The more things change, the more they stay the same. What’s old is new again. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The hubbub about this sign ban has, amazingly, kept its pace even a month into school. It hasn’t suffered the usual fate of the college cause, doomed from the get-go to be tossed aside in favor of some newer, more pressing and oh-so-much more dire crisis. While the blank signs protest wasn’t executed flawlessly in the Richmond game, the fact that there are rumblings of a second protest for Saturday’s tilt against Maryland shows just how deeply this is getting under students’ skin.
And I’ve gotta say: I love it.
But you may be shocked — shocked, I say — to learn that this isn’t the first time students of our beloved University have had to deal with pressures from the administration when they try to express themselves at a sporting event. Surely not at this school, the very paragon of unchecked intellectual freedom, never wavering from its devotion to Jeffersonian ideals.
Yet in the late 1970s, that was very nearly the case.
Those were the days when basketball was king at Virginia. The Cavaliers had won what still remains our only ACC men’s basketball championship in spring 1976 on the back of the incomparable Wally Walker. My parents were undergraduates at the time and lived by the mantra, “Football is social, basketball is serious.”
Those were the days when students got their tickets by waiting in line, not online. The terrace outside old U-Hall was packed with tents and lawn chairs as early as two weeks before a Carolina or Maryland game — base camp for basketball junkies. Terry Holland, Jeff Lamp and Marc Iavaroni and the rest of the Cavaliers’ hardwood heroes would swing through, bringing pizza and sandwiches to keep morale high. There was no such thing as a casual fan.
But that fervor led to the student section getting a little rowdier than was comfortable for the powers-that-were. Referees and opposing teams alike were treated to a barrage of something less than the full vocabulary of the student body. The exact limits of obscene speech is an issue to be settled by courts much higher than those made of parquet, but University officials decided they’d had enough and cracked down.
The president at the time, Frank Hereford (more infamously remembered as The Man Who Canceled Easters Weekend), wrote an open letter to the student body in this very publication. His ultimatum was simple, direct, and dire: Clean up your act, or we won’t let you into games anymore.
Student response was quick in coming. Instead of griping, students got creative. The next game was against Maryland and its reviled coach, Lefty Driesell, whose most prominent feature (aside from garish plaid jackets and red slacks) was his glistening bald head.
The Pep Band took matters into its own hands, arming each student entering the game with a laminated sheet. On one side was a caricature of Lefty, his cheeks puffed out and steam spewing from his ears in cartoon anger, a fuel gauge about to burst superimposed on his ample forehead.
On the other side was a list of 50 of the most vile, profane, stomach-turning taunts and jeers the band could concoct. If I were to reprint even one, my editors would show me the door in record time. Suffice it to say, mothers and anatomically impossible acts made several repeat appearances.
How did that solve the problem, you ask? Instead of every student screaming a semi-intelligible string of four-letter words, the leaders of the Pep Band would simply hold up a sign with a number on it — let’s say 42. Everyone would look down at his or her sheet, read what was there, and begin chanting “Forty-two! Forty-two!”
Hereford wrote another letter the next day, commending the student body on its ingenuity that didn’t sacrifice one iota of fandom.
So what’s the moral here? Don’t get mad, get creative. And more importantly, get organized. This is an era of instantaneous information. One clever computer geek can access the grades for an entire program with the click of a button. Facebook pictures and profiles provide more than enough fodder for getting under visitors’ skin. We can come up with something better than “Greivis has a big nose,” or “J.J. sucks” (though both are true).
As hard as it may be to stand behind the Cavaliers right now, that’s exactly what has to happen if this sign ban will ever be repealed. Show them that what they’re stifling is, for the most part, beneficial. Show them that we can actually pay attention at a game and make our voices heard at that crucial moment.
Show them we’ve still got what it takes.
Read More
Boyden and Tufts reunite, chasing titles alongside each other
By Michael Liebermann | 2 hours agoA permanent mutual affection exists between Boyden and his former program.
Virginia faces goalie conundrum heading into Final Four
By Michael Liebermann | YesterdayThe situation represents a turnaround for Tiffany’s squad.
Connor Shellenberger, an unforgettable shot, and a wave of unbidden tears
By Michael Liebermann | YesterdayAn incredible game-winner triggered a rush of emotion
