PALO ALTO, Calif. — In 1975, students voted in a nonbinding referendum to call Stanford’s teams the Robber Barons, an insouciant reference to the university’s founder, Leland Stanford, who could more charitably be labeled a railroad magnate. The name was rejected.
“I think it’s kind of silly,” a university spokesman said at the time.
But that was the point. Stanford has always had a countercultural side. Now, as it is a more buttoned-up university with teams named the Cardinal (as in the color, like the Harvard Crimson) and innumerable Silicon Valley connections, the best place to find traces of the university’s insouciant ethos is the student-run band, which, in a nod to the institution’s full name, refers to itself as the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band.