Band Tones Down Its Humor

There are many things Ivy League marching bands are known for. Tact isn’t one of them.

In a highly-publicized incident last month, the Columbia University Marching Band drew vehement criticism from Catholic leaders when it took a dig at the Church’s sexual abuse scandal.

During a football game at Fordham University, the band’s half-time announcer told the crowd that tuition at the Jesuit-run school was “going down like an altar boy.”

Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger publicly apologized, but the band has said it would not and has prominently displayed the offending script on its website, complete with an editorial comment that it “received the Catholic League seal of approval.”

While Columbia’s band seems to revel in its bad-boy image, the Harvard University Band—which historically has shared the Ivy League penchant for off-color gibes at opposing teams—is quietly moving toward a less controversial program.

“Columbia prides itself on being over the line,” said band drillmaster Courtney A. Roberts ’03. “Harvard has done some of that in the past, but as of late, especially this year, we’re trying to get away from focusing so much on the other schools because it’s just not going to be interesting to people who come to the games with a primary interest in Harvard.”

Roberts, who directs the script-writing process, said that digs at other Ivies will not be completely omitted—they just won’t be the halftime show’s main focus.

“Part of the difficulty of being in my position is that you’re trying to play to an audience who has so many different interests,” she said. “There are people who are going to absolutely love it if I bash Northeastern, but there are going to be people who are also very offended by it. The key is to make the show less vicious but not less edgy.”

Instead, band members say, they will focus adding more creative music and stunts or parodying Harvard events—like they did at the Sept. 21 Holy Cross game.

“We took a swipe at Let’s Go, we took a swipe at freshmen and that freshmen didn’t know where the Quad was—things that weren’t directly related to Holy Cross, but things that Harvard students could relate to,” clarinets leader David A. Krych ’03 said. “Because obviously the Harvard crowd is the one we’re trying to reach.”

And while a Sept. 28 game at Brown included a joke alleging that Providence’s mayor is corrupt, this Saturday’s Northeastern show won’t mention the school at all.

But band members say the Columbia incident—which most felt went over the line—was not the impetus behind a move to more friendly programming.

The decision to focus on Harvard-based humor came at a meeting last January, when students decided that future shows would emulate a successful Penn game halftime program that showcased Harvard professors on the field, band manager Courtenay L. Kessler ’03 said.

Christopher J. Phillips ’04, who attends football games regularly, said he thought including faculty members or Harvard events helped defray problems that arise when the band’s humor contains too many inside jokes.

“One band’s halftime show was really a joke between that band and the opposing band,” he said. “That is not always the case, but it’s the case often enough to be an issue.”

Longtime band director Thomas G. Everett said that at last year’s meeting, the band also decided to focus on ensuring member involvement in writing the scripts to ensure that a broad audience would be comfortable with the jokes.

“The sensitive period we’re going through, I think, isn’t just with people in leadership positions or adults,” Everett said. “Students are seeing that what they say does have influence and consequences, and what one individual may sense does not represent Harvard University or the band as a whole.”

“At one time people didn’t offer much of their concern when they had that gut feeling of ‘Hmm, I don’t feel comfortable with that,’ but I think this is changing.”

Everett said Harvard administrators had frequently chastised band members for their program choices in the 1970s and 80s. After a 1983 football game in which the band joked about the deaths of Marines in Lebanon and the shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight 007, then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III began requiring members to submit their scripts ahead of time for approval.

Now, Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 reviews each script with Roberts on Friday mornings but, by that point, students have already cut most of the potentially offensive jokes.

In writing for the Brown show, which was based on spin-offs of the popular television show “American Idol,” for example, the band chose to discard one proposed spoof because members wanted to be more sensitive in the wake of the Columbia incident.

In the joke, which did not mention the sex scandal, the Church had decided to sponsor “Catholic Idol: the Search for Piety.”

“We decided that in that particular week, with tensions as high as they were, that the risks of a joke that mentioned Catholicism outweighed its comedic value,” Roberts said.

Krych said he thought that while a “couple people are disappointed,” few are angry when a joke doesn’t get past the student or administration reviewers.

And members said the annual Yale game will be a notable exception to the policy of fewer attacks on other schools.

“We’re still going to make fun of Yale. We’re still going to have plenty of anti-Yale hate,” Krych said. “But we’re not necessarily every year going to pound the same traditional stereotypes about rednecks from Ithaca going to Cornell.”

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.