I read a letter to the editor last week that shocked me, for apparently, the University of Maryland Fight Song is dead. This sentiment of puzzlement, however, was quickly erased by a new feeling of excitement when I read further to learn that the author, far from being complacent on the matter, was calling for a full-scale revival of the song as a means of lifting the spirits of our student body at athletic events, and longs to hear the Fight Song one day at a university athletic event. Why the sudden burst of good spirits? Simple: As a former member of the university’s marching band and current member of the Pep Band for basketball, I know for a fact the University Fight Song, which the author writes he is “appalled about how long I have been attending this college without ever hearing it before,” and which he has become so endeared to during this, his second semester of his fourth year at the university, is not dead.
I like to think of myself as a nice guy, and it warms my heart to know all I have to do to make someone’s day is tell them that if they ever attend any Maryland football game and most Maryland basketball games, they could hear the Maryland Fight Song right then and there. No need to wait; no need to start any kind of revival movement; no need to petition the band to dust off the archives. I have played the song more times than I can count, at both football and basketball games, since my freshman year!
It’s not often you get to make dreams come true.
It is now my senior year, as well. I too, have found that during my four years here at the university, the crowds have been sub-par. Save for one or two games against Duke, I have never seen the raucous crowds and massive celebrations – so prevalent on ESPN and in the newspapers during my senior year of high school – that endeared me to the university as I watched them unfold from Marlboro, N.J., and decided to come here. I too have wondered what happened to the hallowed tales of the great Maryland basketball tradition that so many band members recounted when I was a freshman. I too have wondered where that dullness comes, and why my generation of students has failed to live up to the traditions and accomplishments of past years. Now I know why.
I find it ironic, saddening and yet somehow not surprising that in a letter which implores students to “find- the identity and history of this great university” the author doesn’t even know the official school songs. If anyone is looking for the answer to why the atmosphere is not what it could be at our university, they only need to look in the mirror. The song never “ceased being played in the first place.” What happened instead was the students “ceased giving a flying you-know-what.”
Freshmen, this column is for you. Embrace this university and its history, because it has a lot of it. Did you know Robert E. Lee’s son was president of this university before protests forced him to resign? That the red and white colors we so proudly wear at athletic events are actually “secessionist colors” from the state flag? That the original name of this university was the “Maryland Agriculture College”? That the university has a Fight Song that is played at nearly every athletic event at which the university band is present?
The cure for “dullness” is not students who feel a grand sense of accomplishment when they finally listen to an ancient MP3 file that is labeled “Maryland Fight Song,” hear a school song that has been played several hundred times since they have been students here, feel like they found something NEW, and then try to rally everyone around their archeological achievements. It is to have students who care enough to know in the first place. It is to have students who, when they see an MP3 file labeled “Maryland Fight Song,” start singing, “Fight, Fight, Fight, For Maryland, Honor now her name again – “
If you want to see the atmosphere at games improve, you have to be the change you want to see. It only takes five minutes to go to the university’s website and learn the school songs. However, I will agree with one point which was made in the letter to the editor – if you go to the website and learn the school songs, you will find more than music and words; you will see that history and tradition never died; and you will yearn to see those days return.
Bradley Chalupski is a senior government and politics and french major. He can be reached at chalupsk@wam.umd.edu.
