Notre Dame adds ‘daughters’ to iconic fight song

It’s formal — 50 yrs soon after Notre Dame welcomed the first cadre of feminine undergraduate students to its campus in 1972, the college has formally improved the struggle song, Victory March, to reflect the addition of girls.

Can listen to it here.

Only took 5 many years (kind of).

The line “while her loyal sons are marching onward to victory” has been adjusted to “while her loyal sons and daughters march onto victory.” This tiny tweak has really been close to for a long time — throughout my undergraduate several years at Notre Dame among 2017 and 2021, I knew various folks who sang the “daughters” edition of the song loud and proud, and I also know several alumni who sang the “new” edition as much again as the early 1980s. The earliest recorded recommendation of the alter dates back to 1976, in a letter to the faculty newspaper from a female scholar who tossed out the recommendation, writing, “is it way too much to rewrite a easy but pretty classic fight song and confess that girls are below to continue to be, or would this be the straw that broke the alumnus’ again?” (Regretably, the very same problem has to be requested today.)

The “Notre Dame Victory March” has been about considering the fact that 1908, and its recent tune was composed in 1928, for each Notre Dame Journal. It’s played by the school’s marching band, of program, at the start off of just about every dwelling soccer recreation, following each touchdown, industry aim, and additional position, and at the close of just about every game. It’s omnipresent at each pep rally, formal school event, athletics match, from freshman orientation correct up to graduation. Suffice it to say that it is ubiquitous, as properly as just one of the most effectively-identified combat tracks in faculty athletics, joined by Michigan’s “The Victors,” which was composed in 1898.

For a school that borders on rabidity about custom, and that typically finds it challenging to embrace change (the football subject did not change from grass to turf until eventually 2014, and didn’t have a Jumbotron until finally 2017), this is a pretty significant adjustment for the Battling Irish. It’s a modest improve that doesn’t harm everyone — although, you would not know it to search at some of the Twitter and Facebook replies to the announcement, exactly where issues of “woke pandering” and cries about “tradition” abound — and, if just about anything, in all probability just need to have been applied amongst the huge variations that accompanied, you know, permitting ladies into the school in 1972.

Is it monumental? No. Could it make some girls, in particular all those who ended up early graduates of the college as properly as latest feminine athletes, feel content and provided in the school’s society? Indeed. And, most importantly, is anyone forcing you at knifepoint to sing this? No — so for people who care soooo much about “tradition,” just sing it the old way. Steer clear of Glee Club performances or what ever helps make you not want to shit your pants about introducing a term in a song. And halt complaining in the comment sections — it helps make you glimpse old and crotchety.