(sent in by class-notes secretaries)

Catchphrases and Mottos

1972B studied an HBO (Human Behavior in the Organization) case in which there were two hourly workers. One of them would steal the other fellow’s banana every day from his brown-paper-bag lunch. Every day these two guys would go at it back and forth until the one fellow gave the banana back. After that, in later case discussions, we referred to any laughable or wasted-time activities as “Banana Time,” which would get a laugh from the section.

1972F had a signature acronym, OTSKFS (Only the Shadow knows for sure), introduced by our Managerial Economics professor Bing Sung to indicate that some elements of a problem are unknowable and should be recognized as such in our analyses.

1977H. One professor always asked, “Jeremy, who’s going to pay?”

1987E’s motto was “We Be E!” This became the section song, music and lyrics written by Merrill Watts. The lyrics went thus: Chorus: “We be E, from the Worm Deck to the sky/We be E, and we be E till we die./Verse 1: When it comes to Marketing, we’d all just as soon forget,/Cold calls and openings, all they do is make you sweat./” Repeat the chorus. Verse 2: “When we rolled out of Control, Ken always cracked a joke. When lost in POM, we all turned to Mr. Polk.”

1987I. “Brave but stupid!”

1986H. One of our sectionmates had been an Army colonel (or some high rank), and his approach in one case to a delicate HR matter was to force an unpopular policy onto the workers in the case, a strategy that the professor labeled “Ram it!” That became a catchphrase, which was often called out loud.

1989G. Several funny phrases originally used by sectionmates were regularly borrowed for openings and comments to great general amusement.

1994B had a famous line that ended up on our T-shirts: “You have to read between the lines.” It referred to people who said things that weren't exactly in the case.

2001H. “Without the H it’s just BS!”

AMP 165. One classmate does a fantastic imitation of Prof. Garvin and did it in the classroom. He starts with “I’ve got good news,” one of the professor’s catchphrases.

AMP 168. Dick Vietor regularly shouted “It’s in the toilet” when talking about the US economy. He was, needless to say, our very favorite professor.

AMP 178. Professor Tushman said “Say more” many, many times during the class, so we tended to use that phrase a lot when someone started talking.

OPM 4. Back in 1978 Prof. Arch Dooley opened OPM 4’s first classroom session by coming up to me (in the first row, of course) and shouting out to the class that I was an “entrepreneur in heat!” He then went on to describe the ways I had allowed my company to become scattered in many directions and lose its focus. Of course, throughout my entire three years in OPM, I was always referred to as the guy in heat. Arch was right on: it wasn’t long before my lack of focus caused my business to stutter, but I was able to refocus through the help of my OPM experience.

OPM 7 used “Look at the fish” as a mantra. On some wall on campus we found a stuffed fish and used that in our class picture. Man, were we wild or what!

OPM 17's favorite saying is “Look at the fish.” The first paper we read in Marty Marshall’s marketing class was “Agassiz and the Fish,” about Louis Agassiz, the famous Harvard naturalist, and how he had his student study a fish. The story is found here. The moral is to keep looking at every aspect of something till you get it all, and then keep on looking, for there’s always more to discover. It’s a powerful lesson on the necessity of painstaking observation, staring at and studying the reality before your eyes. So in class, when a marketing topic came up, Marshall would ask, “Did you look at the fish?”

OPM 38. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

PMD 49. The two catch-phrases for our class as a whole were “Swashbucklers and buccaneers” and (derived from our intensive exposure to case studies and their particular methodology) “Predicting the past with ever-increasing accuracy.”

TGMP 5 does, in fact, have a motto that bonds us. It's “Keep Smiling,” which resulted from the final morning of class when Professor Bower entered the classroom, and we all stood and sang the song “That's What Friends Are For,” which starts with the phrase “Keep Smiling.”

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Cheers

1987E’s cheer: Give me an E! E! Give me another E!! E!! Give me another E!!! E!!! What’s that spell? EEE!!!!

1989E: In those once-every-couple-of-days circumstances when a student said something off the mark and was good-naturedly sheepish about the comment, there would be an immediate cheer of “Loop,” with one of our tallest sectionmates making an L with one long arm pointing straight up, the other pointing at the student. It was done good-naturedly, and everyone would laugh or at least giggle.

1990D: “Yo!” (from Warren McFarlan)

1993H people would mumble “Shark” when somebody was aggressive in class.

1993I used to cheer the guy in the Worm Deck who was in charge of lowering the screen for videos.

1994B cheered the name of one classmate when we had a particularly difficult problem..

1996I had a very simple cheer. We all made a capital I with our hands and arms and shouted "I I I I I.” Very sophisticated!

1997B’s “Jambo!” (“Hello” in Swahili)

1998I’s “Banzai!”

1999A had a cheer, as did all of the other '99 sections. Ours started with somebody from the section coming down to the front, welcoming the guest(s) for that day and saying something like “We really just have one question for you” and then screaming, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The response from 80 people, "To get to Section A!” This was followed by a well-choreographed hand-stomping and feet-pounding synchronized performance, akin to the call and response in the movie Stripes: “Boom chugga lugga, boom chugga lugga, boom.” It was really fun and lasted for about 30 seconds. It was a great section unifier and wake-up call for us and the guests.

1999D and every other section our year had a cheer, mainly for welcoming visitors to class but also for when we just wanted to cheer. It involved some chanting, a lot of hand pounding on desks, potentially some stomping. I can’t for the life of me remember how it goes anymore, but it was loud and not short. I believe they banned cheers like ours after our year. We sometimes also had costumes. Various section men would don a head-to-toe skintight yellow suit. Think super hero with no powers and no cape. And very unforgiving. One sectionmate, originally from Africa but many years removed by the time he got to HBS, was the most frequent wearer of the suit, and he would often lead us in a supplemental African war chant that was in a call-and-response format and really powerful.

