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Following weeks of complaints from students and faculty intervention, the Gorilla Gazette — Mather House’s satire newspaper — has promised to scale back lewd and personal jokes, according to the newspapers’ authors.
The Gazette, which satirizes political events, prominent members of the House, and sometimes ordinary students, is written by Sonya Kulkarni ’27 and Abdullah S. Sial ’27, the 2025 Mather House Committee Historians. The paper, named after Mather’s gorilla mascot, is emailed to House residents each week and featured on dining hall tables.
The newsletter, which has existed for several years, is a beloved Mather institution, and House residents proudly wear hoodies displaying its logo.
But this semester, the Gazette’s uncensored satire sparked debate over the boundaries of tasteful humor — and eventually intervention from House leadership, a brief rebellion against bowdlerization, and changes of heart from the paper’s writers.
House administrators — including tutors, Resident Dean Luke Leafgren, and Faculty Deans Amala Mahadevan and Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan — received complaints following the release of the first Spring 2025 issue, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Gazette is not reviewed by house administrators before its publication each week.
The first issue, which was released on Jan. 26, included lewd jokes referencing individual students. The cracks continued in the next three issues, with writers naming a student as “Cultural Appropriator of the Year”and joking that another student was arrested for public indecency after being “Seen Running in Booty Shorts.”
In a statement to The Crimson, Kulkarni and Sial wrote that the Gazette will be “more thoughtful in its language, more mindful of tone, and more inviting for a wider range of students” moving forward.
Kulkarni and Sial also clarified that — with the exception of the first issue — all students named in jokes were explicitly asked for permission beforehand.
Mather house faculty and resident deans did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the publication’s change.
Though the Gazette had previously satirized various political events and students in leadership positions on campus, past issues refrained from explicit content and naming non-prominent students.
One student in the House took matters into their own hands, launching a counter-newsletter named after Mather’s other mascot, the Lion’s Share. On March 2, Mather residents woke up to papers on each dining hall table proclaiming “DEMOCRACY DIES IN DICK JOKES” and accusing the Gazette of running “exclusively sex and masturbation jokes.”
“This is a full frontal assault on our democracy,” they added on the other side. “The Lion’s Share is publishing this #resistance, single-handedly outdoing literally anything the Democratic Party has done in the last few weeks to stand up to fascism.”
Its author, who could not be reached for comment, begged for a cleaner brand of humor — though not without employing some salty repartee of their own.
“Please, Gorilla Gazette, return to normal satire that doesn’t just rely on the shock factor of seeing every lewd word I know staring back at me while I eat powdered scrambled eggs at 8:34 a.m.,” the newsletter pleaded.
After house administrators received complaints about the Gazette, Kulkarni and Sial met with Leafgren in early February. But the inappropriate jokes continued in the following issues.
The jokes stopped on March 2, the same day the Lion’s Share was distributed, when the pair released a blank version of the paper’s usual template. The Gazette’s “All the News that Mathers” slogan at the top of the issue was also replaced with “All the News that Pleases Everyone.”
“Still have concerns and feedback? Tell US,” the issue said at the bottom.
That same day, the pair met with the faculty deans, who again discussed complaints raised by Mather residents. The following week, Kulkarni and Sial met with current and former House Committee members to discuss future guidelines for the paper’s content.
The following issue — the Gazette’s sixth of the semester — was titled “Reflections, Changes, and the Future,” and contained a note from Kulkarni and Sial apologizing for their jokes.
“We sincerely apologize to anyone who has felt alienated, disrespected, or unheard by our editorial choices,” they wrote. “While the Gazette has always aimed to be a space for bold satire and humor, we recognize that in some instances, we have miscalculated.”
The pair committed to a “more thoughtful approach to language and tone” moving forward, and also attached an anonymous feedback form for students to express their concerns.
“Our goal is to make the Gazette compelling, not alienating,” they wrote.
In their statement, Kulkarni and Sial wrote that they “took steps to ensure the Gazette felt more accessible and responsive to the broader Mather community” after meeting with the Faculty Deans.
“We care deeply about this House, and we’ve never viewed the Gazette as something that belongs to just the two of us—it’s always been about the Mather community,” the pair wrote. “We’re learning as we go, and we’re doing our best to keep that learning public, transparent, and collaborative.”
Kulkarni and Sial also acknowledged that they intended to “bring a sharper, more topical voice to the Gazette” when taking over the role, accepting that “not everyone will resonate with every joke or every edition, and that’s okay.”
While Mather resident Thomas E. Cardenas ’27 said that the writers “should have seen this coming,” he praised the pair for their apology.
“I think their response was well done and practically addressed a lot of the concerns that happened, that were made,” Cardenas said.
Fellow Mather resident Benjamin D. Manetta ’27 said that he typically enjoyed reading the Gazette.
“It’s all in good fun,” he said.
—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.
