Current Columbia Student. Columbia's administration is absolutely terrible at cultivating any sense of school spirit. Some of this is a function of the fact that we're in NYC, but some of this can be laid at the hands of decisions like this, which are utterly tone-deaf. I love going here but I've had to work hard to create a sense of community.
I hope some absurdly rich alumnus tightens the vice on Columbia over this behavior, as they are likely the only constituency with any power over the matter.
Wow, what a sad state of affairs. Being a geeky band kid myself and drum major growing up, what can ex-marching band kids around the nation do to stop the scourge of this power-tripping athletic coach?! Just as at my high school, it looks like the football team itself hasn't won a championship in years. When the team sucks go ahead and blame the band, because you're not busy building a winning team. Go figure!
As a Columbia grad I'm not surprised at all... the Columbia Administration is insanely conservative. I have never experienced as entrenched of a bureaucracy as I did at Columbia!
I attended Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in the late seventies and early eighties, and two groups who stood out were the Bard Hall Players and Columbia University Marching Band. They were made up of talented, creative and hilariously irreverent students. Come on, has the administration lost the ability to laugh? Who wrote Plato’s Republic? is pure gold just as Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
Edit: After replying, I realized you may have meant the last sentence with the questions. The “Who wrote Plato’s Republic?” is at the end of the New York Times piece. As to the other one, Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?, here: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/07/grants-tomb/492647...
> Joe Schwartz, a 1992 graduate and former lawyer, said of his band experience, which began by playing a blowtorch, “It’s probably not a coincidence that I’m in the chair asking the dean for one more chance and then I’m the one in front of the judge asking for one more chance.”
Nice.
While the administration's disingenuous rulebook-throwing is fooling no one and tarnishing the university's reputation, it is healthy to have an occasional reminder that the government/administration is not your friend, and a movement of the people, which a scramble band is, would do well to find its way as independent citizens.
Columbia University football team sues for divorce from the band? My bet is on the band coming out on top.
> The band manager, Cameron Danesh-Pajou, a senior chemical engineering student, acknowledged the missed March 9 deadline, but said it was never presented as an ultimatum.
As a maintainer of realtime DSP/audio software I am forced to agree with the University in this case. If they let it slide even this once these kids would spend the rest of their lives making block calls and only ever measuring average performance to gauge their self worth.
Reading the article, it sounds like nothing prevents the band from doing all the things they used to do except perform at the football games. It also sounds like they are funded by the university to run around and prank others, which seems legitimate for the university to not shed any tears when the band drops the ball on its funding request. I’m sure it’s a fun tradition, but it also sounds potentially quite annoying depending on who the target of the joke is, and you can still have fun/ be annoying on campus without direct university funding.
It probably says a lot more about me than I want it to, but I was in a Big 10 marching band and didn't really care about the performances. I mean, it was enjoyable, but I might have done it even if we did all the same long rehearsals of the performances (we memorized the drill and music for ~7 shows a season) and then just went to the games as a pep band.
