The Lynah and E-Lynah Gestapo

[A-19]

Let me begin by saying that the level of censorship by the Lynah gestapo is getting really ridiculous. Today I saw two individuals with signs harrassed by police, because they were "offensive." The signs read "Nickerson has syphilis" and the other made brief use of the word "sucks." Immediately, the Lynah police (not the ushers mind you) made a beeline for these individuals, and argued with them until they destroyed or gave up their signs. I also saw two individuals by the Clarkson bench with a sign reading "Nickerson eats babies." Two seconds after putting up this sign, I saw police approach these fans and have it out with them. I am completely aware of the lack of free speech within a private venue, according to US and NY contract law. I am not making a legal argument, but am commenting on the fact that the limits of what constitutes a "family environment" have been stretched beyond understandable recognition. You want to throw students out for screaming "asshole?" Fine. Even considering the fact that no child has legal tickets in the student sections, and I can't even hear things said in B (and I sit in A), so I really doubt that children in the townie seats can hear many of the obscenities anyway. Even so, this is understandable within the administration's mission of turning Lynah into a more family-friendly rink (which I disagree with wholeheartedly, but that's another matter). But to say that anything disparaging is out of line stretches the ability of the officials beyond practical reason. What do you have to do, just clap your hands when everyone else does, and never say anything disparaging?

The officials of Lynah are not the only gestapo who feel they must assert an authoritarian will to dominate all aspects of cheering, though the individuals of which I speak utilize psychological persuasion instead of force as their authority. For three years (eLynah as we know it got pretty big around my sophomore year, though it may have existed earlier), I have witnessed as alums shoot down students time and again, for things they just don't like. They sit here and blow things way out of proportion, possibly just because they are sad that they happen to not be able to make as many games now. Believe me- win or lose, tomorrow is my last home game as a student at Cornell- so I will understand the feeling that "we had so much stuff we used to say that no one does anymore." However, this does not give you the right to dictate some sort of policy as to what should be done and what should not. Personally, I don't do the "DIIIIIIIIIIIE" nor the telephone number cheer, but some individuals feel like doing it. Good for them. I'd rather have every person in that rink doing something an alum disagrees with than saying nothing at all. I think some of you should stop bitching and moaning that you don't like what other people say. If you don't like it, and you're at the game, make up something more creative youself. If you can't attend the game, try to set a new example during games that you can attend. Every group of students at a game has the opportunity to invent, develop and orchestrate whatever it feels like. Saying things like "this cheer really has to stop" is not only a waste of your time (do you think the people doing these cheers really care?) but is part of the mentality that I have witnessed on ELynah for three years: if you don't do something that everyone approves of, you're wrong. People aren't wrong because you don't agree with them.

How about the Lynah and the Elynah gestapo allow students to make up their own minds? As John Stuart Mill presents in his theory of free speech in On Liberty, free speech serves various functions. If it's right, we gain something. If it's wrong, we confirm the right things. If we don't know, it will help us decide down the road whether the matter is right or wrong. Similarly to cheering, if you don't like it (and it's within reason), let the crowd decide for themselves whether they want to continue or stop the practice.

-Mike Rosenberg '04

[.m.o.o.n.l.i.g.h.t.d.a.n.c.i.n.g.]

That really needed to be said. Amen.

[A-19]

Allow me to add several examples.

First, I do have several opinions about some cheers that everyone does. First of all, I wish that the "remote control goalie" cheer had more words than "bend over." Second of all, I think we can do better as a school than "TEAMMMMMMMMMMMMM suck!" every 5 minutes. So what do I do about it? I attempt to add in "sweeeeeeeeeep" or "tap" or "drink" as loud as I can at the appropriate times, and maybe it will catch back on. But I am not going to say to someone "you do this wrong" or, more in tune with what some individuals order on this board- "stop doing that." Change by action, not your stupid dictate.

If you're not at the game, you pretty much lose the ability to affect what people say. Because you don't like hearing it on your webcast is no reason to authoritatively dictate that whatever you don't like is stupid and wrong and must be stopped. There are about 800 examples of this in occurrence on this board anytime that anyone every brings up a cheer or sign they want to use. That's why I don't even post my own cheer suggestions anymore.

[Ack]

I do hope "Are you familiar with the term 'disappointing loss'?"  makes a comeback too.

[Will]

Mike, while I agree with your idea in theory, that the fans should be free to cheer as they want, I feel I should explain exactly why I want the phone number cheer to end.

