The Columbia University Marching Band has just been banned from performing at all Columbia sporting events.
Here are some quick thoughts on this:
1) The band was always irreverent, but in recent decades it became less supportive of the CU teams. It used to poke fun at the other teams, other schools, and the administration much more.
2) Many of the football players have told me over the years that they really resented the band and its attitude towards them.
3) But probably the key point is that most fans are completely oblivious to the band. It's not easy to hear their music and cheers, and the P.A. announcers narrating the pregame and halftime shows have been almost completely inaudible for many years.
20 comments:
Amen to that!
I need to be honest here. We all need to be honest here.
I am not simply uncomfortable with this ukase, which, I have to assume, emanated from the Office of the President. I am totally against it.
Why? Because in our Bill of Rights, we have the sacrosanct 1st Amendment, which, paradoxically, Lee Bollinger has spent his entire adult life defending, even and especially before the Supreme Court.
Moreover, we continue to have a yahoo in the Oval Office who is trying like hell to dismantle systematically our democracy, at the heart of which are our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Columbia is renown worldwide in large part because of her willingness to championing causes of right over wrong, even when most of America--indeed, most of the world--did not share her values, let alone her heroic behavior to choose to right a wrong.
While I personally do not not condone destruction of property or harm to person, I have to remind all of you that Columbia was the first university in the world to protest the injustice of the Vietnam War and the 28 years of imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.
This ill-considered ban on the Columbia University Marching Band is both silly and petty and, most importantly, antithetical to all that our beloved institution has stood for since its founding in 1754.
Alexander Hamilton left our college literally to fight for what became to be the core of our cherished nation.
CUMB does not pose the same threat that Hamilton faced. In truth, CUMB poses no threat at all.
But subtlely, undermining the 1st Amendment does. Ask Lee Bollinger if I am not correct.
Such poppycock! This is the CU band. They’ve always been outrageous. Just leave them alone. They do no harm.
In my opinion, the band breathes life and spirit at home football games which is often sorely needed.. Although they are often irreverent and not particularly talented as a group, nonetheless, they make going to our games a bit more fun, particularly when we win.( (And I’m not even referring to their stupid halftime routines). They are also often at times the only students cheering for the team . Their absence will dull the afternoon a bit and quite possibly in some small way be detrimental to the prospects of the team.
Why not just make them do sone community service as their sanction. My suggestion: Require that they participate, as musical teachers and mentors, in local area elementary school music programs.
And we can bet that the Tines will seize upon this idiocy and finally mention our football team.
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Well said, Peter.
This is a completely idiotic move by Columbia. Besides suppression of freedom of expression, this is stupid because the band for all of its irreverent behaviour has harmed noone, destroyed no property, and quite frankly was a big reason I came to homecoming games all the way from HK
They add spirit and energize alums like me....and not having them in the alumni tent this year will be a huge disappointment
Kind of surprised, Jake, that you would post 3 points that justify this decision.
Not hearing roar lion or who owns new york is a loss
Must have been some petty administrator exerting.power
Just stupid
Peter Stevens...am with you and your post here
The band was punished due to defying orders not to have Orgo Night at Butler and not with its content during football games.
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/sports/2019/09/25/marching-band-banned-from-all-future-athletic-events-lose-all-university-funding-athletics-announces/
The internet is already displeased:
https://deadspin.com/columbia-university-wipes-out-its-delightfully-chaotic-1838467749
Personally I see this as a League matter and I expect under pressure to see the decision reversed in some way.
THE BAND USED TO BE CLEVER; IT USED TO PUT ON A SHOW WORTH WATCHING; IT WAS USUALLY, GOING BACK TO THE 60S, REALLY ENTERTAINING. BUT FOR YEARS IT HAS BEEN A SHADOW OF ITS OLD SELF. IT HAS NOT PUT ON A DECENT, OR CLEVER, OR ENTERTAINING, SHOW FOR AT LEAST 20 YEARS. IT HAS BECOME AN EMBARRASSMENT. SEEING A BUNCH OF NON-MUSICIANS RUNNING AROUND AND TRYING TO BE CLEVER HAD FRANKLY BECOME A BORE AT BEST. THE LACK OF EFFORT AND TALENT REFLECTED ITSELF IN ONE DISMAL “PERFORMANCE” AFTER ANOTHER. SO I SAY GOOD RIDDANCE. IF A GROUP WANTS TO MAKE A FRESH START AND PUT IN A REAL EFFORT, I WOULD BE ALL IN FAVOR OF IT.
