"I'm telling you dear," said an old grad to his wife, "this time they're serious." He gave the Saturday extra of the Yale Daily News to her, and added, "Very serious indeed."
Published and distributed by the CRIMSON, the paper's five-column headline declared, "PRINCETON FOOTBALL STARS MAUL 16-YEAR-OLD YOUTH." By noon, 4,000 copies of the parody had been distributed to the crowd which awaited the Yale-Princeton football game.
Complete with a picture of the victim and a strong statement from the police chief, the parody convinced many alumni. Most undergraduates nervously laughed the edition off as a Yale hoax. But at 1 p.m. they were somewhat shocked by 8,000 editions of the Daily Princetonian, which corroborated the messy details and added a few more.
This edition, also a CRIMSON product, had a bedside interview with the victim--"I asked what they wanted, but they didn't say anything. They just kept grinning at me. Then one of them hit me in the side...."
The Princetonian quoted Police Chief John H. Smith as saying, "We won't hesitate to go right out to Palmer Stadium and yank somebody off the field." In a front page editorial, the Prince said, "Justice should be done, but not in a kangaroo, court presided over by a bulldog."
The parody of the Princetonian duplicated the paper's style and format. The Yale edition was almost an exact replica, the CRIMSON being unable to duplicate exactly the low quality newsprint of the Daily News.
Crimeds had worked for weeks on the parodies, and 40 were at Princeton for the actual distribution. Seven cars left Cambridge at four in the morning and rendezvoused at 11 a.m. at a private home just off campus.
The Daily Princetonian telephoned the CRIMSON last night and asked if the Crime had published the parodies. The Princetonian spokesman noted, "It was kind of amusing."
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