Title: Bestiality Society
Informant Info: Sandor Farkas is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth Review. He is a ’17 from Haydenville, MA. He was interviewed on May 24, 2016 at the Review office in Hanover, NH.
Type of Lore: Verbal, Legend
Country of Origin: United States
Social / Cultural Context: The Review was known for more provocative and somewhat absurd stunts in the 1980s. The effort to establish a bestiality society as a joke is one of them.
Transcript:
Yeah, so I won’t name any names, they’re not public, but a group of students who you could say considered themselves perplexed at the Council on Student Organizations recent decision to approve the creation of a gay student group, this group of Reviewers decided it was weird to have a student group funded by the college dedicated to a particular sexuality, so they took another sexual orientation, that of humans towards animals, and they determined to create an official Dartmouth student group dedicated to the exploration of this human-animal connection, known commonly as bestiality. So what they did, is they took the gay student union’s proposal to the Council on Student Organizations, and they simply replaced every mention of the word “homosexuality” with “bestiality” but they didn’t end there. They actually went and researched bestiality, did, you know, looked at the scientific research on it, looked at research written about it, and they created a whole curriculum for what this student organization would do when it would meet, you know, officers, budget, they did everything, and they even found an advisor, a very old professor, well-known, respected, who had been involved in the Review for some time, in fact since its creation, and that professor became their adviser, and so this group of a few students, a couple women, a couple men, pretty diverse group actually, and this old professor walks into the Council on Student Organizations, the COSO hearing, and the professor is actually carrying a little stuffed animal tiger in his hand, and they make the presentation all the while the professor is petting slowly the tiger, like this, and uh, they make the proposal very heartfelt, the Council on Student Organizations keep a straight face the entire time, and at one incident, one of the students, who is Indian, actually says “where I come from, we have very deep connection with animals like elephants and tigers,” you know, deep connection, wink wink, so they leave the room, there is a deliberation for ten, fifteen minutes, and they come back in, it’s announced to them that they, that COSO decided to NOT fund the group by a, I think it was five, no, four-two decision, and immediately, one of the students in the group, female students, “One vote! We lost by one vote!” and just goes hysterical and everyone in the group just went hysterical, and that is how a bunch of Reviewers trolled, you could say, what we could “trolled,” the Council on Student Organizations.
Collector’s Comments: This legend is perhaps one of the lesser known exploits of the Review, not having been revealed in the past. Even many Review staff members do not know of it. It is henceforth accessible to the public.