As a group of LSJUMB alums who have left the Farm for other, if not greener, pastures, we were shocked to find out that the Band would be prohibited from performing even a halftime show at Cal, until we found that a suspension had been in place since the summer that prevented the Band from performing a single field show throughout the 2006 season. Evidently, the Stanford administration saw fit to remove one of the few things that might have made this football season watchable, and instead punish the Band for the sins of their fathers.

A brief history of the current Band’s situation, from an admittedly biased source: For years, the Stanford administration recognized that the LSJUMB was an integral part of campus life, an embodiment of the laissez-faire, treat-the-students-like-adults atmosphere that made so many of its applicants choose Stanford over the humorless Harvards, Yales and Princetons of the world. They tolerated the Band’s lovable eccentricity, knowing that it came with a price: the occasional incident with a field show deemed offensive by hypocritical Notre Dame fans, or a mellophone’s intoxication at a basketball game or a freshman’s sprained ankle on the fall Band Run. This was the price of having something that differentiated Stanford from the Ivies of the world, and the administration paid that price with the appropriate slap on the wrist for what in the grand scheme of things were relatively innocuous, victimless crimes. And then something happened to the Stanford Administration.

They got scared of losing their jobs, and of getting sued. In the late 90s, a wave of Risk Management Specialists began overtaking higher education in America, coinciding with (or perhaps resulting from) a wave of tragic student deaths from alcohol. And in an ironic response to these tragic deaths from massive, irresponsible overindulgence in alcohol, the Stanford administration responded with their own massive, irresponsible overindulgence in shameless strategies to save their own jobs.

Do not misunderstand; any college student’s death — particularly one from something as unnecessary as binge drinking — is tragic, and steps must be taken to prevent that kind of tragedy. But no less tragic is robbing a revered institution like Stanford of its very essence, and in their shameless, ham-fisted scramble to avoid an unlikely but potentially career-wrecking incident on their watch, the Stanford bureaucrats grasped for the most illogical of straws.

The Stanford Band.

Suddenly, those slaps on the wrist became onerous. Suddenly, every drunken freshman was one too many, every mildly offensive field show was “significantly over the line,” every slight infraction was “the last straw.” Suddenly, the Band was public enemy number one.

And the administration struck. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat fearing for her next paycheck. They pounced on the Band like a Panzer division, and they have taken no prisoners, neutering the Band in every conceivable way. They have imposed conditions of non-assembly on the Band that border on unconstitutionality, they have restricted its performance schedule in a manner that can only be described as maliciously punitive, they have imposed sanctions historically reserved only for fraternities that were either $50,000 behind in rent to the University or whose president had swan-dove off a back patio? They have even forbidden alumni, a critical part of the Band atmosphere, from performing with the Band.

The only way we can describe the administration’s treatment of the Band is Karl Roveian; as loathsome and repugnant as we find their goals, we can only gawk at and respect the single-minded ruthlessness with which they pursue them. They have put the Stanford community on notice that the Band in its current form will be destroyed by any means available and over any time frame, like trying to breed the Scots out of Scotland.

Incidentally, has it worked?

Absolutely. Perhaps one cannot blame recent Band management, desperate to preserve what remained of the Band they inherited, for making Faustian bargains. Unfortunately, they have been overrun by an administration holding all the cards and hell-bent on exploiting each new minor transgression for the purposes of furthering the Band’s annihilation. As a result, what remains is a neutered, hamstrung organization with a falling membership and unclear identity that bears no resemblance to the Band of just five or 10 years ago.

When we were at Stanford some years ago, we used to joke that the Band was Stanford’s cockroach; in the nuclear winter, there would still be a few drunk trumpets bleating out “All Right Now.” We joked about it, but we really believed that. However, the last five years have put that belief to the test. Stanford’s administration has declared unabashed, unholy, unrestricted war upon the Band, and by all accounts, they have won.

For now.

So we say “Good Luck” to you, Stanford Administration. And we mean it, for you will need it. At the end of the day, we take solace in one irrefutable truth: We will be Stanford alumni writing checks long after you cease to be a Stanford bureaucrat cashing them. We’re younger and we’re angrier, and WE WILL OUTLAST YOU.

The Band is dead. Long live the Band.