<p>So, im a freshman at Columbia and over the last year had read and heard a LOT about how the school lacks spirit and pride and "really really sucks at sports.!".</p>
<p>However after a month here..I can confidently say that those things ARE NOT TRUE.!! Columbia kids have a tremendous amount of school spirit and there have been many situations where Ive seen/heard people talk about how amazing Columbia is (not just freshman.!)</p>
<p>But more importantly..since school spirit is something which really comes out best on the sports front...ive definitely seen it there..! I watched the game against Princeton today and had an absolutely awesome experience.
First off; although our football team doesnt have many ivy titles and doesnt compete for the rose bowl every year or something..were not that bad as were made out to be.
We thrashed Princeton 42-14.!! (The highest scoring game in the opening round of the ivy season) and i havent heard anyone talk about how much princeton sucks at sports..?</p>
<p>But more importantly...the home side stand was packed!! With alumni (and their families) all wearing Columbia Blue as well as a lot of students!! The marching band was pretty good..and even the cheering squad was okay. But hundreds of people would sing (chant) roar-lion-roar on a regular basis and the atmosphere was pretty electric.</p>
<p>The reason im bringing this up is because the ONLY apprehension I had when coming to Columbia was due to the (misconceived) notion that the school lacked pride and sucked at sports.
(Atleast under Norris Wilson the team seems to be doing pretty well) and yeah...we definitely have a lot of pride..!!</p>
<p>Hope any current/future applicants will take note of this and wont have to worry about those things when they get here.</p>
<p>Put to rest another question… are the girls cute? Are the guys? I’d love a hot women/ugly men thing going on-- my 6 would quickly become a 9. Also, yes, that was a pun.</p>
<p>It was an impressive victory, all the more because Princeton is our rival. But still, most Columbia students don’t go to football games. There were maybe 200-300 people at the game, at a school of roughly 6,000 undergrads. But what do you expect when the football stadium is 100 blocks away?</p>
<p>There are definitely groups of people care who have lots of school spirit and/or care deeply about sports, but it’s not everyone. But that’s a good thing: if you like A, you can find people who like A, but you don’t have to worry that everyone on campus likes B so you’ll be left out. If you love Columbia and are concerned that absolutely no one on campus cares about sports or school spirit or Greek life (like at NYU), then don’t be. But if you want to go to a school where the main focus is sports/school spirit/Greek life, then you have to recognize that Columbia is not that school. And thank god it isn’t.</p>
<p>As for this thread - it’s about time someone put up a thread like this, I was at the Columbia-Princeton game as well and it was significantly more than 100 blocks away for me to go it. I lost my voice for the rest of the day because I was cheering and singing so hard, the stands were packed light blue, there was a great sense of pride and everyone was pretty exhilarated. Homecoming is in 3 weeks which will be an even bigger deal.</p>
<p>I think “school pride” is one of those things that columbia is actually changing and has changed significantly over the last decade. I saw it shift slowly but consistently from my freshman to senior year. Not a frat boy or an athlete here, but loads of school pride.</p>
<p>^if you bothered to read the rest of the post you’d see that there was justification for columbia having school spirit, while we’re not great at sport, they are getting better, we don’t lag the rest of the ivy league, and the mediocre sports impedes school spirit less and less these days.</p>
<p>wow.
you spent all that effort cutting fragments of my post and putting them together to make something ridiculous only with the end result of making yourself look like a jackass.</p>
<p>did you even go to columbia?</p>
<p>my point was that for the amount that people talk about Columbia being terrible at athletics, were not that bad. and i was striking a comparison with Princeton cuz people never brought up Princeton being all that bad at sports when obviously (theyre football program - which is one of the biggest intercollegiate sports) is not as good as Columbia’s. (Atleast presently). </p>
<p>Work on those comprehension skills. seriously.</p>
<p>Yup, funny this guy managed to screw up were/we’re and they’re/their in back-to-back sentences. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The problem with your post is that it’s about your little visit to one football game – at which you probably didn’t even know the difference between the quarterback and the cornerback – rather than the facts and data that totally refute your thesis. The facts and data unambiguously prove that Columbia is bad at the major sports (football and basketball). It’s moronic to say it’s a “misconception” that Columbia has a bad football team. Heck, from 2009–>2002 these are Columbia’s numbers of Ivy football wins:</p>
<p>3, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 3, 0. </p>
<p>That’s an average of 1.4 Ivy wins a year for the past 8 seasons. That means Columbia is coming in second-to-last in the Ivy on an average year. Never a winning Ivy record (4-3 or better). 3 of the last 8 years they’ve been dead last in the Ivy.</p>
<p>As for Princeton, it’s not a particularly strong football program. Princeton and Cornell basketball are the two dominant Ivy programs – currently and historically.</p>
<p>Columbia killed Princeton last year, too. They both finished the Ivy with 3 wins last year. It’s not exactly a shock that Columbia beat Princeton, nor is it an impressive or season-defining victory on Columbia’s part. In a battle of two of the weaker Ivy football teams, Columbia prevailed. Columbia football is still bad. Nothing’s changed.</p>
<p>Congrats on this new era & spirit for Columbia Sports.</p>
<p>There’s quite a heritage. There was a string of multiple years where Columbia football did not win a single game, in its league anyway. All the other teams were scared to play them, because they didn’t want to be the ones that broke the string.
Your “band” was pretty funny though.</p>
<p>FYI, for the rest of the Ivy League, except Penn, hockey is a major sport. At some point Columbia and Penn seem to have dropped their hockey programs altogether, while the other schools went the complete opposite direction and made their programs stronger, so the league is now highly competitive and exciting. Without you two. Lacrosse has a decent following at some of the schools too.</p>
<p>Cornell basketball has certainly been good recently, but if that’s also historically been the case it’s news to me. I recall the best bballers often were Princeton and Penn, with Columbia showing up periodically as well IIRC .</p>
<p>The band is probably the only organization on campus that actually has school spirit, whatever the OP says.</p>
<p>And because the administration knows that, they will cover the band’s arse whenever it goes a little too far or stretches boundaries a bit. On game-day scripts, traditions, underage drinking, embezzlement of funds, etc.</p>
<p>there’s also the model UN club (they go by CIRCA), lots of school spirit, very successful team and sometimes good parties, they sign the fight song a lot.</p>