On the banks of the (new) Raritan?

As New Jersey considers amputating Rutgers-Camden from the rest of statewide university system, one legislator wants to rewrite the Rutgers alma mater.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, the fearless old-school liberal Democrat from Bergen County, has introduced a bill urging Rutgers to modernize "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" so it sounds less like a rah-rah ditty from the school's prehistoric all-male past and more like, you know, a paean to the panorama of diversity that is Rutgers today.

Weinberg's bill suggests the song drop "My father sent me to old Rutgers/ And resolv'd that I should be a man" in favor of something more "gender neutral," although the latter isn't specified. The bill makes no suggestion about what to do with the spellcheck-challenging "resolv'd," either.

The admittedly quaint lyrics, penned (perhaps on parchment) by Howard N. Fuller in 1873, don't seem to have had any pernicious impact on female enrollment.

As Weinberg's bill notes, women make up half of the 40,000 undergraduates at Rutgers, from whom there has been no outcry of outrage about the sexism of the school song. Last October, the student affairs committee of the Rutgers University Senate deliberated on the alma mater and concluded that "the most current version...should stand."

Perhaps Weinberg's well-intentioned bit of tinkering/ fiddling is meant to be a refreshing break from more burning issues in Trenton.

And let's note that "On the Banks" is hardly a bit of holy writ; plenty of other songs have been updated at other schools, and the sky hasn't fallen.

But the notion that this nearly 150-year-old tune needs to be rendered more "inclusive" accomplishes  little, except to cast Weinberg, a serious and accomplished legislator, in the silly light of what looks very much like political correctness.

Circa 1975.