The Stanford Chaparral is a humor publication that has delighted generations of Stanford students and befuddled University administrators for just as long.
Bristow Adams, Stanford student and proud subject of a five line Wikipedia article, founded The Stanford Chaparral in 1899 shortly after he invented humor. While The Stanford Chaparral (Chappie to its friends), has remained a quintessentially Stanford publication, Bristow’s new invention of humor gained widespread national popularity. It even found purchase in the pages of an undergraduate humor magazine published in a small East Coast safety school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Back on Stanford’s sunny campus, the Chappie quickly made a name for itself. Between pumping out six gut-busting magazines a year (though admittedly not as gut-busting as Stanford Dining’s deep fried cod and beans, which is a real side-and-intestine splitter), the Chappie founded the Stanford Concert Network, funded the construction of Memorial Auditorium, started the Saturday Film Series (later renamed Sunday Flicks and later still discontinued), and designed Hoover Tower. The Chappie also founded Stanford’s vaunted computer science department in the early 1960’s after one Chappie member wanted to learn how to make video games. Stanford’s current infatuation with AI can be traced back to a desire to program better ghosts in Pac-Man.
After graduation, Chappie alums have occasionally taken their talents to Hollywood. Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 masterpiece, The Room, received minor edits from a Chappie writer whose attempts to break into Hollywood were chronicled by David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive. Chappie alums have also written for The Simpsons, The Office, Gravity Falls, Nathan For You, Disenchantment and played every storm trooper in Revenge of the Sith. In addition, Chappie alums have worked on Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wag the Dog, Incredibles 2, Batman vs. Superman, Black Panther, Tootsie, Chef, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Hangover Part III and Shrek the Third as part of craft services.
Sam Simon ’77, who went on to develop The Simpsons with Matt Groenig and James Brooks, was rejected from The Stanford Chaparral for being too funny, but he did draw cartoons for The Stanford Daily. One of our alums was a California governor, but it wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger. Rumor had it JFK wrote an article titled “One Really Fun and Inappropriate Thing to do in the Wind Tunnels Under Campus” during the three months he audited classes at the business school. Still, this is Stanford so most of our alums work in technology writing code and undermining democracies to sell ads for toothpaste.
More recently, the Chappie hit a nadir under the tenor of former University President John Hennessy. The rocky relationship started after Hennessy, the chairman of Google’s board, logged onto the Chaparral’s office computer and realized Bing was the default search engine. Already in a bad mood after Stanford’s trustees rejected his proposal to sell Stanford to Google, Hennessy razed the Chappie’s office building and banished the club to its current digs in Nitery. Vice Provost Condoleezza Rice was sent in to restore diplomatic relations, but she accidentally invaded The Stanford Chaparral.
The past few years have seen a revival of The Chappie under the benevolent bafflement of current University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
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