Educate us

I feel stupid,

yet pretentious

here we are now

educate us...yeah...(etc.)

I quickly got discouraged with song adaptation. In their original forms, these songs are hits, but as school songs they really miss. About the only thing going for them is that they're danceable.

"10,000 Men," on the other hand, sounds more ancient, more antique, more Harvard. After all, this school was founded by Puritans, not 20th-century disc jockeys.

If Harvard students aren't going to football games, raving about this top-of-the-charts education or getting teary-eyed as they pass through Johnston Gate, it's not because of the school song. It's because we like to complain, it's because we're too lazy to cross the river, it's because we think too much. But it's not the fault of "10,000 Men."

"10,000 Men" sounds so outdated that it ought to pull us together in its very corniness. Harvard is old, and overflowing with tradition. As the nation's first university, we're probably the last school in the nation that ought to be rewriting our fight song.

And another thing. The music industry can be vicious. If we retain the non-pop "10,000 Men," we'll avoid the wrath of Casey Kasem and the ever-fickle public tastes.

We've been able to stay "number one" according to US News and World Report. But how long could a new and improved school song stay on top of another major magazine's rankings--namely, Billboard?