Students at Harding may think they know their teachers, but a professor band may prove them otherwise. Some faculty members from the College of Bible and Ministry have gotten away with having a band for the last seven years without gaining the recognition they deserve. Members include: Dr. Tom Alexander, retired professor on the guitar; Daniel Oden, associate professor on the keyboard; Devin Swindle, associate professor as lead singer; and Jim Bury, assistant professor on drums.
\n \u201cWe kept saying we needed to get together and play sometimes, so we decided if we were going to do this, it had to be now,\u201d Bury said.
\nBury said that up until this fall, when they played a set at the Bible majors\u2019 retreat, they had only ever played at Bible majors\u2019 cookouts held every year in the spring. This was also where the band had their debut in 2012.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been asked several times to perform,\u201d Swindle said. \u201cBut you know our songs are parodies of people in the Bible department \u2026 it\u2019s so in-house, we don\u2019t really perform outside our college.\u201d
\nWhile most students outside of the college may not know the band exists, some students said they have come to love this talented group of teachers.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just very fun to see them in a different environment from teaching you very serious theology, and then at the same time being just very funny people who want to get to know and love us,\u201d junior Morgan Proffitt said.
\nBury insisted that this group, sometimes called a band, is simply a group of people who get together once a year to have fun, not to entertain a crowd.
\n\u201cIt dawned on me that there\u2019s a way to sneak in this annual performance,\u201d Bury said. \u201cIf we\u2019re trying to present ourselves as this quality entertainment, we\u2019ll really fall short. But if it\u2019s just fun, then everyone has fun, and we\u2019re not being graded by our modest scale.\u201d
\nThe group performs parodies of songs about their own faculty, such as songs like \u201cMonte be Good\u201d to the tune of the hit song, \u201cJohnny B. Goode,\u201d referring to Dr. Monte Cox, dean of the college. They\u2019ve also written many other songs about things like associate professor Mac Sandlin\u2019s hair and Greek nouns. Both Bury and Swindle, who are the main songwriters, said they take their main inspiration from Weird Al Yankovic, a king of parody himself.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been listening to Weird Al since I was 13, so this kind of thing is just right up my alley,\u201d Swindle said.
\nBury said he likes to remind people who are tempted to take things too seriously that it really has nothing to do with how talented they are. It has more to do with low expectations on the part of their students.
\n\u201cI use the analogy of dancing bears,\u201d Bury said. \u201cYou don\u2019t critique the bears on how well they are dancing, you are just delighted to see them do anything at all.\u201d
\nDiminished Faculties has posted songs on YouTube and is continuing to write songs for the upcoming spring cookout.
\n\u201cI guess we\u2019ll keep doing it until everyone retires,\u201d Swindle said. \u201cWe\u2019ve kind of developed a cult following.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Students at Harding may think they know their teachers, but a professor band may prove them otherwise. Some faculty members from the College of Bible and Ministry have gotten away…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15163,"featured_media":13625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13647,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions\/13647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}