You feel the others have views, beliefs, and positions that are not legitimate. Insightful stuff. If only they were acting in good faith, everything would be gravy. Except those darn others are "basking in the possibility" to "piss the living hell out of the powerful" and make them "squirm" -- when all the good folk of the world want is to just sing a song they "truly love." The good folks are victims here. Won't someone think about the good folks?
Or maybe, instead of dumbing down and delegitimizing their position as a simple exercise of misguided power, folks could at least acknowledge the others would just rather have a song that unifies the whole school and isn't one with a tainted origin story.
And if you really need to think about things in terms of power, maybe instead of being concerned about the supposed "power play" by students and athletes, you should take a look at the "power play" by donors going on. I bet there are some emails somewhere you can take a look at.