(1) It is getting old--it was clever against Dan Yacey, but the novelty has worn off for me.
(2) It crosses a certain line that I don't think should be crossed when it comes to heckling the opponents.  I can't really classify it as an invasion of privacy (since apparently the information is freely available online), but it works along the same line of thinking.  Remember who it is who is saying this as well.
(3) I don't want this practice spreading to other schools' fanbases.  I think it would be a shame if Dave McKee's number was chanted by another team's fans.
(4) More personally to me alone, the phone number cheer interferes with my own ability to heckle the goalie with my own ad-libbed lines.

All of that being said, painting the numbers on their chests was brilliant, as much as I hate to admit it.  Those guys gave me the opportunity to heckle Traylen with the line, "You see that, Traylen? It's official--YOUR NUMBER'S UP!!!"

[jtwcornell91]

Do you really think a cop coming over and confiscating a sign is the same thing as an alum saying "I really wish you'd stop doing that cheer.  It sounds stupid."?  One is coercion, the other persuasion.

And it's not like these exchanges only happen between you hip youngsters and us old squares.  Several years back, one member of the class of '94 was part of a group that had decided BU was no longer relevant to Cornell hockey and tried to replace "Screw BU" with "Let's Go Red".  A classmate of his tried to convince him on a predecessor to this forum that he should stop that; I believe the phrase used was "you're making the Faithful sound like crap".

[.m.o.o.n.l.i.g.h.t.d.a.n.c.i.n.g.]

JTW i dont think you're as old as you think

[Get a Room Rick]

Mike, shouldn't you be writing your thesis?

[Ben Rocky '04]

On that note, I'd like to say this to the parents giving me dirty looks tonight:
If you don't want your kids to hear it, don't sit in a student section.  

Mike, well said.

[Josh '99]

Can I agree with Mike and with JTW?  John has a good point that Mike's frustration with the Lynah Gestapo and the ELynah Gestapo have not a whole lot in common other than the word "Gestapo" (with which I have different issues altogether), and which should really be taken up in completely separate forums.

That said, Mike is right when he suggests that the holier-than-thou attitude on this board gets to be a little bit much sometimes.  I'll freely admit that I've been a part of this on occasion (Macho Man and excessive "bend over" come easily to mind), but I think maybe at times I, along with others, take things too seriously, and could benefit from taking a figurative step back and looking at things in perspective.  No, the cheers and the fans in Lynah aren't exactly the same as when I was a student, or when Rich was a student, or JTW, or Apple, or Greg, or Jeff H, Marty, Jim, Al, or their predecessors.  Can we expect them to be?  I don't see how we can.  Sure, I love going back to Lynah and screaming my throat raw in the student section if I can get in, or wherever my ticket happens to be if I can't, but times change, and people change, and I don't see why I, or anyone else, should have a right to expect Lynah should be the same now as it was "back in my day," or to suggest that the way it was in any of those "back then"'s was "better" than the way it is now in any objective sense of the word.

People need to cool it and relax and realize that we're all cheering for the same team to win, and that how we go about is just details.  We are all part of the Faithful, and the bickering that sometimes goes on among us is ridiculous.  Advocating each of our own views about how best to cheer for the Red is pretty unimportant in comparison to reminding Nickerson about his raging case of syphillis, or asking Traylen why he spent a solid year backing up a tapping sieve like Walsh, or pointing out to Roll that Clarkson was a better team when the coach WAS beating his players, or, if you prefer, just adding one extra voice to "Let's Go Red."  And if people (especially those in attendance, obviously) don't get their collective shit together, and support the Red, and get on the Golden Showers and into their heads, however they can and however they choose to do so, then we're just all that much more likely to be sitting around tomorrow night talking about how much we loved having Vesce around to win the big faceoffs and how great Marr looked when he needed to, instead of how much we're all looking forward to seeing Hornby and Wallace pound Rich Peverley or Tyler fuckin' Kolarik next Friday in Albany.

I'm sorry if this post offended any of you, but this is about as eloquent as I can be when I'm drunk.

-Josh

[Greg Berge]

"Dieeeeee" isn't important either way, it's just a cheer.

The phone number violates the line between the game and real life.  Neither J. S. Mill nor other Libertarians wrote that you have a right to unfettered freedom without regard to consequences on others' freedoms.  I'm all for recounting Murphy's and Nickerson's tender relations with woodland creatures, because that stops at the Lynah exits.  Contact info -- a phone number, an address, an email address -- doesn't just stop there.

