Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern
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The Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern is a college humor magazine, founded at Dartmouth College in 1908.
Many celebrated writers, artists, comedians and politicians began their careers at the Jacko, including: [1]
- Theodor Seuss Geisel (also known as Dr. Seuss). Geisel began signing his work with his middle name so that he could continue to work on the Jack-O-Lantern after he was banned from participating in college activities for violating Prohibition.
- Chris Miller, who based his short stories in National Lampoon on his undergraduate experiences at Dartmouth, and subsequently turned them into the movie Animal House.
- Norman MacLean
- Budd Schulberg
- Buck Henry
- Robert Reich
The magazine was referenced in the opening line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Lost Decade," which was first published in Esquire in 1939. [2]
The Jacko has many traditions, such as performing campus pranks and publishing a yearly parody of the campus newspaper The Dartmouth in a style similar to that of The Onion.[3] One of the oldest traditions is Stockman's Dogs. In the October 1934 issue, F.C. Stockman (class of 1935) drew a single panel cartoon of two dogs talking to each other. That same cartoon has appeared in virtually every issue published since then, always with a different caption.[4]
Jack-O-Lantern writers Nic Duquette '04 and Chris Plehal '04 invented the unofficial Dartmouth mascot Keggy the Keg in the fall of 2003.[5]
