Cartoon: Holiday Appropriation

This assignment was really fun because it was creative and highly interactive. It made me feel like I was on the Iron Chef show because of the team work and time constraint involved. The different positions held by each group member were effective. I was one of the two "writers" and really had fun with it. As is clear, our graphics people did an excellent job of using the simplistic tools in paint to create a graphic image.

The topic for the cartoon was hard to choose because as students we could come up with many different things relevant to Clemson for satire. We considered parking services and the inconsistencies of our football team both as topics. It ultimately came down to the ability to use a single frame with the topic of holiday appropriation as well as the ability to create a minimilistic image in the Microsoft Word paint program.

Our topic, Holiday Appropriation, was in reference to the re-assignment of holidays as President Barker addressed to the student body in an "Inside Clemson" listserv email. We received it a few weeks prior to the annual two day Fall Break. Clemson doesn't usually get Labor Day as a holiday, but due to the Florida State game falling on that Monday, one of the Fall Break days was re-assigned to celebrating Clemson Football. A lot of people were disappointed by the short holiday. Those die-hard football fans were the most understanding and supportive of the change in holiday. But let's face it, some people just don't care about football. To them, this "re-assignment" assumes that what they have had planned for Fall Break is inferior to Clemson Football and doesn't matter enough to have that extra day off. To me, that was the primary punch line of the cartoon. There was also an underlying satirical message in the cartoon. It was in reference to all the rage about climbing our way up the ladder to being a top 20 University. It seems like we tend to get less holiday time than other universities. For example, USC in Columbia ALWAYS gets Labor Day off, as well as their two well-deserved days of Fall Break. The word on the street is that our holiday control will contribute to our becoming a top 20 university. IT IS JUST ONE DAY, and we are still only number 27.