Alumni at New Mexico State University might change the school’s fight song to exclude references to drinking.
NMSU alumni are polling other alumni to see if they feel the references to drinking in the song inappropriately condone high-risk drinking. Several alumni first questioned the song’s content at the end of the football season this year.
The fight song at NMSU is considered by some to promote binge-drinking because of four lines that read:
“And when we win this game/ We’ll buy a keg of booze/ And we’ll drink to the Aggies/ ‘Til we wobble in our shoes.”
The concern with the song’s promotion of binge-drinking is reinforced by the high percentage of drinking-and-driving incidents throughout New Mexico and the high national percentage of binge-drinking on college campuses.
According to Rebecca Dukes, vice president of University Advancement, the song, originating from a 1906 melody, has been used since around the 1930s as the fight song for the NMSU Aggies, who take their name from the university’s start as an agricultural university. However, Dukes said the song is not “an original to the university.”
It was altered from a melody that is “almost exactly the same, but [NMSU] replaced the word ‘California’ with ‘Aggies,'” Dukes said.
The University of California has a song titled “California Drinking Song” among 20 others posted on the band’s website for UC-Berkeley. The California version of the song, however contains more verses than the NMSU fight song. The NMSU song leaves out three verses that contain more lines that promote drinking, such as the following verse: “One keg of beer for the four of us. Sing glory be to God that there are no more of us, for one of us could drink it all alone. Damn near. Here’s to the Irish, dead drunk. The lucky stiffs …”
According to Dukes, a song nearly identical to the NMSU fight song is also currently being used at the University of Wisconsin’s fellow Big Ten member, Ohio State University.
Polls indicate that alumni do not wish to see changes made to the song.
“As of now, results of the [e-mail poll] show two-to-one against making changes to it,” Dukes said.
Currently, only 200 alumni have responded with a vote, and the song will only be altered if a majority of responses from alumni indicate a wish to see it changed.
Dukes said the decision belongs in the hands of the alumni, as opposed to taking a poll of students.
However, Dukes also said an alumni stance against the song would not make much of an impact on students.
“Even if we told them they couldn’t sing it, they probably would anyway,” said Dukes, when asked why the students were not being included in the vote.
