Friday, October 13, 2006

The Bus/Band Denouement


The mystery has been revealed! Male band members danced around the bus with their shirts off, shaved someone's head (as a former swimmer I have absolutely no experience with this type of horrific behavior), and made comments about sex. Goodness. I'm surprised Chance' Wiley didn't put them on double secret probation.
But it was nice that the administration recognized that they overreacted. Now of course, they didn't admit that explicitly. College administrators are never, ever wrong. Don't you know that's how they're selected? One must live an incredibly boring life, never making any public mistakes, in order to even be considered for such a post. You see these days the ability to avoid mistakes is mistaken for wisdom and tact. Never mind that you can't really learn anything unless you've made serious mistakes, ah, but I digress.

The way UW administrators admitted their overreaction was by mentioning prior, more scandalous incidents. They realized that if they had really publicly threatened to ban the band just because of some shirtless dancing (by men), people would be upset. (See this also). So they launched some countermeasures, cherry-picking the most offensive of past antics: making female band members kiss before being allowed to use the bathroom, inciting someone to fellate a dildo, you know, typical bachelorette party activities. Oh, and younger band members had to fetch beer and carry bags for older band members. Wiley totally must have felt like Colonel Kurtz ("the horror!") upon learning about those debaucherous shenanigans.

Apparently, the administration forgot that the make up of the band changes every year. The entire band turns over every four (ok, five; alright, maybe six) years. Regardless, harshly punishing today's band members for harmless antics because different members were worse in the past makes zero sense, and is patently unfair. Maybe they're just trying to force Mike Leckrone (the septegenarian band director, a legitimately wonderful guy) into retirement. Hmm, suddenly the picture above and Chancellor Wiley are merging in my head.

Plus, this is making Bucky look tight-assed. That can't help with recruiting, or with increasing the number of applications, and thus the university's ever important U.S News and World Report ranking. Well, maybe with the tight-assed crowd. You know, the Wisconsin residents who look at Madison as some kind of Gomorrah. Pretty much everyone in the State. Whatever. My hope is that any negative publicity regarding our awesomeness will be balanced out by Hollywood casting Rachel Bilson as a Sconnie student in The Last Kiss. And her character's in a band! Although, not in the band. She plays a music student, a flautist. How awesome is that? (That's a rhetorical question, because the answer is "definitively"). Here's what I'm talking about, folks. Hello! And yes, I'd say there are definitely women at UW who are just as, if not more, attractive than the nubile Ms. Bilson. I've seen them walking around downtown. They can't all go to MATC.

Finally, how fantastic is it that UW has to transport the band and the cheerleaders/spirit team separately, because the band teases them too much? Sounds like Revenge of the Nerds 33 and 5/3rds, brought to you by 5th 3rd Bank.
God, do I love those kids.

1 comment:

Criminal Appeal said...

That's a fantabulous picture at the top.