Have you ever seen any other college bands whose members act so like a bunch of imbeciles? I have been booing the band each year since I became a Columbia fan in 1997! Legally the pro band people have a first amendment point, imbecilic behavior is protected speech but it is still imbecilic! Football will be better off without it...Robert Pelletreau
It's a sad day, all around. Not a great look for CU, either. The band was weak, both musically and just ability to project sound, and the routines had gone into Breckian absurdity. But still, they were our band. I hate like hell to think we're going to get some Big Ten style marching band with unis and corny cadet style hats! Please, CU admins, don't foist that on us.
I don't think that will happen here, largely because they wouldn't be able to find the students to do it. UVA used to have a 'scramble' band and replaced it with a traditional one, but that's a Div I ACC school with 24,000 students, big time athletics as a draw to going to the games, and millions in athletic funding to draw upon. Plus they literally received millions more in donations to start their new traditional style band.
To PKnight's point, actually all Ivy schools (except Cornell), Stanford and Rice have scramble bands who make bad jokes. Granted, most are larger than the CUMB and/or play much more and more musically - Harvard and Princeton come to mind - but they all have their silliness quotient. Most people ignore it and are just happy to see some pep in the otherwise empty student sections.
Read Landon Baty’s tweet on the adverse impact of the band. It isn’t just that they were unfunny, or that they made idiots out of themselves, or that they exhibited no preparation, no talent, and no wit. It is that they were a negative factor on game day. They had no more right to perform at half time than any other student group. The free speech argument is bogus— they can perform in any public space, just not at Bake rField at half time. The administration actually did them a favor by foreclosing their opportunity to further debase themselves.
Look, folks, most of these comments are being made by people who have only a fraction of the story. The situation is a coming together of the university president and college dean, who have been cowed by over-the-top PC students "offended" by the band's Orgo Night gags, and an athletics office that (as you've surely noticed) has been trying to make an Ivy activity into a Big 10 enterprise. Neither has room for the Columbia Band. In Washington it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. On Morningside it's not killing the Band (well, OK, to a lot of people it ), it's the made-up reasons for it. Lying to students and alumni isn't a good thing. The result--as you can see if you've meandered around the internet over the past 48 hours--is that a huge number of alumni (not to mention students) are turned off by the War on Fun. Columbia needs its alumni support, for money and for good will. These administrators are squandering it, big time.
Glad to see it, the band is awful hated them since I played there in the early 80's
1) The First Amendment is a protection against government censorship. So the band at CUNY could claim 1st Amendment protections, but not at Columbia, which is a private institution. 2) Students who go to study at Butler during exams, and not just Orgo, are injured by disruptions deliberately caused by the repeatedly banned invasion by the CUMB, which serves no purpose other than their own cynical self-amusement. This why they lost their special status, not the content of their routines. 3) The CUMB was getting discretionary money from the University. They have no right to that $25,000, which could be withheld at any time. 4) The CUMB was told one year ago that they should apply to the Activities Board to get funding from student activity fees, like the Glee Club. The CUMB has refused to submit an application.
Dear CC1974Bkb: Are you working for a Russian troll farm or playing defense for the Columbia PR office's Situation Room? Your carefully crafted reply is, step by step, a replay of the Administration's Greatest Hits, each part having a grain of truth but in fact missing the point and thus ending up far from the whole story. Your last sentence is flat-out wrong. Stop parroting the authorized talking points and check out what you're writing before you post it. Many of your teammates and classmates understand and appreciate the humor and get a kick out of the Columbia Band. If they don't especially like it themselves, they're willing to let others do so. And they appreciate the Band's support of Lion teams in all kinds of weather. Surely a few of them must have told you back in your day: Lighten up a little.
Briefly, I'm an attorney, so this is just the way I write. Frankly, by my standards it's not particularly "carefully crafted." Actually, I am not interested in seeming to defend an administration that I usually find cowardly, unprincipled, and opaque. In reading these comments, however, I found many statements supporting the band that I felt were misinformed. I have no idea what the administration's talking points may be. Everything I wrote came from Spec stories, including the facts stated in my last sentence. Well, I'm done talking about the CUMB. I come to Jake's wonderful blog to commune with supporters of Columbia Lion's Football, and regret that this band thing has become a distraction. Feel free, if you are so inclined, to have the last word.
Thanks.
Team's record since the Band was banned: 0-3. Coincidence? Karma...
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