A tradition is a way of thinking and behaving that’s been passed down through a group for a long time.
At least until some damn kids come around and ruin it.
In effect, a tradition is something each generation has deemed important because the generation before did. Traditions hundreds or even thousands of years old are honored today because people like to maintain a link to the past and the roots of who they used to be.
Traditions matter because a group of people decide they do, not because a conglomerate of administrators, figureheads, supposed “student leadership” and video board advertisements tell them they do.
It’s a function of the collective conscience, the unspoken set of shared beliefs and ideals that help unify a society.
Traditions are passed down and understood just like any social norm, and new generations learn without being told just as they learn red means stop, green means go and you don’t tell parents their newborn baby is ugly.
Traditions that matter can only be created organically. Sure, the clean versions of “Neck” and “Tiger Rag” were traditions in their own way, but a school-sponsored initiative was never going to be an effective way to make that point.
Over the course of our nation’s history, forced traditions have been nothing more than a dressed-up way to justify oppression. For this very reason, LSU’s “Tradition Matters” campaign was doomed to fail before it even got off the ground.
Throw in the initiative being conceived from a “knee-jerk reaction” with only two home games remaining, the lack of communication between those involved and the subsequent finger pointing, and the campaign has quickly become what it was always destined to be — a joke.
LSU football is littered with traditions. From tailgating and marching down victory hill to the 5-yard lines and H-style goal posts on the field of Tiger Stadium itself, Saturday Night in Death Valley is a tradition all its own.
Those are just some notables from a long list, but all of them are traditions native to LSU without me or anyone else saying they are. The first time someone steps on campus on a gameday, they have an innate understanding that what’s going on around them is somehow special.
If anything, by calling attention to the “vulgarity,” the athletic department and administration did nothing but exacerbate what they were trying to stop.
Since the 1960s college students, especially impaired ones, have reveled at the opportunity to rebel against a perceived authority figure. Obviously cursing at a football game isn’t the same kind of cause as civil rights or protesting the Vietnam War, but the sentiment is still the same.
“The man said not to do this, let’s do it more.”
In today’s social media- obsessed society, people will drop everything and pretend they care about a cause no matter how trivial it is, but not if they think someone is trying to sell them something.
Athletic department personnel trying to plant a story in a newspaper and airing public service announcement videos featuring Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry feel like the way to advertise a product, not create a tradition.
The University’s official seal of approval all but cinched the failure of its own movement, meaning “Tradition Matters” was doomed from the start even if it was managed well — which it wasn’t.
Trying to eliminate “vulgarity” at a football game is pointless anyway. Traditions do matter. This pointless initiative does not.
James Moran is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Beacon, N.Y.