The Buzzard

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The Buzzard is (or was) the satirical alter-ego of The Tiger, presenting the news behind the news, as well as salacious gossip disguised as "humor" in a once or twice a year edition. Particularly active during the activist 1970s and 1980s, The Buzzard was sometimes published in lieu of The Tiger on Halloween and April Fools Day printing dates, and on other occasions as an insert in a regular issue. In some years only a single edition was issued, and it was occasionally printed in conjunction with Spring Break. Certain campus scandals were recounted in copies of The Buzzard, with names thinly disguised to veil the guilty, material that could never have appeared "straight" in the campus newspaper. Various other campus icons (sports teams, coaches, deans), and issues (housing, road safety, campus drinking) provided much fodder for Buzzard copy. Special points to those writers who figured out how to include the thinly-disguised "F" word!

The usual Tiger advertisers invariably went along with gag ads commensurate with the satirical tone of The Buzzard. Sometimes, the ads were better than the copy!

The role of The Buzzard seems to have been taken over by The Almond. The last time an issue of the Buzzard was published was 2001.

Trivia

  • It is unclear at this time when the first Buzzard was published. The Tiger ran a send-up of itself on April 1, 1946, with the masthead slogan altered to "The World's Most Uninteresting College Rag" and the frontpage stories headlined "Shorty Is New President" and "Oscar is found dead in Latrine". The accession number for this edition at Special Collections at the Strom Thurmond Institute is Volume XXXIX, Number 32a, in the bound 1946 Tigers.