Snowflake Members of the UT Band Get Butthurt About “The Eyes of Texas”
Jose Nino
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Campus Reform reported that a number of members of the University of Texas at Austin marching band will no longer play “The Eyes of Texas.” They justified this action by claiming that the song is racist.
Ally Morales, the Longhorn Band’s drum major, vowed to no longer play the song once she learned about its history.
“It’s not ultimately about the song, it’s about ingrained, institutionalized racism that frankly, in invisible form, takes the image of a school song,” she stated, according to a report from the Dallas Morning News. “Removing our alma mater is the first step to realizing the oppression that the Black students face on campus and off-campus.”
The Daily Texan reported that saxophone player Judson Hayden joined Morales in standing up against this song. Hayden founded an organization called LHBlacks as a way to support the marching band’s Black members. None of the group’s 11 members plan on playing the song. Similarly, at least four of the band’s 49 section leaders will not play the song.
That said, there is some opposition to removing this song. Drumline section leader Alex Shah, who is the recipient of alumni-funded scholarships, is concerned that getting rid of this song would result in a loss of alumni funding towards UT’s music program.
“I am concerned that it’s going to upset a lot of the alumni and it’s going to come back to bite us later on,” Shah remarked.
On the other hand, J.B. Bird, a UT spokesperson, told The Daily Texan that the potential loss of donor backing was not a major factor in maintaining the song.
“‘The Eyes of Texas,’ in its current form, will continue to be our alma mater. Aspects of its origin, whether previously widely known or unknown, have created a rift in how the song is understood and celebrated, and that must be fixed,” UT Austin’s Interim President Jay Hartzell declared in a July statement. “It is my belief that we can effectively reclaim and redefine what this song stands for by first owning and acknowledging its history in a way that is open and transparent.”
Jordan Clements, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas, told Campus Reform that the song is a fixture of UT history and the recent attempts to erase it represent an egregious form of revisionist history on the activists’s part.
“Every time I sing that song, I get warm feelings knowing that fifty years ago my late grandfather sang the same song at his games,” he commented.
Julie Flowers, a formed UT student, told The Daily Texan that if the song is discarded, she “would not feel the same as an alumnus of the school.” She is of the opinion that the song’s current form is not racist.
The university has decided to build a statue of Julius Whittier, the school’s first black football letterman, instead of erasing its history. In addition, the university will rename its football stadium after star running backs Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams, who both won Heisman Trophy trophies and received Pro-Bowl accolades in the NFL.
Back in June, Campus Reform reported that UT Austin football players were also demanding that the school get rid of “The Eyes of Texas,” take 0.5 percent of athletics revenue and send it to Black Lives Matter, and establish “racial injustice awareness” module. If the university doesnot go about making any significant changes, the athletes would not be “participating in the recruiting of incoming players or donor-related events.”
The radical Left saturnalia sweeping across the nation is sparing no university, which are already incubators of leftist ideas. If the Right doesn’t start taking a stronger stand on these issues, we could be witnessing unprecedented efforts to completely destroy American history within the next decade.
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