A coda at Columbia: The marching Lions sleep tonight
The Columbia University Marching Band is ending more than a century of silliness and silencing its instruments because, it says, bad acts were committed by long-gone students. Assuming that this isn’t another prank by the notorious pranksters, the group’s playing “Taps” for itself is at least in one sense well-timed: There is no Lions football this year, as the Ivy League has scratched its fall sports schedule due to COVID.
In fact, there really is not much of Columbia College, which is 100% online this semester, which started last Tuesday. Only a handful of undergrads are even residing on campus.
Pre-COVID, the Lions kickoff was to be Saturday at Lehigh, with the home opener and first Ivy League contest against the visiting Princeton Tigers on Oct. 3. at Kraft Field/Wien Stadium. Now, no football, no music, no jokes. No fun.
The band, an irreverent gaggle of musicians of varied talent, has tangled for years with the university and was banned for the start of last season. The bandless Lions were winless at home, but when the goofballs came back, the team trounced Penn and beat Harvard while falling to Brown.
When Columbia football, which can be agonizing to follow, finally does return, we pray its uneven musical accompaniment does as well. What’s a college without at least some sarcastic and cheeky and exuberant and idiotic college kids?
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