Columbia University Marching Band

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CUMB 2005

Columbia University Marching Band (CUMB), also known as The Cleverest Band the World (tm) was formed in 1904 and is one of the oldest student groups on campus, and the perpetrator of one of Columbia's only traditions, Orgo Night. During games they tend to please the crowd by playing songs and cheers. They also perform at halftime when everyone is attentively engaged.

History

The CUMB of yore appearing on Johnny Carson

We used to have a real "rah-rah-let's-go-team" band. That broke up sometime around the early 60s, when fascism became decidedly uncool, and now we have a scramble band, which prides itself upon its witty scripts, edgy humor, and a definite lack of marching.

As fascism grows more popular, our developing a lamer, more traditional marching band appears more likely. This new band will destroy the environment and offer no-bid contracts to multinational corporations.

Slogans

  • G(tb)²
  • The Cleverest Band in the World™
  • If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the band.

Traditions

Orgo Night

Lisa Birnbach's College Book named the CUMB's Orgo Night performances as the University's most popular campus tradition. Since at least the mid-1970s, the Band has performed at 11:59 p.m. on the night before each Organic Chemistry final exam. The course is notorious as one of the most challenging undergraduate subjects. In an effort to relieve pre-exam jitters and lower the exam's curve in general, the CUMB interrupts studies at the main reading room of Butler Library. Several hundred students gather for the show, often standing on desks and bookshelves. Orgo Night performances are presented in a style similar to their halftime shows, and have sometimes included comedy banned from those shows by the university's censors.

Tax Night

Every year (since the mid 1980s[1]) on the final due date for filing income tax returns with the IRS (usually April 15th unless it falls on a weekend), the Band plays on the steps of the James Farley Post Office, which stays open until midnight on Tax Day, until closing time to entertain last-minute tax filers.

FIttingly, the Farley building was designed by McKim, Mead, and White, the same firm that designed the original plan for Columbia's Morningside Heights campus. Its architects adorned the building with the now-famous inscription "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds", which is often mistakenly assumed to be the USPS motto (it has none.) Good Columbia students know it's actually an adaptation from Herodotus' "Histories" because they read it in Lit Hum.

Underground Tour

During Orientation Week the Band takes recently-arrived freshmen on a tour of what it calls "the side of Columbia that the admissions office never dared nor cared to tell you about." The tour also may or may not involve actually taking tour groups underground.

Controversies

Due to its irreverent humor, some of the band's halftime shows have caused controversy. The CUMB prides itself on evading university censorship:

  • In 1964, the band performed a "Salute to Moral Decay," featuring a formation of "the upper part of a topless bathing suit" (all marchers left the field except for two sousaphones, while the band played "My Favorite Things") and a typically heavy-handed reference to Walter Jenkins, an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, who had been caught in flagrante delicto in a men's room. Columbia's president had to fend off angry letters from several notables, including conductor Leonard Bernstein.
  • In 1966, the band was suspended for several games for the infamous "birth control" show where they formed a Combined oral contraceptive pill, a calendar (for the Rhythm Method), and a chastity belt.
  • In 1968, at West Point, the band formed what it called a "burning Cambodian village" on the field. CUMB has yet to be invited back to West Point. The football team hasn't actually played any games at West Point in recent years, but the band feels it should be invited to perform at the occasional halftime show anyway.
  • In 1973, a brawl broke out between the CUMB and the Harvard University Band over the alleged attempted theft of the giant Harvard Bass Drum.
  • The band's theme for a 1981 halftime show at Holy Cross was "The Lions vs. The Christians". Holy Cross administrators subsequently dis-invited the band from any future games played in Worcester, much to the band's relief. Columbia's next road game against Holy Cross, in 1983, marked the beginning of what became an NCAA-record winless streak.
  • The band's script for the 1982 season-opening road game against Harvard mysteriously turned out to be identical to the script the Harvard band was set to use moments later. The Columbia band subsequently denied that this astonishing and inexplicable coincidence had anything to do with the fact that two of its members had spent the previous week posing as new freshmen at Harvard's undergraduate orientation. Faculty of Columbia's statistics department refused to support the band's claim.
  • In 1990, the band received a bomb threat over its symbolic formation of a burning American Flag accompanied by The Doors' "Light My Fire". This performance happened shortly after a controversial United States Supreme Court ruling that actual flag burnings are legal.
  • In 1992, at the Halloween show, the band performed in costume or drag, including one member dressed as Jesus, with cross. This was also the homecoming game. Two alumni took the field and attempted to charge Jesus, but were thwarted by drummers clad in snare drums. Quoth the alumni: "Don't you know that's fucking sacrilegious?!?"
  • In 1992, at the Yale Bowl the band pantomimed the consummation of a same-sex marriage on the field, while the couple was held aloft on a CAVA stretcher while the band did the hora and played Have Nagila. The occasion was Youth Day and hundreds of local children from community groups were in attendance. The first words of the halftime show: "We swear, we didn't know it was youth day."
  • In 1993, the band drew parallels between the Holocaust and policies for management of New York City's homeless population proposed by newly-elected mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The Anti-Defamation League demanded an apology.
  • In 1993, at Princeton, the band recreated the Magic Bullet Theory as put forth by the Warren Commission on the John F. Kennedy assassination, complete with band members as scattering skull fragments.
  • Not really a controversy, but on October 7, 1994 the Marching Band showed up outside of David Letterman's Late Show with David Letterman. They were soon invited for an impromptu performance.
  • In 1998, at the Yale Bowl, the band performed a show featuring a homosexual, pot-smoking Jesus Christ in a homage to the Terrence McNally play Corpus Christi. Angry Yale fans demanded their money back.
  • During a game against Fordham University in 2002, soon after the Catholic church was rocked by disclosures about pedophile priests, the band claimed that Fordham tuition was "going down like an altar boy" in a joke improvised minutes before the start of the pre-game show. In the ensuing media frenzy, band Poet Laureate Andy Hao was featured on MSNBC's Phil Donahue Show in a debate with Catholic League President William Donohue. The New York Times profiled the CUMB. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger ended the controversy in one of his first official acts as University President when he apologized to Fordham president, the Reverend Joseph O'Hare.

External links

Bibliography

Lisa Birnbach's New and Improved College Book, by Lisa Birnbach (1992) ISBN 0-671-79289-X

  1. ↑ CUMBlog - Tax Day, 15 Apr 2009. "A tradition that dates back more than twenty-five years, the Tax Day performance is both a fan and Band favorite."
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