The upset victory by the Cavaliers in the Continental Tire Bowl over West Virginia was a major accomplishment for the football program. But the controversy surrounding the halftime skit by the Pep Band that mocked West Virginia overshadowed the victory, and this is a shame. The outcry over the skit is ridiculous and clearly an overreaction.
Many University students must have been surprised over the break when they picked up a newspaper and saw the University mentioned. This time, the national coverage was not about the Bloomfield honor cases or the blackface incident at a fraternity party. Instead it was something far less important: The governor of West Virginia wanted an apology from the University over a parody of the TV show "The Bachelor" performed by the Pep Band during halftime of the bowl game.
According to a Dec. 30 Associated Press report, the Pep Band skit imitating "The Bachelor" had a male University student choosing between two female contestants ("W. Va. Gov. seeks apology from U. of Va."). The contestant who was supposed to be from West Virginia wore overalls and had a pigtail. Her talent was square dancing and she wanted to move to Beverly Hills one day, in what was apparently a reference to the TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies."
But West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise got himself very worked up over this. In a letter to University president John T. Casteen III, Wise demanded that the University apologize because the Pep Band's show perpetuated negative stereotypes about his state that they are trying to overcome ("W.Va. Gov. eyes Univ. of Virginia apology," The Associated Press, Dec. 30).
Predictably, Casteen did go on to apologize and said something to the effect that we are all related ("Va. head apologizes for halftime show," The Associated Press, Jan. 2).
It is amazing that the story received as much press as it did, since it is so unimportant. First off, the parody itself is not that offensive. According to the Associated Press, the University Pep Band mocked WVU the last time the two schools squared off in 1985, and that performance included comments about plumbing and birth control. ("W.Va. Gov. Seeks Apology From U. of Va.," Dec. 30).
That halftime show seems far more provocative than a girl wearing overalls who has a pigtail. Unfortunately, in the current PC world, the normal reaction to the Pep Band skit for West Virginia is not to chuckle or comment how corny the skit was, but to become enraged. Luckily West Virginia had a good spokesman in Wise.
The most striking thing about Wise's comments was that it seems he has way too much time on his hands. One would think that as governor he would have more important issues to deal with, but apparently that is not the case.
If Wise thought that a skit performed by the Pep Band was a critical issue, here is just one example of something else he could have dealt with. On New Year's Day, surgeons at a few hospitals in West Virginia staged a walkout to protest high malpractice insurance. The walkout has led to elective surgeries being canceled at four West Virginia hospitals, while 30 patients have been transferred to other hospitals in the state as well as Ohio and Pennsylvania ("W. Va. surgeons keep insurance walkout," The Associated Press, Jan. 9). Wise had much more important issues to deal with than a Pep Band skit, such as proactive measures to prevent the surgeon strike in the first place.
But Wise is a politician, and his "courageous" stand against the awful University Pep Band got him lots of publicity. It was also easy to do, as the Pep Band didn't have anyone to stick up for them and Casteen didn't have much of a choice about apologizing. Although it would have been much more entertaining if Casteen had made some wisecrack remark to Wise, as the president of the University he has to be diplomatic.
The truly amazing thing about this controversy is that the bowl's executive director, Ken Haines, approved the skit before the game. Yet Haines told the Associated Press that the performance was "embellished" and the Pep Band was not welcome at future Continental Tire Bowls ("Va. head apologizes for halftime show," Associated Press, Jan. 2). It seems that Haines is just trying to cover himself after approving a copy of the skit before the game. Rather than apologizing himself or taking any blame, he took the easy way out and banned the Pep Band from future Continental Tire Bowls.
Virginia Pep Band Director Adam Lorentson said in an e-mail interview that he was surprised by Haines' negative reaction. "We submitted our script well in advance (before Christmas), and they had every opportunity to tell us to change things," Lorentson said. "They did not do so, and merely decided to run spin-control afterwards."
The fact that this skit became a subject of controversy is outrageous. This incident simply demonstrated how people will pick on a group that is easy to pick on for their own political gain. Not a very nice holiday message.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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