A History of Satire at Haverford
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The cover of the November 2005 issue of Without a (noun).
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In this post, Maia Schwallie '25 explores the history of satire at Haverford from the nineteenth century to the present day. Maia works in Quaker & Special Collections as a Documenting Student Life Project student liaison.
These days, Haverford students can get their dose of Haverford-related humor from The Consensus, an online satire publication, whose Instagram bio boasts their hard-won status as “Haverford’s third-most legitimate news organization.” Whether you’re craving quippy tweets about Peanut (Wendy Raymond’s dog) or Instagram graphics about how even lax bros have feelings, The Consensus has got you covered. You can even check their shockingly still active Facebook page if that’s your speed.
Though the in-jokes and the immaturity of college humor writing displayed by The Consensus’s online presence may feel decidedly modern, student writers at Haverford have been making their peers chuckle slightly since the 1800s, and Haverford has a rich history of satire publications you can explore in the College’s archives.
Scarlet and Black, published in 1881, is perhaps the first Haverford student publication devoted entirely to satire. Their motto was “Out of the emptiness of the head the mouth speaketh”, and so it did as Haverford students filled the Scarlet and Black with strange drawings and parodic poems about the differences between the freshman and senior classes. Though nothing in the archive’s collection of Scarlet and Black personally makes me laugh, perhaps I’m just a century or so late to the jokes.
A perhaps more inventive and vulgar Haverford publication was the Students of Haverford Inter-Toilet Publication (or S.H.I.T.), a satire publication that broke into the Haverford humor world in 1995 when its editors pasted its first editions on bathroom stall doors in Gummere and Barclay. While this posting site helped the publication find its name, this appearance of S.H.I.T. was short-lived, as stalls were noticeably S.H.I.T.-less by 1996. In Fall 1997, S.H.I.T. was revived by Elliot Targum and Jon McCandlish (both class of 1999). Issues were originally distributed in the Dining Center, but the editors later transitioned to a subscription service. Students could subscribe by email and receive a copy of S.H.I.T. for free in their Haverford mailbox. By issue 5, S.H.I.T. had 190 subscribers who were subject to headlines such as “HCA 10 Burns Down, No One Notices” and “Hasbro Toys Introduces New Mr. Potato Head Add-On Genitals”. The jokes in S.H.I.T. are immature, sexual, and adequately irreverent about the occasionally uptight student culture at Haverford. Their motto was “Just Lighten Up,” an urge to embrace stupid humor within the confines of too-smart academia.
Sensitive Mail, another subscription-based publication, had a similar mission. Founded in 1988 and cracking occasionally offensive jokes until 1993, Sensitive Mail’s first issue “outraged some and tickled others,” according to an article from the September 21, 1990 issue of the Bi-College News. Sensitive Mail was founded by Mark Hudis (Class of 1990), now an Emmy-nominated writer who has written for television shows such as That 70’s Show, Nurse Jackie, and True Blood. Before making it as a comedy writer, Hudis was defending his college humor publication to the Bi-Co News, explaining that after the first issue was published, “A lot of people hated us and wanted to kill us.”
Though Sensitive Mail occasionally received backlash for taking their comedy too far and harming minority groups at Haverford in the process, the publication considered themselves equal opportunity offenders who would crack a joke about anyone or anything in the name of humor. Like S.H.I.T., the editors behind Sensitive Mail believed this kind of satire was essential at a school like Haverford, where the students are often described as too woke, too studious, or too “sensitive,” to want to engage with humor that toes the line between what is okay to say on a liberal college campus and what isn’t okay to say.
Sensitive Mail unfortunately fits within a long history of Haverford humor publications that relied on sexist, racist, homophobic, or anti-semitic language to create their “humor.” Though it's nearly impossible to peruse the archives’ collection of humor publications without stumbling upon a joke that certainly wouldn’t fly today, some publications did a better job than others at promoting humor that doesn’t offend large groups of people.
One of my personal favorite Haverford satire publications is Without a (noun), a brightly-colored mid-2000s magazine that subverts the masculine aura associated with the majority of Haverford’s past humor publications. Without a (noun) is possibly the first Haverford humor publication founded by two female students, which I think contributes to the publication’s fun, artistic, quasi-girly humor.
Though not all sections of Without a (noun) were written by women, it is clear which sections are. Much of the humor in the publication’s first issue plays on stereotypes of girls being boy-obsessed, jealous, or image-conscious. One “News In Brief” article pokes fun at a girl who is horrified to find out that she is related to Paris Hilton, who the girl describes as an “eternally tan media whore… famous for being rich and skanky.” Another story titled “The Honor Code Gets Me Hot,” redirects a typical object of straight-girl desire in favor of the Honor Code.
The story begins, “So I was talking to my friend Denise the other day, and she was all like, ‘Hey, don’t you think that Orlando Bloom has sexy eyes?’ And I was like, ‘Whatever Denise, have you read the preamble to the Haverford Honor Code?’ Because damn; I want me some of that.”
Though some of the writing in Without a (noun) arguably reinforces certain stereotypes as it challenges them, consuming this magazine as a relic of mid-2000s girlhood is refreshing in contrast to the other Haverford humor publications, led mostly by white men, which too often “punched down” at minority groups for the sake of humor.
The history of satire publications at Haverford may be riddled with immaturity, political incorrectness, and jokes that don’t quite land, but this past reflects a larger mission continuously held by small groups of students writers since the 19th century: even within a college campus known for its honor code and insular academic community, we all need to lighten up sometimes and embrace the levity that humor publications can provide.
--Maia Schwallie '25