When I set out to write an article on Columbia fight songs, I planned to write about drinking songs (“The Columbia Drinking Song”) and stolen songs (“Stand Up and Cheer,” from the University of Kansas) and bad, boring, embarrassing songs (“Who Owns New York?”)—all songs that I, and maybe most of us, have never heard. I read the fight songs that Columbia students had written, most around 100 years ago, and the songs said what they probably did not mean to say at all: Columbia is obsessed with its legacy—and owning, and ranking, and lasting forever. The more songs I read, the more obvious this was, again and again, in new and different ways. One song that had everything—the legacy obsession, the gender bias, the total disregard for anyone outside the institution—I had already heard, far too many times, just like everyone has. If you listen to “Roar, Lion, Roar” enough, you can hear most of the major issues in Columbia Athletics—and some in the Columbia community—outlined in two paragraphs.

Columbia’s current fight song, including its lesser-known first stanza, goes:

“When the bold teams of old wore the Blue and White,

Deeds of fame made their name,

Here at old Columbia!

Now-a-days we can praise fighting teams again!

Hear the Lion roar his pride while the men of Morningside

Follow the Blue and White to vict’ry.

Roar, Lion, Roar!

And wake the echoes of the Hudson Valley!

Fight on to vict’ry evermore,

While the sons of Knickerbocker rally ‘round

Columbia!

Columbia!

Shouting her name forever

Roar, Lion, Roar!

For Alma Mater on the Hudson Shore!”

Among most students, this is the only recognizable fight song Columbia has. I do not know all the words, and you probably do not either, but “Roar, Lion, Roar” still has some revealing truths in its lines, even though they were written 101 years ago.

The first thing I notice is that even today, the song that cheers on Columbia’s sports teams only refers to male participants. And although that reference was relevant before 1983, when only men were allowed to attend Columbia, it applies to today’s athletic department, too—through funding. In 2016, Columbia’s spending on men’s sports was double the amount spent on women’s teams. As spending in football has increased in an effort to make the team more competitive so that “now-a-days we can praise fighting teams again,” the athletic department’s funding has shifted more and more towards “the men of Morningside” specifically. As of 2016, Columbia had the worst sports funding disparity for gender-specific sports in the Ivy League.

I also notice that “Roar, Lion, Roar” constantly switches between caring about the actual people who “fight” and caring about the institution people fight for. Athletes “follow the Blue and White,” but by the end of the song, they’re forgotten, as the singers only care that the general athletic institution continues. Instead of caring about the people who attend their Alma Mater on the Hudson Shore, the singers focus entirely on “shouting [Columbia’s] name forever.”

It’s not just “Roar, Lion, Roar” that does this. Many other old Columbia songs put the institution before everything else. In “Stand Up and Cheer,” for instance, the speaker sings “Today we raise / The Blue and White above the rest,” and the implication, as I see it, reads: This institution is above all others—including any person who attends it.

This tension is rampant throughout college athletic departments across the country as players fight for wages from the schools that use their images and talents to make enormous profits. At Columbia, the same problem exists. Just a few years ago, for instance, Columbia’s head football coach Pete Mangurian left under allegations of forcing players to play with concussions—students were forced to “follow the Blue and White,” even when it was bad for their short-term and long-term health. And although current Athletic Director Peter Pilling publicly wants “our student athletes [to] be successful in the field of competition and ... in the classroom and ... life,” it’s not always obvious how building a competitive athletics program can also respect the individual interests and time of its athletes.

The singers of “Roar, Lion, Roar” don’t just want a successful institution that they can celebrate now—they want one that lasts forever. This is something that also happens in college sports, where athletic departments want to build sustainable programs that outlast a graduating class. But the legacy-thinking from “Roar, Lion, Roar” shows up even more prominently in Columbia’s administration outside of athletics. In “Roar, Lion, Roar,” the singers care completely about regaining an “old … name” that will be praised “forever.” This sounds exactly like the sort of thing University President Lee Bollinger thinks about as he constructs “the University’s most ambitious expansion in over a century” with a Manhattanville campus that disregards the community around it. In “Roar, Lion, Roar,” the shouting singers don’t just make Columbia known—they “wake the echoes of the Hudson Valley.” As they become obsessed with “Columbia!” and its legacy, the singers stop caring about how much they might bother their neighbors. I think all of us can recognize this, easily, in the current Columbia administration: inside and outside of sports.

I do not think that Columbia is exactly the same as it was in 1920, or just as bad. Columbia has changed, Columbia Athletics has changed, and even “Roar, Lion, Roar” has changed. Today, when we hear the song, “Roar, Lion, Roar” does not include the first stanza, which cares so much about “old Columbia” and expects individual students to “follow” their institution “to vict’ry.” Without the first stanza, the institution doesn’t seem so far above everything else; we “rally ‘round” our school, but the school isn’t above us.

There have even been completely re-written editions of this song, which are mostly written as jokes but also completely disregard the old Columbia way of caring about legacy, institution, and ownership. And if “Roar, Lion, Roar” from 1920 says anything about Columbia today, this re-written version, which appeared in a Spectator article in 1979, says something a little more endearing:

“We all smoke dope.

And some of us take speed and drop acid,

We were all pre-meds at the start,

But four years have taught us the value of

Philosophy!

Art history!

And the BA degree.

Because we all here smoke dope,

And Alma Mater takes another toke … "

Instead of shouting “Columbia!”, anyone who recites the 1979 version of “Roar, Lion, Roar” sings the praises of “Philosophy” and “Art history” and “the BA degree”—without bothering any of their neighbors. Here, no one cares about legacy, or old Columbia, and Alma Mater’s statue is treated like an equal: just another person who “takes [just] another toke.”

Each version of “Roar, Lion, Roar” says something about Columbia today, just like every song of Columbia’s that I’ve read from any era. We are different than we were in 1920, as an institution and as students, but we are somewhat the same. In athletics and beyond, Columbia struggles with the same issues, but we’ve also made some progress—discarded a few of the outdated traditions, and picked up a few new ones—just like our most famous song.

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