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I guess I should be flattered when Athletic Director Kim Chandler said that “We’re classy here at Macalester,” on Saturday night at the Women’s Soccer Game, but it just confirmed to me how little she knows students at Mac.Games at Mac have changed this year. At the beginning of the year I thought that the heightened security at the stadium was just because of the RNC, but the security hasn’t left. Now they’re parked outside the stadium checking bags before letting students inside, and patrolling the stands throughout the games. That bothered me, but I accept that because they check bags at every other sports event you go to. I’m not excited about this, but I do accept it.

However, I do not accept being told what we can and cannot cheer. At the game some students started the cheer: “Give me a C-O-N-D-O-M, what does that spell? DEFENSE.”

Chandler promptly came over and told them to “settle down” and that “that was enough of that.” You went on to say that “we’re classy here at Macalester” and “we don’t cheer things like that.”

In fact, we do cheer things like that. It’s one of the best things about going to games. I know that these are Chandler’s first few months here at Macalester, and she may be adjusting to an “atypical” student body. But I think that those cheers are great.

Condoms are, in fact, a great defense against STIs, and that, as one friend put it, “is the classiest way to have sex.”

Those cheers-whether you’re talking about the condom, sex, Viagra, or the drink blood cheer-are part of our school tradition. They may not be what some would like us to be cheering, but they are part of Macalester.

The worst part is, not only by saying those things Saturday night did Chandler alienate herself from many students, but she showed how little she has gotten to know Macalester students. People may stop cheering those things because you’ve scared them, but they will also stop going to the games if they feel like they’re being watched over like some rowdy middle school kids.

Chandler is ultimately hurting the sports teams by not allowing the student body to cheer them on with the cheers they know and love because people will stop going to games. People look forward to going to those games, and cheering ridiculously inappropriate things. She may not like what the cheers say, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to say them.

Charlotte Fagan ’11