Students of Satire,

We are honored and frankly confused that you have taken interest in our insight. Ultimately, we write satire to cheer people up. We believe that many at this University take themselves too seriously, and we want to make light of that. As members of this community, we hope our publication serves as a mirror, enabling reflection and self-awareness.

Punching up is one of our core editorial values. Though readers have described our comedy as depraved, sexually repressed, even verging on absurd, we actually do write with intention. We have no interest in ridiculing righteous causes or trivializing the struggles of those less fortunate than us.

Bothering self-serious students is one of our most urgent goals. After all, we are just a group of college kids printing a humble newspaper full of dick jokes. But we are mindful of satire’s history and certainly aware of the apparent contradiction. Perhaps such an intelligent-sounding question for your students would arise from considering any radical aesthetic/literary project (we do not claim to be radical): how does an artistic endeavor serve a political project (we do not claim to be artists)? But you asked about The Yellow Journal.

UVA calls itself an institutional arbiter of the “great and good” while perpetuating harm to its own students and society at-large, and this is the contradiction we are concerned with unraveling. Our jokes about this school are absurd because this reality is absurd! If we, somewhat rational people, decide how to craft our reality, then why is our world so irrational? Beyond irrational to inhumane? We have to laugh—otherwise, how would we make sense of what’s around us without losing hope and joy?

Your class sounds really fun! We encourage anyone interested in satire and the questions surrounding it to apply to YJ in future semesters.

Yours truly,

The Yellow Journal