Sung to the tune of Favorite Things, from Sound of Music
Old Tech Traditions with Tartans and Kilties
Alumni who visit to leave a few fifties
Football with Dayton, bananas to fling,
These are a few of our CMU things...
Four-by-four dorm rooms where cockroaches stifle,
Snipers in Mudge shooting buses with rifles,
Dorms where the fire bells never will ring,
These are a few of our CMU things...
When we leave here
For the real world
And we're feeling sad...
We'll simply remember these CMU things,
And then we won't feel so bad.
Black people, white people, fascists and Jews,
Everyone this week is writing to Views
A fruit or a vegetable, how do you swing?
These are a few of our CMU things...
Free office hours with President Cyert
Sororities joining in E-tower's riot,
Fraternity mixers, and even Greek Sing,
These are a few of our CMU things...
When the real world
Feels too heavy
We won't be so sad...
We'll simply remember these CMU things,
`Cause nothing could be so bad!
Remember the old cheerleader uniforms that were dredged up (or recreated?) for this performance?
The Dayton football game was part of our brief foray into NCAA Division II football. Dole sponsored some rally posters, etc., and had a guy in a gorilla suit tossing bananas into the crowd ("Go! Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!"); I think most of the bananas ended up being thrown back at him.
The reference to small dorm rooms "where cockroaches stifle" was a veiled reference to a student who died in a basement dorm room (Welch hall?) after, I think, inhaling various aerosols. Some of us didn't want to be too obvious in referring to that incident, so we ended up being very obscure.
A bus on Fifth Avenue in front of Morewood mysteriously ended up with a couple of bullet holes in the windows. I don't think they ever found who was responsible.
The line about firebells never ringing was really a better dig at the CMU administration, but it was completely drowned out by laughter from the "sniper" line and was never heard.
The reference to Views (a letters-to-the-editor column in the Tartan) brings up one of the best pieces of the Secret History of CMU that I can recall -- the famous hate-mail battle. It was started by an engineer writing to the Tartan, complaining about two males that he claims to have seen necking in or near CFA, and why couldn't these "fruits" keep it in private. Angry responses denounced engineers as "vegetables", and the forces were joined.
What was Secret was that the original letter was forged by then-Editor Jeffrey Zaslow, in the hopes of spicing up an otherwise lackluster Letters column. In this, as in other ventures, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams...
I don't remember anything at all about the "E-tower riot". Can anyone fill in?