Aug 22

Owned! The Jeff Deck Saga Continues

Dartmouth, Ivy League

DEVON GRANDY (Honolulu, Hawaii)

So much for the hiatus–this bit off breaking news was just too good to lay off of.

You may recall Break Out The Oreos‘ prior coverage and interactions with Jeff Deck (Dartmouth ‘02), the “mild-mannered New Englander” whose day job as a “grammar vigilante” earned him a berth in our BOTO Picks. The Chicago Tribune once described him and his pals as “Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation,” a description that does Jack Kerouac (a two-time Columbia dropout) a good measure of injustice. We made the obvious jokes about Dartmouth’s commendable perpetration of traditional values like douchebaggery and vandalism, but never expected anything to ever come of it other than having Mr. Deck show up in our comments section.

But what ho! Mr. Deck has appeared in the news again, not two-and-a-half months after we dedicated a “pick” to him! It seems that his cross-country travels of grammar correction brought him to the Grand Canyon in March, where he apparently supplied the punchline to all of our jokes by vandalizing/correcting a hand-painted sign that has stood in the national park for more than sixty years. Mr. Deck and his accomplice Benjamin Herson both pled guilty last week and received a sentence of “a year’s probation, during which they cannot enter any national park or modify any public signs.” They were also ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the sign.

It would appear, due to the stipulation that they cannot modify public signs for a year, that Mr. Deck and his friends will be ceasing their typo-slaughtering crusade and, as a result, will not be in the news for a while. They also won’t be camping at Yosemite anytime soon. On the other hand, you never know when another scandalous grammar-centric crisis may wrack the Ivy League like this one has. One can only hope.

Related Posts

• June 11, 2008 -- Jeff Deck Gets His Own And The “Wetbacks” Go Surfing
• April 11, 2008 -- Ivy League Round-Up