And the Band Couldn’t Play On

Let’s get something clear: the dialogue during the Harvard University Band (HUB) halftime show is supposed to be a joke...at least in that dorky, “I-go-to-Harvard” kind of way. But apparently our friends at Columbia don’t find the band very funny. In fact, Columbia’s athletic department found them so unacceptable, it prohibited HUB from reading its halftime script at the game on November 3.

The band planned to call Columbia out on their new, 100-million-dollar athletics campaign. The crew was to quip that with all that money, the school could buy real lion mascots. As if that wasn’t enough, they added that other departments might have to use drastic methods to get dough—such as the Statistics department playing the lottery. Burn.

“I think they’re very proud of the capital campaign, so our timing may have been off,” explains Drill Master Matthew S. Fasman ’08, who is also a chair of the Crimson’s Information Technology board.

The Columbia Athletic Department could not be reached for comment.

The band prides itself in its scripts. “I think they’ve all been in good taste...and I’m an old fogey,” says longtime director Thomas G. Everett.

“The band was quite disappointed, as you can imagine,” says Fasman.

Columbia’s marching band wasn’t so sympathetic. “I mean, at the end of the day, there’s nothing I can do about it,” says Head Manager Morgan A. Robinson. “I felt bad, and I cried a little tear, but whatever.”

Yeah, whatever, Columbia...way to uphold the First Amendment.