1999F's cheer was in a call-and-response format: Section F, are you ready? YES! Section F, are you ready? YES! Let's get it on! (desk pounding) Oooh Alay Alay (section repeats) Alaya ticky tonga (section repeats) A wasa wasa wasa (section repeats) Ooooooooh alay alla lay alay wa (section repeats) Oooh alay alay (section repeats) Alaya ticky tonga (section repeats) A wasa wasa wasa (section repeats) Welcome to Section F!!!!!

1999G. “Shay Shay Cool Ay.”

1999H had a cheer that we used whenever we had guests in the classroom. Our designated spirit boy and cheerleader would stand up and yell to left field, “Give me an H!” to which they'd yell back “H!” Then to center field, “Give me another H!” The reply, “H!” And then to right field, “Give me another H!” “H!” “What’s that spell?” After a brief pause (so our confused guests could contemplate the question for a fraction of a second), the section responded, “Huhhhhhhh!” (Not like a confused “Huh?” but more like a drawn-out, James Brown-like exclamation.)

1991I had an elaborate cheer that was based on Australian or British crowd cheers at either rugby or soccer games. It was a call and response. One side chanted "Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy!" (It might have been "Oggy Oggy Oggy!"), and then the other chanted "I! I! I!." Then "Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy!" "I! I! I!" "Ozzy!" "I!" "Ozzy!" "I!" and finally, loudest: "Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy I I I!"

2001I “Har-ris-s-s-s-s!” He was an interesting character, so whenever someone said something “interesting,” especially him, everyone cheered.

2001J would sing out “Oh-J, Oh-J, Oh-J, Oh-J, Ooooooh-J, Ooooooh-J,” repetitively, to the tune of the Spanish soccer chant “Olé, olé, olé, olé, olé, olé.”

2003F’s “More on this” and “Nacho.”

2003I: Less in the classroom and more on the football field, we cheered “Ole, ole, ole, ole, say I, say I.”

2004D used to have a cheer for one of our sectionmates. Every time our professors or guest lecturers needed help with anything technical, Dean would be the first to jump up and lend a helping hand. Of course, he’d fix whatever the problem was. As a result, our section would respond with a “DEEEEEEAAAAAANNNNNN” chant. Sometimes we would even say it after he made a comment on a case in class.

2005E had a section song, written by Wes Whitman: “When I walk into class and I see all the faces,/Tired from reading all those crazy cases,/I think . . . it must be Friday./After many long nights and not much sleep,/ Struggling through Finance and FRC,/It's that . . . time a day, put your books away./Get ready for Skydecks, and everybody say (Chorus): Section E, won't you sing with me./It's Friday, it's yours and my day,/To take a break, relax, and be free,/singing La, la, la, la.. La, la, la, la, la, dee, dee./It’s all about Section E! Verse 2: How many times have you tried to hide,/Behind your laptop when you're feeling scared inside/That the cold call . . . is coming straight to you!/And how many times have you been surprised,/When you woke up looking straight at the professor's eyes./You dozed off, it's true,/but it's Friday . . . What can you do!/So sing with me. (Chorus) Verse 3: Other sections in school/Seem to think that they're cool./And while cool they may be,/They ain't as cool as Section E./We got our own eDog, we got a Pub pup too,/And we wake up saying, “What would Home Depot do!”/Aldrich 12 is the only place for me! Singing (Chorus).”

2005H’s “So hot, so hot! H! H!”

2007B’s “Argh!”

2007D used to cheer “D-licious,” and we used to all sing a song called “Kawasaki,” but I am not really sure how that came about.

2007H’s “Armen! Armen! Armen!”

2007I. Within the classroom we had “Tech Rep” or “Show-gata” whenever there was an IT issue. Outside the classroom we had our war cry, “Who’s your daddy? I’s your daddy,” which was put into full effect when we won the Section Olympics.

2008C had “12 Wagons,” which we screamed with much delight. And when someone was late to class, we would boo them.

2008J had a call and response: One person: “Whose house?” The rest of the section: “J’s house!” It was used again this past weekend at a wedding.

2009F yelled "T Fong!" to get psyched up for field-day events, out at bars and restaurants, and other section bonding times.

2009H: “Jagadeesh!” It is the name of one of our sectionmates that slowly evolved into a chant.

2010E’s main chant was “It’s Great…To Be…In Section E!” Many section e-mail signatures also include the chant acronym, IGTBISE. One sectionmate whose name is Beau (rhymes with “faux” as in “faux pas”) was accidentally called “Byoo” (as in the first part of the word “beau-tiful”). Whenever he spoke for the rest of the semester, many people, at varying volumes, uttered “byoo” (like a cow mooing) under their breath.

2010I's chant was simply “Sec-tion-I (Eye), Sec-tion-Eye, Sec-tion-aaaayyye” to the tune of the Rocky song “Eye of the Tiger,” which we adopted as our theme song.

OPM 25 had a class song, sung to the tune of the “Mickey Mouse Club Song.” We practiced it during our second and third years, did impromptu performances, and did a formal performance at our final dinner. Here are the first stanza and the chorus: “Hey there! Hi there! Ho there! You're as welcome as can be. AMP, PMD, it's OPM for me. Sam is on the debt limb, while Barbara hugs the tree. AMP, PMD, it's OPM for me. Refrain: OPM (OPM), Harvard Square (Harvard Square). You'll learn with all the smartest teachers there. Come on down to Cambridge to spend a week or three. AMP, PMD, it's OPM for me.

OPM 34. Wasabi! (from a case about a Japanese restaurant chain in the US)

If you know about cheers that are not on this list, please send them to us in the box below.

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