When the Spiders went marching in

One day last October, professor Andy McGraw, who chairs the music department, got a message out of the blue.

“What do you think is the best thing to do with this?” it asked.

The sender was David Donaldson, manager of UR’s Rethink Waste program. The “this” in his message was what appeared to be a UR marching band uniform that staff found while cleaning out a cabinet in UR’s physical plant. Made mostly of heavy, itchy wool, it can’t have been comfortable to wear. Still, it was an outfit of both wonder and mystery for Donaldson, a former music student in college.

“Nobody here was around the last time we had a marching band,” Donaldson said. “But it was obvious what it was.”

Images of Spider bands show up in yearbooks as far back as the 1920s. The uniform Donaldson and his co-workers found seems to date from the early 1970s, based on a name on a label inside one of the pairs of pants. That time stamp puts it near the end of UR’s marching band era. The program was discontinued in 1979 on the recommendation of the music department, which preferred to concentrate resources on concert performances, according to an article in The Collegian. The following season, a combined student-alumni pep band performed during halftime at the homecoming football game.

McGraw, the music professor who got Donaldson’s note about the find, contacted the athletics department. Athletics contacted archives. Archives contacted us. Now we’re sharing it with you.

Donaldson, for one, is glad we are. “It’s a piece of history that isn’t with us any longer,” he said.