University of Virginia Students Fight For More Tolerant Song

The student council unanimously passed a resolution, urging the campus community to stop singing "not gay" during the "Good Ol' Song," five years after the Queer and Allied Activism group first raised the issue. The group's explanation, according to the Cavalier Daily student newspaper, was that the insertion started to become audible during televised football games. 

 

Allen Groves, dean of students, called the chant "juvenile" and embarrassing, and Eric McDaniel, the student-sponsor of the bill said the chant was "a relic of hate from a time of intolerance that we have more than progressed past." 

 

Outsports reports that students have made the addition to the song since the 1970s.

 

The Cavalier Daily's editorial staff also urged students to drop the addition to the "Good Ol' Song." 

 

"Certainly there is a right to be ignorant; to have one’s views and shout them too," they wrote. "But the addition of “not gay” does not even express this. It says only that Virginia isn’t gay — which isn’t true, given demographics and the fact that a Charlottesville Pride Festival happened Saturday. 'Not gay' is also not funny or clever or in any way cool."