[QUOTE=49erDrummer;368926]I guess nobody else recalls the incessant bitching that occurred in regards to that about four years ago. Everybody and their brother was moaning about the Alma Mater not being played at BBall games…so the pepband learned it. We played it. However, how many people stuck around to sing it? Moreover, hardly anyone even stuck around to [I]listen [/I]to it. To me, that’s pretty freakin’ apathetic. TF can back me up on this…he was around for it.
Do I know it? Yes. Do I know all the words? Yes. Hopefully I can say the same for the countless people that pissed and moaned about it back then. Still, I’m not sure what’s gonna have to be done to actually get Halton involved with the Alma Mater.[/QUOTE]
Before you bitch and moan about wasting your time — the timing of playing the alma mater was piss poor.
The game ends. If its a win, we have to wait for the paper confetti to fall and the players to shake hands.
Then we have to wait through the very predictable comments from Coach Lutz.
THEN the band starts playing something.
I’m sorry I don’t know the words and don’t always recognize the music, but damn it, the song did not even exist when I graduated from UNC Charlotte.
I’m been at college sporting events with alums from other schools (in & out of North Carolina) and the playing of the Alma Mater is part of the critical path of activities on gameday. Nearly all of them get rather emotional about the playing of the song because it means something to them.
Here many of us alums never had an Alma Mater.
When I was a youth, I attended many NC State football games, at the end of the halftime performance by the band, the Alma Mater was always introduced and a bunch of people (learned much later they were alums) stood up and sang.
It is a goddamn joke, the way the Alma Mater was placed in the gameday repitrare(sp?).
The only thing that is worse, is that the song is totally ignored right now.
Somebody with some influence needs to make it an integral part of the gameday experience and make it mean something OR get rid of it. Right now, it is a waste.
ETA:
[QUOTE]Alma Mater
UNC Charlotte’s Alma Mater has deep roots in the institution’s history. It was part of an “Academic Festival March” composed for UNC Charlotte by James Helme Sutcliffe, a Charlotte composer and music critic who lived in Germany at the time. Dr. Loy Witherspoon, professor of religious studies, commissioned the March in 1965 when he learned that Charlotte College would become a campus in The University of North Carolina system. The March was first performed in 1967 at the installation of Dean W. Colvard as UNC Charlotte’s first chancellor. Afterwards, it was performed as a recessional at every Commencement during Dean W. Colvard’s time as chancellor. When UNC Charlotte founder Bonnie Cone heard the March, she said, “I can hear an alma mater in it,” referring to a hymn-like refrain. Dr. Robert Rieke, a professor of history, also heard an alma mater in it.
On a 1990 trip to Germany, Rieke visited Sutcliffe, picked up a recording of the March, and began writing words to fit the final refrain. On Christmas Eve 1991, he sent Bonnie Cone the words and music as a Christmas present to her and to the university, from which he had retired a year earlier.
Chancellor James. H. Woodward approved the composition as the university’s Alma Mater in April 1992. It was sung for the first time at the following May Commencement and has been performed at every Commencement since.[/QUOTE]
For the record, I am old, but Colvard was gone and Fretwell was the Chancellor when I graduated.
