Immature, intelligent and indicative of their paper, The Tank’s staff is waging a war to capture your mirth.
The Tank is a satirical student-run newspaper that, among other things, claims to “lick the stories other papers won’t touch with a 10-foot pole.”
Jason “!” Duff created The Tank last winter quarter.
“I started thinking wouldn’t it be neat if we had a satirical paper here on campus. I was thinking about the Harvard Lampoon. They’re pretty common in Ivy League schools, and I thought OSU could definitely handle one,” said Duff, a senior in marketing and political science.
The three issues that have been published since have included advice, editorials, interviews, a USG voter guide and both faux and real advertisements.
“We pride ourselves on never doing a real news story,” said Duff, The Tank’s “Editor-for-Life.”
Feature stories have included “OSU Physicist Discovers that He is a Nerd,” “Broken Glass & Pornography Found in Box of Cereal” and “USG: American Nazis?”
“Offending people isn’t the goal of The Tank but it is a hefty side effect. The goal is to rock people’s faces, and you rock people’s faces by getting them to think and getting them to laugh,” Duff said.
Once he had a blueprint of what he wanted the paper to be, it came together in a couple of weeks, Duff said.
“I made a list of people I had encountered at OSU that were both funny and smart. Writing comedy is pretty difficult. It requires someone who’s a good writer. I have a lot of funny friends but they don’t necessarily work at The Tank,” Duff said.
Two of the comedic engineers on The Tank’s staff, Josh Yoakam, and “Uncle” Suntosh Kelkar, are Duff’s long time friends and students at the University of Cincinnati.
“Jason throws ideas at me and sees if they stick. He used to do the same thing with knives. I also compose a few articles of my own and try to add a few jokes as needed,” Kelkar said.
The paper also uses articles submitted by Ohio State students, and as a result has added one member to their staff, Duff said.
“We have a diverse group of people. We have liberals and conservatives, but we’re still mainly written by guys,” Duff said. “I want women to be able to enjoy this, too. One of my regrets is that we weren’t able to get more women on staff.”
Three of the sixteen staff members are women.
“To me, The Tank means freedom of speech, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with the possibility of free beer,” said Shannon Tillar, the assistant editor and a junior in English and Italian.
Once he assembled a staff, the biggest challenge was convincing advertisers to take a chance on the concept of the paper, Duff said.
“At first, I thought we might not be able to get this off the ground because it would cost us too much money. After the first issue, it was a lot easier because we could make a media kit and bring along previous issues,” Duff said. “For the most part, advertisers really like the idea of a satirical newspaper because it’s something different.”
It costs approximately $450 to print 8,000 copies of each edition of The Tank. Duff and other staff members distribute the newspaper to classroom buildings and High Street businesses.
The paper has been a self-sustaining financial success as well as accomplishing its other goal.
“One thing I wanted to make sure of for The Tank is that it was an apolitical newspaper,” Duff said. “All of us have certain political leanings. We represent a very diverse group. I didn’t want to attack any political party or political figure or ideology. I want this to appeal to as many people as possible, but at the same time, I like to ruffle some feathers.”
The Tank has had its detractors, including an effusive sparring between columnists as a result of comedic engineer Jon Alexander’s parody of The Lantern column “Masticating in Public.”
“I don’t question Jon Alexander’s unparalleled qualifications, but his column, “Masturbating In Public,” should be handed off to someone literate,” said Hank Mylander, author of “Masticating in Public.” “Read The Onion, instead. It’s in the same satirical style as The Tank, only less utterly devoid of humor. Well, I suppose it wasn’t all bad. At the risk of sounding juvenile, I thought that “Placeb-Os” advertisement was really hilarious.”
The comedic engineers relish the criticisms as much as compliments.
“I consider Hank’s comments to be quite flattering, an obvious sign of jealous envy,” said Alexander, a senior in marketing.
Other parodies have been less personal.
“I did think (The Tank’s) comparison between USG and Nazis was completely inappropriate,” said Eddie Pauline, president of Undergraduate Student Government.
“I think The Tank is really a funny reading on campus. It is filled with a good mix of intelligent humor and complete stupidity, but it does inspire people to think about things and may even help people become interested in something, such as USG, that they make fun of,” Pauline said.
Duff defends the paper’s choice of targets as being both amusing and apropos.
“I want everything in The Tank to be original. I want The Tank to be somewhat timeless, so you could pick it up at anytime and not have to think back to what the stories were back then. USG elections (issue) being the exception, but I think there are a lot of stories in there germane to just about any student council,” Duff said.
The Tank allowed The Lantern to venture behind enemy lines to conduct an un-surreptitious surveillance of its operation.
Duff and four of the paper’s comedic engineers sat in his apartment critiquing the latest submissions to The Tank. One in ten articles in the paper is the result of a submission.
Their conversation ricocheted between crass jokes and critiques of the submission’s universality, quality of humor and relevance to OSU students. They collaborated on the submitted ideas as well as their own and discussed practical concerns such as the length of articles.
“Although we do get low brow, we don’t look for low brow,” said Aaron Bruns, a senior in philosophy and film, and one of the first staff members to join The Tank.
“We want to be funny, but not in a way that panders to everyone, and we want to be provocative and to some extent offensive, but not in a way that’s obvious to everyone,” Bruns said. “Tank style (is) edgy, wordy, built on turns of phrase, Space Ghost-esque non-sequitors and Onion-style ironies.”
“We have a unique style of comedy that favors certain types of humor over others,” Duff said. “I like the cerebral jokes, so I try and shy away from the jokes that just offend people. We’ve cut out articles. A lot of things have not run. I like to keep this PG-16 for the most part.”
Among those pieces deemed too offensive to include were a cartoon depicting the devil playing poker with hallowed historical figures, and an article suggesting a close encounter between Drew Barrymore and E.T. of another kind.
“Some figures are sacred, not many,” Duff said.
Other members of The Tank’s staff are less reflective but no less jocular.
“The Tank is like this big piece of machinery. It’s like this metal car with this cannon, and it shoots. It’s like artillery,” said Jon Temler, a senior in mechanical engineering and a Tank comedic engineer.
All facetiousness aside, no one knows what is going to happen to The Tank after this year. It hasn’t depleted its arsenal of witticisms and words, but with 80 percent of its staff graduating this spring, its tour of duty may be up.
“The heart and soul of The Tank is leaving. I’m worried that we might not have the people to make sure that the type of story that goes in is right,” said Duff, who is among those graduating in June.
The future of The Tank is uncertain without Duff’s leadership, said Matt Youngner, a comedic engineer and senior in philosophy, who calls Duff the “impetus” behind The Tank’s operation.
“It’s our paper.
I don’t really think of it as a monolithic organization, I guess in some sense I probably should. It’s only because I failed to establish some kind of set hierarchy. I tried to in the beginning but the problem is the funnier the writer, the more adverse they are to any kind of structure,” Duff said.
In the end, Duff says he has no regrets.
“I like the idea of having this to look back upon. What I love most about it is that it has given me a chance to refine my writing skills as far as comedy is concerned, and it’s given me a chance to leave my mark on OSU,” Duff said.
The fourth, and possibly, final issue of The Tank comes out on Monday.
