So, we had a splendid time looking back on all the comments made here over the past few months, and recognizing how a blog is a spam outlet, and of course readers will have difficulty sometimes telling the difference. But the big news around here, aside from the salubrious (ha ha got you — if you like big words check out the new Catholic liturgy, unveiled today in this great country of ours [thanks M O'R for the heads up]) climate, the big news is the suspension for the rest of the term (a hugely short time) of the Queen’s Bands, musical diadem of the local campus for oh, so many years. The Bands have long been central to the Scots spirit of the place, what with all that tartan, those highland step dancers, and the general mating-season behaviour during games that has gone on since time immemorial. Just as football players slap fannies, hug and shake each other, and of course shower together, the bandsies’ cheerleaders do the same. Male on female, female on male, female on female, male on male. All in good fun, of course, sanctioned by years of tradition, Homecoming (oops, Reunion Weekend), and–as befitting a university campus where fraternities and sororities do not exist, as close an item to either–yes the Bands is (check the grammar–I am right here) fully integrated and the closest thing perhaps to a Greek living group we have, again, of course, with all the rights and privileges (and responsibilities) thereto pertaining. I myself love the Bands–wrote a column two decades ago about their rag-tag outfits that were held together by mere safety pins and elastic bands. Indeed, there were times that I thought that the Bands resembled the Salvation Army or another musical group, warning that the end was near. But no, this was real, Queen’s–and woe betide anyone who made caustic comments about these musicians, as my history shows…I got hammered at least a half-dozen times for being unpatriotic and misguided. Even had my photo turned into a dart board in the Bands office.
Now, however, because of something called “the banner” (an in-house newsrag) and some gamey behaviour at football games, all hell broke loose. Suddenly the group that Clare Leggett worked so hard to make them look halfway-presentable (ie., new outfits) put its collective foot in its mouth. Too much momentum toward the carnal, we learned through a long article in the Queen’s Journal (while the Whig Standard stood mute, probably waiting for the news to break in KTW). Then, everyone and their mother and father, uncle and aunt weighed in, with pro-Bands people ranting against the administration for the term suspension, and anti-Bands people (a significant number) agreeing that the kind of language used in Bands publications and the type of practices practiced by the group in broad daylight went further than good taste dictated. And, of course, good taste dictates that Queen’s possesses that quality in spades. Others took the opportunity to hitch their respective wagons to the issue, seeking to make points of one sort or another. The loyal Catholic Father Raymond J. desouza, who sits on the football team bench during games and ministers to the spiritual needs of this Presbyterian school’s team, wrote a diatribe against casual sex as a serious social problem, not only at Queen’s, but throughout our land, strong, free, and apparently very horny. Desouza has the reputation as an indefatigable blogger, and from time to time provides the National Post with the same kind of culturally conservative reassurance as Margaret Somerville and (on occasion) Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail. Desouza’s critique struck this writer as a version of the impossible counsels for abstinence that now permeate Western Civilization, understandable as an evangelical intiative of huge importance and a sort of answer to the laughable sexuality that swamps everything that we see in our daily life. (For desouza on the issue, see http://fatherdesouza.ca/
Why, suddenly, did the Queen’s administration decide the time had come to pull the plug and reassert some control over a group that demonstrated the worst kind of misogyny that one finds in U.S. fraternities? Obviously there was nothing startlingly new in the Bands’ behaviour, publications, hubris. I recall my own frat days at Berkeley and some of the things that we were forced to do to become members of good standing among men who were fine in groups of one, two, or five, but became difficult, even unmanageable, when all together with the cultural baggage of a century that included equal parts anti-Semitism, racism, disdain for women, homophobia, go ahead, fill in the blanks. On one occasion as a pledge I was ordered to go out on a date and, as with all my dozen pledge brothers, see how far I could go with the woman in question. This is not the place to note specifics on what transpired that evening, save to say that there was a big scoreboard which we had to fill in, all the blanks, which signified our scores and failures. The women we dated that evening? Use your imagination.
So here we are, not lost in the fifties tonight, but in the year 2011, and Queen’s Bands are on report, much like the student body as a whole after the Aberdeen Street party fiascoes of bygone years. Why did this happen? Not the Bands’ behaviour, obviously, that was well established, historically. As a norm. But why the concern, now? First, perhaps the Penn State sexual abuse case involving an assistant football coach and bringing down a revered head coach, Joe Paterno, and University President had something to do with the Queen’s admin’s concern. Second, the fact that the new Vice President Academic and Dean of Students (you can look up their names on the campus masthead) had no long-standing Queen’s connection, or any connection, for that matter, before coming here recently, made it easier for them to take a hard line on the issue. Third, and most important, as with my frat at Berkeley, it’s clearly time for some students to grow up and treat others fairly and with dignity, whether black, female, Muslim, or, heaven forbid, themselves.
