Ole Miss Might Kill Fight Song, Make Games Less Racist
University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones recently asked the students of his fair school to stop chanting "the South will rise again" during football games (immediately following "From Dixie With Love," the school's fight song). The students, obviously, didn't listen, even when Jones had the band cut the song short to mess up their timing.
And now, there's discussion of removing the song from the games altogether. In fact, Jones laid down an ultimatum this week -- if fans decide to fill the stadium with the pro-South chant during Saturday's game, he's going to kill the fight song.
"The University of Mississippi is a warm and welcoming place. So many have worked hard to make sure our image moves forward, and we don't want anything to hurt that," Jones said during a luncheon sponsored by the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and the Capitol Press Corps.
"If the chant continues, we will discontinue the music that's associated with it," he said.
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with Jones on this -- clearly chanting "The South will rise again!" is not really appropriate in the grand scheme of things (and, for the record, so do most of the school's coaches, including football madman Houston Nutt).
But, at the same time, I'm not sure Jones knows what he's biting off here; people from Mississippi are not just racist and proud -- they're stubborn as well. And when he instructs these PC-lovin' students to stop chanting the South thing and enforces it by removing the fight song, well, I'm pretty sure that's only gonna make them more angry.
Which will probably mean that we'll get a scene like this in two weeks: no fight song + "South will rise again!" chants every 20 minutes + Jones instructing police to arrest students who chant it + riots outside his house +, well, you get the point: unless Jones is absolutely positive that he can get these "gentleman" and "ladies" to stop screaming for the Civl War Part Deux, it makes little sense to take away any more of their pride.
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