dartmouth staff member summed up the situation thusly: 'It's just ridiculous. It's a kid who wants to draw a cartoon—is this such a big deal? Even if he is completely wrong in this case, does it warrant suspending him until his senior year? I just have a problem when Dartmouth students get all high and mighty and tell other students what they can and can't do.'

In reflecting upon the entire sordid affair, I am reminded of a classic 'Kicker' strip in which Cassie the Wicked Witch of the North-East stands over a pot of churning witch's brew. 'Eye of newt completes the set, let this spell get rid of Theta Delt.' Her spell having failed, Cassie, dismayed, resorts to her backup plan: 'Oh well, I'll just do what I always do and make up some inane rule for them to break.' Unknowingly, Ware may have sown the seeds of his own destruction in his cartooning.

Could he have known that his own editors would read so closely as to become his very characters? It's an irony better than life imitating art—it's the editors of the Dartmouth imitating 'The Kicker.'

The Daily D's Shameful Censorship: the Saga of ''The Kicker''

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