We’re not sure when it started or when it stopped, but once upon an Auburn the Plainsman used April Fools’ Day as an opportunity to vent its frustrations with campus culture to varying degrees of satirical success.
The paper’s April Fools’ edition would often be renamed. There was the Alabama Polytechnic Institute Plowman (“To Fester The Auburn Spirit”—1966), The Auburn Plainboy (“To Pester The Auburn Spirit”—1967), The Weekly Reeker (1968), The Auburn Painsman (1969) The Perverted Press (1970), The Auburn Plainsperson (1979), even… Dear God… the Auburn Tidesman (1974, with “AU absorbed into University of Alabama” above the fold, a photo of AU President Harry Philpott superimposed onto the body of Auburn’s first streaker below). Coverage focused primarily (and suggestively, in the most politically incorrect of terms) on the various freak accidents, crazy capers, and double entendre’d-debauchery of Dean “Joy Boy” Foy, as well as the suddenly libertine policies of Dean Katharine Cater.
But it’s the frivolously farcical fake ads that offer the truest—and quickest—taste of a time when you could pretty much print anything in a student newspaper.
Related: Photo of Bear Bryant ‘drying out’ in 1979 April Fools’ edition of the Auburn Plainsman.
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OMG, that’s ME in the San-Flush ad from 1979. I was a Plainsman staff member and spent many hours “working” on the April Fool’s edition. Thanks for the memories! I miss the Flush;(.
Awesome, Nancy! Thanks for letting us know. Was hoping someone would ID the cute Sani-Slush girl.