The band and the culture war

The first sign that the PUB-Citadel fray might expose hopelessly intractable cultural fissures between North and South, religious and secular, ivory tower and military bastion, occurred Monday morning when The Daily Princetonian and the Charleston Post and Courier published grossly dissimilar accounts of the melee.

The ‘Prince' article reported that Citadel cadets inexplicably taunted, spat on and assaulted PUB members as they began a pre-approved march through a guarded entrance to the Charleston, S.C., military college. The cadets then continued to defy military discipline during the game. They jeered PUB during its subdued (and again, pre-approved) halftime show and harassed band members at their stadium seats, according to this narrative. On Wednesday, the ‘Prince' published a less tendentious account of the fracas, quoting cadets expressing everything from contrition to unwavering defiance. Only through quotes by indignant cadets do readers learn that the band may have incited cadets with their pre-game and halftime shenanigans.

The Post and Courier's version of events did not deny that cadets booed the PUB during halftime or that they skirmished with band members before and during the game. But rather than assault PUB members for no reason, the cadets had been provoked by the scramble band's appalling irreverence and vulgarity. When band members blithely "sashayed" on a part of campus honoring the war dead and when their halftime show degenerated into Animal House boorishness, the cadets felt compelled to defend their school's honor. So this story goes.

But these two divergent interpretations of the PUB-cadet encounter were nothing compared to the anonymously posted readers' comments linked to Monday's ‘Prince' article. As of 10 p.m. Wednesday, the article had 490 comments - more than any other in the history of the ‘Prince.'

The comments represented three distinct viewpoints: anti-Princeton and pro-Citadel, pro-Princeton and anti-Citadel, and finally, the circumspect "they're both to blame" category. While this campus is generally regarded as the least liberal Ivy, posters in the first group depicted a Princeton full of effete, hippie, gay-loving, draft-dodging, anti-American pseudo-intellectuals. To the second group, Citadel cadets and their apologists were war-mongering rednecks lacking a sense of humor and worst of all, ignoramuses who could never gain admission to Old Nassau.

The point is not which group won the war of words or which paper was more accurate in its reporting. Rather, the conflicting interpretations of the altercation underscore that despite paeans to unity in campaign rhetoric, the culture wars are as heady as ever and the divide appears unbridgeable for now. To be sure, the combatants of these wars don't always align neatly along regional, class and religious lines. But the contest over what transpired at The Citadel on Saturday and which group was culpable reveals that the culture wars are ignited by larger differences in region, class, religion, views on the military and whether groups like the PUB are exemplars of expressive performance or a manifestation of liberal excess.

Chin Jou can be reached at cjou@princeton.edu.