The Cornell Lunatic is the college humor magazine at
Cornell University, founded on April 1, 1978, by
Joey Green.
History
During Green's two-year tenure as editor, the Lunatic was a 72-page glossy magazine of
satire and
parody published once a semester. The Lunatic staff was responsible for many pranks on campus, including a parody of the 1979 Cornell–Yale Homecoming Football Game program, sold by the Lunatic staff as the real thing at the football stadium, resulting in Green's arrest and near expulsion from the university.[1] Today, the Lunatic continues to publish once a semester, and the magazine is distributed on campus for free.
Material from the Cornell Lunatic from 1978 to 1981 was reprinted in the 1982 trade paperback book, Hellbent on Insanity, a collection of the best college humor, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston and edited by Green, fellow Lunatic alumnus Alan Corcoran, and Bruce Handy,[2] former editor of the Stanford Chaparral.
In the spring of 2005, the Lunatic staff distributed a full-scale parody of The Cornell Daily Sun on campus.
On March 29, 2008, more than fifty Lunatic alumni and guests gathered at the
Cornell Club in Manhattan to celebrate the Lunatic's 30th anniversary and the publication of the book Lunacy: The Best of the Cornell Lunatic.[5]
In March 2016, the Lunatic hosted a night of comedy at Willard Straight Hall featuring comedian
Eric Schwartz, aka Smooth-E.[6]
Throughout the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the Lunatic continued to produce digital issues, returning to print in Fall 2021. They hosted comedian and actor
Ronny Chieng for a virtual event in April 2021.[7] Later that year, the club established a second formal mascot, "Honse," a horse with an unspecified illness. As of 2022, the club boasts nearly 30 members and is one of the strongest comedy groups on Cornell's campus.
Notable alumni
Some notable alumni from the magazine include:
Glenn Adamson, editor of The Journal of Modern Craft, author, and museum curator
Jeff Bercovici,[8] author and Los Angeles Times Business editor
Lawrence Carrel,[9] financial author and contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Forbes
Adam-Troy Castro, science fiction, fantasy, and horror novelist, and winner of the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award