Thirty girls in khaki WAC shorts and blouses, and a live swing band--just one big happy sing

I was a judge the other night for the annual UCLA Spring Sing, and I was reassured that what we used to call “the old college spirit” did not die, as we have sometimes thought, in the 1960s and ‘70s, even though it was pretty sick.

The exuberance, enthusiasm and sheer energy that we associate with youth was there at Royce Hall in abundance.

(By the way, as a judge I had to be at the auditorium at 7 o’clock. What to do about dinner? We solved that problem by arriving half an hour early and dining in the north campus student cafeteria. I had Mexican Chicken Kiev, which is a pretty exotic conceit. It wasn’t bad, even without wine.)

Of course a college campus is a yeasty place, and undergraduates are historically rebellious and irreverent, as they should be, so I was gratified to see that satire was the underlying object of the sing.

The annual sing had been dropped for a decade, from 1969 to 1979, when students everywhere were protesting the Vietnam War, most American campuses had been turned into battlegrounds, and anything that was smiled on by the administration or the Establishment was disdained by most of the students; even the annual UCLA Homecoming was abandoned, fraternities and sororities fell into disfavor, and many students were drawn from their academic courses to “alternative” studies off-campus that were somehow thought to be more “relevant.’ Do you remember trying to argue with a college student of that era? Anything you said was dismissed as “irrelevant.”

Now, except for occasional anti-apartheid demonstrations and the like, the anger seems to be gone.

It was one, big, happy, international sing.

I was also astonished, and gratified, to see what appears to be a discovery by our college students of the big band music of the ‘40s--though perhaps their purpose in using it was partly satirical.

Anyway, in filling out my judge’s sheet, I gave the greatest number of points, in every category, to Delta Delta Delta for their production of “Rhapsody in USO,” a rousing, powerfully nostalgic celebration of that beloved institution of World War II--the United Service Organizations--done with about 30 girls in khaki WAC shorts and blouses, and a live swing band with lots of brass.

Incredulously, I heard them playing that inspirational tribute to “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and then that greatest of jitterbug songs, “In the Mood.”

The girls did some marvelous old big stage dance routines, shaking their torsos in the delightfully wanton manner of 1940s showgirls, and the audience--which was so amiable and audible it even cheered the judges--repaid them with a storm of whistles, bravos, uninhibited shouting and group responses.

When it was over the executive director and emcee, Michael Soules, who had been debonair, amusing, self-deprecatory, and deliberately inept (he explained that he was from Fresno), announced that Delta Delta Delta had won not only the choreography award but also the Sweepstakes Award for “Rhapsody in USO.”

There were six other judges, including Bill Conti, the Hollywood composer, and I doubt that my vote was decisive; but at least it was contributory. A vote for the good old days.

Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman would have loved the Delts.

In a big production number called “Rhapsody in Enrollment,” the Delta Zetas satirized the sheer size of UCLA, the difficulty of getting into the class of one’s choice, and the godlike eminence and power of certain teachers.

In the choral competition, Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Sigma Phi spoofed our times and our styles with “Rhapsody in Blue Polyester,” for which those two fraternities placed first in that category.

The sing drew heavily on music and routines from such musicals as “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line,” and “Oklahoma,” among others, and there was also a lot of rock.

But I was disabused of any lingering notion I might have had that the music of the young is incomprehensible, or that they find our music without appeal. Fifty years from now, I suppose, a few die-hard radio stations will still be playing Bruce Springsteen and Boy George for a diminishing cult of old geezers in their 70s. The time will come when KMPC, which now plays the “unforgettables” of the ‘30s and ‘40s, will switch to the “unforgettables” of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It will probably also still be broadcasting the Angel baseball games, though I doubt that they will have won their first pennant yet.

Three final numbers that were not in the competition dramatized the new cosmopolitan texture of the Westwood campus.

One was a dance by the Kabuki Rockers--a riveting performance by a group of Asian men and women with eyes like obsidian in their chalked faces. It was stylized, sinister and exciting.

The Group de Folklorico de UCLA performed a traditional Mexican folk dance in full costume, and the Chinese Students Assn. and the Hong Kong Students Assn. combined in a stunning routine called “Aerobics”--a series of beautifully choreographed aerobic exercises that these young Chinese men and women, lean, athletic and supple, performed with speed, precision, and tireless grace.

By the way, the show was dedicated to a teacher--Prof. Waldo Phelps, famous for his classes on the rhetoric of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, which proves that students are still curious about the Establishment. (Anybody who can interest a class in the rhetoric of Harry Truman has got to be a great teacher.)

Sometimes I think George Bernard Shaw was wrong. Youth is not wasted on the young.