Students in the “Cartooning” class taught by Richard Laurent, a part-time instructor in the School of Design, created political cartoons around the election this month as part of a class assignment.

Laurent said political cartoons are historical and support the First Amendment.

“It’s very important that we have that right,” he said.

Senior illustration major Sidney Abbott drew a cartoon about Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.

“With the upcoming election, it’s really important for us to bring some irony to the situations and comedy,” Abbott said. “Me just being able to draw him fat and stupid is something that I enjoy with this class.”

Editor’s Note: The Chronicle published some of the cartoons in collaboration with the class.

Transcript

0:00: I drew a severed head and put it up on the wall in my dorm. And word got around the school. 

 0:06: We had hundreds of people coming by to look at the severed head.

 0:17: Last week we drew political illustrations for my cartooning class and I chose my topic of choice to be Trump with the upcoming election. 

 0:29: I think it’s really important for us to, I don’t know, bring some irony to the situations and comedy. 

 0:36: I think it’s for how sad and terrible the politics of today have been. 

 0:43: Me being able to just like, draw him fat and stupid is something that I enjoy with this class. 

 0:49: And I’m grateful that I got that. 

 1:01: I focus more on the swing states. 

 1:03: So I pretty much try to figure out how exactly I wanted to emphasize of like, which they could be. 

 1:15: So one of my cartoons I did more of like kind of a, like a parody of gender reveal parties. 

 1:23: So it was of a cake and essentially it would show the inside of whether it was Republican or Democrat. 

 1:30: OK. 

 1:30: Everybody made their marks. 

 1:32: So let’s go through.

1:35 Political cartoons, from my point of view, are historical and they support the First Amendment freedom of speech. 

 1:45: It’s very important that we have that right. 

 1:47: And it’s sort of a barometer for this country. Political cartoons often tap off of the issue of the day. 

 1:58: So I’m, I’m listening to media and picking up on a daily basis what’s happening in public media, blogs and so on. 

 2:09: So I can do a cartoon that’s related to a specific topic that’s shaking down right now. 

 2:17: So this had to do with Donald Trump obviously. 

 2:21: And there’s certain issues that sort of are germane to political cartoonist. 

 2:30: They work with these things like back to school, gun control. 

 2:34: There are things you can always fall back on if you don’t have a topic for the day or the week. 

 2:40: So that it’s, it informs our inventory of ideas, actually.

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