Judge — January 22, 1927 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Judge Page This page satirizes college hazing practices at Yale University ("New Haven"). The top cartoon depicts "Tap Day," a real Yale tradition where senior society members would tap underclassmen for membership. The joke shows this literally—a "varsity shot-putter" physically taps a man and orders him to his room. The bottom cartoon, titled "The experiment," extends the satire: a woman conducts a controlled test on a man, apparently demonstrating that the tapping/hazing ritual produces predictable, explosive reactions (shown by the burst cloud). The satire mocks both the brutality of college hazing and the pseudo-scientific justification some might offer for such practices. The cartoons ridicule Yale's elite club traditions as simultaneously violent and absurd, treating hazing as an experiment worthy of scrutiny rather than an honored custom.