21–30 of 38 posts
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.
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 annoyin…
Performing at games is the main point of marching bands. Who wants to be in a band that can't perform?
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.
Columbia '15 here, the existence of the marching band was the only thing that made me feel any sense of school spirit in my time there.
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 annoyin…
Performing at games is the main point of marching bands. Who wants to be in a band that can't perform?
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!
Can you help me understand your comment? I can't tell if your making a connection between conservative and entrenched.
Looks like the money is not an issue, $25k a year. They'll raise that much but... https://www.columbiaspectator.com/sports/2019/10/04/marching...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you help me understand your comment? I can't tell if your making a connection between conservative and entrenched.
Conservative as in resistant to change, traditional. Not Conservative as in politics. You’d expect a conservative group to be entrenched.
...but this article is about them making a change to their marching band rather than leaving it be as it has been for years?
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?
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.
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.
Columbia '15 here, the existence of the marching band was the only thing that made me feel any sense of school spirit in my time there.