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‘River Hawk Pride’: Fight song analysis

Ben St. Pierre

Connector Staff

River Hawk Pride

UMass Lowell we will always be,

a team of strength in unity.

With River Hawk pride,

we stand side by side,

and fight for victory.

Our wings unfurled and talons curled,

we swoop and strike then we score!

When Blue sets sail,

in flight we won’t fail.

Let’s go UMass Lowell and soar!

To those who are unfamiliar with fine art, this is the triumphant fight song of our university, to be chanted loudly and proudly by every student and faculty member alike. It is a song of power and courage; of unity and success. It reminds us all that we are not merely attendees of UMass Lowell, but valiant, blue River Hawks, and when we band together, our blueness blends with the cerulean expanse of the cool sky, and we can fly on forever, accomplishing all that we wish as we soar.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: when such a beautiful piece of poetry exists, and is so widely known among our students, why is it that we are not taught about it in the classroom? Why do we devote our time to boring, irrelevant, canonical novels instead of literature that so heavily impacts our school spirit?

Being a River Hawk, I won’t stop at just identifying this problem: I’m going to take matters in my own hands, and resolve it, and not run away from it, but fly fiercely, after tearing the competition to pieces.

So, let’s break this precious gem down. The overall structure is very bold and irregular to convention: eleven lines, with a couplet followed by a tercet, then another couplet followed by a final tercet. This creates a rushing, rippling effect for the reader; like a wave that surfaces, roars upward, recedes, then roars upwards for a last time with its greatest possible intensity. This purpose is evident within the poem’s last line: “Let’s go UMass Lowell and soar!” The speaker clearly wants us to be influenced into flying off, and the optimistic tone removes any hesitation of being unwilling to soar.

In terms of theme, as I have previously stated, the speaker is saying that the collective flight of all River Hawks is the most essential part of what it means to be a student here. With words like “strength,” “unity,” “pride,” “victory,” and “soar,” the speaker clearly focuses not on the readers as people bound by an inability to fly, but as River Hawks; we aren’t just students. We’re creatures who can fly and find strength in its purest form through togetherness, and not isolation. We are better off, as a whole, as just that: as a whole, and not as individual students occupying one large space. Instead, to be able to soar, we all have to soar, and we all have to do so by feeding off all River Hawks’ strength, and the shared knowledge from which we nourish.

I hope that my analysis of our fight song not only displays the deep unity we all feel for each other as River Hawks, but also, that we all reconsider what exactly it means to be a good student. I hope when you religiously recite the fight song when you wake up in the morning, you see Rowdy in your mind, and feel him in your heart, and you know that he is omnipresent in every other River Hawk’s mind and heart as well. We are all strong, and we are all individually even stronger when we’re all strong as a whole, and our own flight is not always possible unless you know that other Hawks possess the ability to soar.

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