Funny Girl, Badly Drawn

With rough strokes of a poorly wielded pen, a student cartoonist delivers a dead-on picture of life at Dartmouth.

he's only a cartoon stick figure, but Badly Drawn Girl exerts surprising comic heft. In her daily appearance as a strip in The Dartmouth, the crudely rendered character delivers a fresh, sometimes daring take on student life and campus issues.

Unleashed in 1999, Badly Drawn Girl is a product of the ready wit and unsteady hand of Mindy Chokalingam '01. Through the foibles of her character, Chokalingam tackles topics ranging from the student dating scene to the ongoing uproar over the student life initiative. Her drawings are bad—turn the page to see for yourself—but her insights are sharp. And she's not one to shy away from controversy.

Though most of her student characters are composites, Chokalingam regularly gets hate mail from strangers who think she's making fun of them. Others love the strip. "All my friends want to be written in," she says. Kudos also come from unexpected quarters, including Dean of the College James Larimore, who has sent fan mail.

Some readers suspect that Badly Drawn Girl is Chokalingam's alter-ego. Both are from Massachusetts. Both "love Dartmouth," says the cartoonist. Both are seniors. But Chokalingam, a lifelong comedy addict who acts in a campus improv group, is a playwriting major. After graduation she hopes to write for Late Night with Conan O'Brien (where she interned in 1999) or Saturday Night Live. Badly Drawn Girl, on the other hand, "doesn't have a major yet and never thinks ahead," says her creator.

That gives Chokalingam plenty of room to play with the strip as she hones her comic—if not artistic—skills. "I love breaking taboos and surprising people, getting that 'Oh my God, I can't believe she just said that' reaction," Chokalingam says. "I just don't want to get expelled for my cartoon before I graduate."