School Spirit: Columbia wins this category, hands down. Granted, it was Senior Night, which is more likely to bring out a supportive crowd to send off graduating seniors, but the stands were packed and lively. All the elements are in place here: cheerleaders, a mascot (Roar-ee. Get it?), and last but not least, Columbia’s smart-ass student band (the Columbia University Marching Band, or C.U.M.B., as the kids call it). From the pregame introductions when they displayed a “Where’s Snooki?” sign for their New Jersey–based opponent, we knew we were in for a good time. We were right: After a questionable call on a shot-clock violation, they led a sing-songy chant ending in “You’re a bastard, referee.” (As you can probably guess, the band has seen its fair share of controversies.) Band members danced in the aisles during a rendition of “Hava Nagila.” And though we couldn’t hear a lot of what they were saying from our seats on the opposite side of the court, late in the game we’re pretty sure one of the chants involved the phrases “kill, kill, kill” and “murder, murder, mutilate.” That was maybe a bit too much — we were well into garbage time by this point — but hey, that’s school spirit to the extreme. Score: 10/10.
Perhaps nowhere is this new wave more striking than at Columbia, which more than any other Ivy League institution has thrown out a welcome mat for returning servicemen and women. There are 210 veterans across the university, integrating a campus whose image-defining moment in the past half-century was of violent protests against the Vietnam War.
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