[billhoward]

It's tough for freedom and responsibility to coexist in a 3836-seat arena. It's like trying to segment a swimming pool into peeing and no-peeing sections.

Is there a point where fans can go too far? From applauding your team to booing the opponent to making rude remarks to making boorish hand signs to making obscene printed signs and adding gestures? Yelling out an opposing player's home phone number? His girlfriend's arrest record? His sexual preferences? (Hypothetically): If Nickerson is gay, when he makes the trip to the penalty box (and he got good at that Saturday), do you yell out, "See ya, faggot"? Do you dress in blackface and wear the visitor's jersey to mock a black opponent? (I think that one's illegal by Cornell's rules anywhere on Cornell's extended grounds.)

Do we know, or just hope, that a loud and boisterous crowd is worth a goal a game? And is that the fans or is that the travel away from home and playing on an unfamiliar surface? Was the de facto open-net goal against one Dartmouth goaltender who responded to Cornell taunts a possibility in every game, or a once-in-a-lifetime event? Or we supporting Cornell or just amusing ourselves?

What was clever once can become boring and repetitive. Harvard tied one chicken to Dave Elenbaas' cage circa 1973 and we're still reliving that with fish-tossing, like Southernors still annoyed by how the Civil War turned out.

What I might find amusing on my own, or as an undergrad, I'm not sure is so fully amusing in other circumstances, as when I brought my wife and boys back for a game last month. Fortunately, Lynah's acoustics suck [sorry, wrong word] and you can't tell what's being said half the time, and other times what you think you hear is worse than "Wen - dover" or "sucks." Maybe I'm getting old, but when the PA announcer at my boy's hockey game plays brief snatches of rap music [oxymoron?] with the F-word, my civil liberties self gets replaced by my annoyed self who thinks it's inappropriate in a public place with a wide range of people.

Down in Florida at the Everblades Classic, some of the old-timers from the other schools harrumphed about it being inappropriate to shout "Red!" during the national anthem. (Sorry. During the U.S. anthem.) Is that disrespectful? Or are the Fighting Irish unhappy the American flag isn't green and gold so they could get their cheer in? It certainly reinforced the Buckeye and Notre Dame opinion that we're a bunch of rich Eastern liberal jerks. But they also think it's disrespectful to play the Canadian anthem. Or unneeded.

Maybe Cornell should set even clearer rules about what's acceptable behavior at Lynah and make it clear to both the fans and the enforcers. It's possible the enforcers have too much leeway. Is "sucks" now the eighth dirty word?

[paulspen]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 It's tough for freedom and responsibility to coexist in a 3836-seat arena. It's like trying to segment a swimming pool into peeing and no-peeing sections.
 [/Q]

Brilliant!

[Will]

[Q]jtwcornell91 Wrote:

Several years back, one member of the class of '94 was part of a group that had decided BU was no longer relevant to Cornell hockey and tried to replace "Screw BU" with "Let's Go Red".  A classmate of his tried to convince him on a predecessor to this forum that he should stop that; I believe the phrase used was "you're making the Faithful sound like crap".

 [/Q]

"Let's Go Red, Clarkson too!"?  I'm guessing that cheer didn't last very long. ;-)

[Killer]

I'm 50.  Does that make me one of the old-timers?  I was there from '71-'77 (slow, yes, but not that slow, I think I remember somehow earning 2 degrees between hockey games).

Can't say that I'm a big fan of signs about STDs, sexual preferences, or spouse/girlfriend beating, as they can be offensive and I don't see what they add.  There are probably more creative and just as effective ways to get your message across and get inside the opposition's head, both good things to do.

But I have no issues with "sucks", shouting "RED!" during the anthem, or playing the Canadian anthem, which I think shows we respect and appreciate our players and fans from up north.

As an aside, in one of the most heated rivalries in all of sports: Red Sox-Yankees, you can't display anything with "sucks" on it in Yankee Stadium, but at Fenway, you see all kinds of "offensive" material on signs and shirts.  Stadium security does nothing about it.

BTW, anyone know the real history behind the chicken-in-net thing?  I know I've read posts about the fish being in retaliation for Harvard putting a chicken in Elenbaas' net at the old Watson Rink.  But when I was a freshman, I remember my RA telling me that it was a tradition for us to tie a chicken in the Harvard net at Lynah between the first and second periods.  Sure enough, at my first Harvard game, in the 1971-72 season, I seem to remember some guy goes out on the ice before the start of the second period and leaves behind a tethered chicken.  No fish at that time, but certainly fowl.