This weekend I went to my first Big Ten football game, and I was so excited to be going - unfortunately, the experience was bittersweet. I loved singing the cheers, roaring with my claw out, listening to the band and hollering with everyone else in the student section when our team made a particularly good play or scored points.
But I spent so much of the time feeling embarrassed for Northwestern that it was hard to enjoy the rest of the experience. I wasn't embarrassed because we lost, and cheers like "Appalachian State!," "A__hole! A__hole!," "F___ Michigan" and "Muck Fichigan" didn't bother me in the slightest. What bothered me was the portion of the crowd that seemed determined to make everyone on the yellow and blue side think that Northwestern is the most pretentious school in the Big Ten.
And how did they do this? Firstly, with the practice of key-shaking before kickoffs, which implies that Michigan students will eventually become our valets. This one was encouraged in a video at a mandatory EssentialNU for all freshman, although its meaning was not explained. Even more disgusting was the accusatory cheer of "State school! State school! State school! State school!" with an accompanying hand gesture (back and forth at the elbow to indicate that you, not us, are enrolled in the lowly state school), and I heard that in another section students were boasting "Higher GPA! Higher GPA!"
Where do I begin? To start I'll say that there were students in my graduating high school class who were admitted into Rensselaer, Cornell, and even NU itself, but are now attending our state university because if they had enrolled at those elite institutions, their parents would have had to quit eating. We all know that the decision to go to state school is often more about money than smarts. Do we really want to parade ourselves as the kind of kids who judge people based on their parents' incomes? Personally, I don't think that's much better than being racist, sexist or anti-Semitic. But aside from that, what the hell do money or GPAs have to do with football? While we waste our breath acting like stuck-up, bigoted pricks, Michigan's over there saying, "What do we care if you're a private university? This is a football game, we're the ones winning, and you're just a bunch of snobs."
And how did I feel when we finally lost the game? I felt that as long as our cheers are what they are, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
- grayson vreeland
Communications freshman
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