Though the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins will face off at the Rose Bowl this Saturday, rivalry week encompasses much more than football. Student organizations at the two schools engage in competition as well, and among them is USC’s satirical newspaper, the Sack of Troy.
Founded by a group of freshmen in 2012, the Sack of Troy has since blossomed into a beloved source of laughs and not-so-serious news for USC students; the Sack’s Instagram account has almost 5,000 followers. Among their most recent headlines are “Study Results Reveal USC Students’ Biggest Fear is Being Asked Their Parents’ Salary” and “DPS Dresses Up as Cops for Halloween.” This week, the Sack of Troy has been embattled with their crosstown counterpart, UCLA’s Westwood Enabler. Joshua Wolk, the president of the Sack of Troy, talks about the rivalry.
Wolk: “I’m not sure if I’d call it much of a rivalry. You know, sort of hammer and nail. But last year we had a bit of a back and forth last Conquest Week, and this time around they wanted to start it up again.”
Despite the satirical nature of the two publications, the rivalry is no joke. Last year, the publications competed to see who could ellicit more pictures of their readers’ feet. This year, The Westwood Enabler made an interesting request.
Wolk: “Essentially, they wanted to have a competition to see who could get a, you know, a larger amount of their student base to send pictures of them, like on the toilet and in the bathroom. It was really strange. We didn’t want to do it, but they still put out promotions about it and we just had to make a public announcement that we were not taking part in this and we wanted nothing to do with it.”
Wolk and the Sack of Troy denounced the Westwood Enabler on their Instagram, saying they “disavow this egregious request and henceforth reject any affiliation suggested by previous collaboration with the Westwood team.”
Wolk was worried the Sack of Troy’s followers would not understand that the statement was serious and would take it just like any other post: a joke.
Wolk: “We put out the serious remark and people think we’re still sort of just messing around with them when in reality we’re trying to distance ourselves for once.”
Gillian Smith, a writer for the Westwood Enabler, has a different story about how this collaboration came to be.
Smith: “Both publications came up with that sort of together. We the Enablers sent a lot of ideas, and the Sack of Troy chose one and that’s basically what we both went with.”
Smith claims she was shocked that the Sack of Troy denounced the rivalry.
Smith: “Then yesterday I think it turned into something a bit different because we started to publish, you know, the rivalry contest and we’ve been flooded with toilets in our DMs, which has been lovely. And then the Sack of Troy actually deleted the message, saying that they wanted to participate in our DMs and pulled out last minute. I think in a way to sort of one-up us.”
As Conquest goes on, only time will tell if the Sack of Troy truly ends their collaboration with the Westwood Enabler or if this was all part of a joke.