Photo credit: Ben Chua
Hundreds
of Trojans showed up at the Navy Pier in Chicago this past Friday to
get their rally fix in before making the drive to South Bend. In the
usual rally protocol, Dr. Arthur C. Bartner and the Trojan Marching Band
threw up their fists to the crowd and began the famous USC SoCal
Spellout:
“S-O-U-T-H-E-R-N C-A-L-I-F-asalkjlkjfaaa! Southern, Califooooooornia!”
The
cheer, which asks students and alumni to complete the task of spelling
out common words, has recently come up for debate ““ many feel that
syllables are just not something they would like to think about when
cheering for the team in an inebriated state. Others feel that as
Trojans, it is our duty to not only complete the chant successfully but
petition for more letters to be added.
The
blurring together of the “F-O-R-N-I-A” has proved very difficult for
new students especially. We tracked down some current freshmen in
McCarthy Quad and found that 100% of those asked either could not say
these six letters back to back in rhythm or had no idea what a SoCal
Spellout even was. The consensus of upperclassmen and alumni see things
differently.
“It’s
not adding words to the Spellout,” one student told us at the Navy Pier
rally. “It’s changing the way to spell California. Who says we can’t?
We’re USC. Let’s just take out the N or something. No wait, the R. Actually all of the O-R-N-I-A.”
“We’re
Trojans. We can spell anything,” another “SC fan cut in. “”Southern
California’ is just the beginning.” He suggested some other phrases for
Trojans to spell such as “SouthernCaliforniaTrojansareamazeballs” and
“SouthernCaliforniaeverydayI’mshufflingexceptnotbecausethisdanceisactuallyreallydifficult.”
Regardless
of how the issue is solved, it becomes clear that USC has the upper
hand on cheers in general ““ UCLA says the name of their school and claps
a bunch of times like Bruin-shaped losers. Please refer to this
mindless clapping disaster here: https://www.livevideo.com/video/beachgirl/E24A4D49F40C42D5BC3131DCBBFAEEA6/ucla-8-clap.aspx
We
can rest easy knowing the SoCal Spellout at least proves that USC
Trojans can spell all of the word “southern” and half of the word
“California.” The future of the cheer will be determined at an upcoming
USG open forum where students will have the opportunity to express their
opinions on reducing syllables in the phrase or indeed adding more
words. We are told that the forum will be moderated by various drunk
people and the Dornsife college linguistics department.
