The New York Times
May 13, 1992, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 7; Column 1; National Desk; Education Page
HEADLINE: Campus Journal; Dartmouth Review Glowers at Harvard Prank
By NANCY WALSER, Special to The New York Times
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 12
BODY:
Late last month, six staff members of The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine loaded 2,000 copies of their latest spoof into a Range Rover and drove two hours north to Hanover, N.H.

Their destination: Dartmouth College, which was rocked a year and a half ago by charges of anti-Semitism after student staff members on the ultraconservative Dartmouth Review inserted a passage from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in the Review's masthead.

Their mission: to distribute a look-alike takeoff of the Review titled "Spring Fashion Issue," featuring photos of Adolf Hitler posing in the woods in preppy garb and articles mimicking the conservative themes, the personal attacks and the inflammatory style for which the Review has become known.

Inside the parody issue, the Dartmouth president, James Freedman, is assailed as a "poo-poo head," the Democratic Party is characterized as the party of the elderly kept alive by "Medicaire," and fictitious editorial writers apologize for publishing passages of "Mein Kampf" but hail its "rhetorical flair unsurpassed in German literature since Nietzsche."

All in all it seemed like a chummy Ivy League prank -- until a Review reporter caught the Lampooners in a dorm, replacing real issues with the spoofs, and called the police. "They were nose to nose," said Bob McEwen, head of campus security.

The Review staff insisted that the authorities make the Harvard students put the real Review issues back; the Harvard six, who had passed out most of the parodies, refused. Eventually, the police deferred to campus security officers, who ordered the Lampooners to leave or face arrest.

Kenneth Weissman, the Review's editor in chief, then asked the Dartmouth administration to condemn the parody for its play on fascist themes, a request that was denied because Harvard, not Dartmouth students, were the instigators, said Alex Huppe, a Dartmouth spokesman. Mr. Huppe pointed out that the Review itself had once published a cartoon of President Freedman dressed like Hitler on its cover.

Had the Review's reaction been different, the incident might have gone down as another round in a long tradition of Ivy League jousting. Instead, many Dartmouth students found themselves cheering the Harvard students for exposing what they believe is the Review's Achilles' heel.

"As one of my friends put it, they can dish it out but they can't take it," said Andrew M. Baer, a former Review writer who is now editor in chief of a new conservative campus monthly, The Beacon.

"For one brief hour," he said, "they were not the entity that Dartmouth students feel threatens the name of the institution. A lot of us are grateful that the Lampoon did it."

The Lampoon's editor, Geoffrey Rodkey, said he had chosen the Review to parody because the "Mein Kampf" incident made it an easy target. "I find their politics extremely abhorrent, but this wasn't a vendetta," he said. "I just thought it would be funny."

Mr. Weissman said he had called the police because the Lampoon staff members "were removing legitimate issues of the Review" from dormitories. In an open letter posted around the campus, he charged the Lampoon with "falsely representing" the Review.

The Review's May 2 issue accused those who enjoyed the parody of using a double standard. "While logic dictates that certain topics seem to be off limits to what can be parodied in good taste, the scene at the modern academy is such that it is not the topic of the parody, but rather the target of the parody, which determines if the parody is acceptable," Review editors wrote.

Jay Heinrichs, editor of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, sees the Review's defensiveness as evidence that it was seriously hurt by the "Mein Kampf" incident. The Review has lost staff members and has had trouble recruiting writers, he said, adding, "It has become uncool and a possible detriment to one's career to work for them."

But Mr. Weissman denies the Review has changed. "We're doing very well," he said. "We're going to remain outspoken."