Re: College radio and politics

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Scott D Fybush wrote:

> There's something about college radio that seems to bring out
> these impassioned but (usually) entirely pointless political battles.

Not just college radio.  College in general seems somehow to produce some
really silly arguments.

I remember a Student Senate meeting, circa 1964 or 1965, over the fact
that the UMass football team was to play in the Tangerine Bowl.  As a
result, half the organizations on campus had a reason why the Student
Senate should give them money to go to the bowl, in Orlando, Florida.  One
such was the Army ROTC group Scabbard & Blade.  They had a particular
function, which was a Sacred College Tradition.  At all football games, it
was their job to set off a cannon whenever our team scored.  So, of
course, they thought the Senate should pay for them to go to Orlando, with
cannon, for the Tangerine Bowl.

After turning them down, the Senate spent another hour or more debating
various proposals to assure that the cannon -- or a cannon (That in itself
was the subject of at least one amendment to the main motion.) -- be sent
to Orlando.  This had to be done since it was, you see, a Sacred Tradition
that there had to be a cannon to mark our team's scoring.

I don't remember the final upshot of all this, but one day, sometime in
the 1980s, I was at McGurk Alumni Stadium, watching a home game, when
UMass scored, and I suddenly burst out laughing!  I realized that there
was NO CANNON! 

Maybe some other time I'll tell about when I was seriously accused of
trying to bribe a member of the Student Senate Finance Committee -- with a
mimeograph stencil. 

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 A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                         617.367.0468
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