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How Far Is Too Far?


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1 hour ago, garfield said:

Some WC corps directors disagree with the "central policy" approach because such mandates have been largely ignored by the corps directors in the past, and because the stink of one violation colors the entire activity, whereas, with a disparate individual-corps policy, a single infraction (like the Cadets) keeps the accusations limited to the accused.

Understandable on their part... but the publicity fallout certainly seems to "color" the entire activity when it comes to the general public, regardless of whether one corps or 20 corps are guilty of violations.

Especially when headlines scream "Drum Corps" and "Sexual Abuse."  Not "One corps, and just this one time, and let us explain and give you all some background about drum corps here..."

Bad PR is bad PR.

Edited by Fran Haring
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47 minutes ago, BRASSO said:

 If they thought he was a good hire, they'd have kept him on, and justfied Moody's hire and retention there for years and years. Instead, this bad hire and bad retention of Moody's came back to bite them in the azz. The Crossmen essentially rolled the dice on this guy... and ultimately lost big time. And the embarrassment of the hire and retention of this Moody wound up a huge national embarrassment to the entire DCI community itself. The departure of Moody became of course a CYA action as well. but it was the HIRE back in 2010 of Moody that set in motion where the Crossmen and DCI finds itself today, make no mistake about it. If KNOWN  former sexual predators with histories like his were not HIRED in the first place, then the name of Moody could never be misspelled by me, nor more importantly,  ever become the hire and retention embarrassment that he has ultimately become to the Crossmen and to the entire DCI community itself today..

2012 at Crossmen. 2011 at Teal Sound

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1 hour ago, MikeD said:

Oh, I agree. I think they are doing a good job in a very highly charged atmosphere in a very short timeframe. 

 On the surface it would seem so to me as well. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. Time will tell us if these new policies and procedures being implemented have real teeth in them, or merely window dressing. I think it'll be the former, but we'll see.

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On 5/21/2018 at 11:08 AM, GUARDLING said:

I'm going to be really sorry I posted in this thread but I will keep it brief to my decades of experience on this subject.

YES, there have been issues of members to some degree. 1st let's remember ( depending on ages ) corps are much older in WC than any years of the past so issues from year to year become different. Younger corps all seem to have a much different set of rules. Now with that said, we have to remember at these young ages some young people struggle with many issues and often come with tons of baggage merely because they are developing in all areas and this includes relationships and what is proper or acceptable. Also, remember for many if not most this is also a 1st experience expected to act like adults ( with a distant supervision of course ) and expected to start growing up. All this comes with growing pains.

Now with all that said, Kids today are much smarter, much more savvy, much more educated to the things many of us would never have been exposed to when we were young, much more available to them, many more pressures. Does this make it different for young people today? YOU BET IT DOES. Have MMs crossed lines in this new time for them? sure, BUT have some known exactly what they were doing? yes, Have some directly and deliberately even gone for staff too? You bet many have. I have seen a lot of this in winter programs especially. Should the older adult know better? of course. Again, which has been discussed a lot is the young new staff and a MM almost the same age.

I think I can say for most places, every person involved is well aware of all I have said here and keep a watchful eye and those who spend time on tour have been available for a MM having this as well as other issues. When you spend a day in and day out it is very easy to see a person struggling with almost every issue. It affects everything and often everybody around them.

Well said.

I go back to the Stone Age of drum corps, relatively speaking. LOL. Marched junior corps (local circuit/regional) and senior/all-age corps... and you are so right... times, and young people, have changed.  I don't recall either corps I was with having a stated policy for dealing with "shady"  (for lack of a better term) or potentially unstable members....  but we had some of those members, for sure, in my opinion. Probably more in my local junior corps than in the all-age corps, to be honest.

But the years before  I joined my all-age corps, there was a member... a Vietnam vet with PTSD issues (to say the least) who at various times kept a loaded rifle in his car.  Not kidding here.  Most times, or if you didn't know him well, you would never know he had ...uhhhh... problems. Very quiet, very respectful, well-spoken, a good corps member, a good guy. And thankfully, it never came to the point where there was any violence.

How did we handle any of these situations back then?  I guess we just kind of dealt with it.... sometimes maybe ignored it, or kept our fingers crossed that everything would be fine.

Kids are kids.... they can be knuckleheads at times, just like we were back in the day....LOL.... but I think your average marching member today would not hesitate to speak up/report it to the proper people if he or she saw, suspected, or encountered problems with a fellow member.  At least I sure hope they would.

Edited by Fran Haring
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5 hours ago, MikeD said:

However, in the case of Moody, he has no conviction on his record and would have, and I am thinking probably did, pass any vetting out of his legal record that might be mandated by the state of Texas.

Interesting. I'm personally wondering what would happen though on a PA Act 151 check.

 

http://www.education.pa.gov/Teachers - Administrators/Background checks/Pages/Act-151-(Child-Abuse)-Background-Checks.aspx

 

Non-criminal check, but I think the most involved of the 3 PA checks in terms of background vetting.

 

I don't know the answer. I'm thinking "possibly/maybe".

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 So we don't get sidetracked here a bit... DCI does  not have a problem with marchers on marchers doing bad things to one another. DCI Corps have done a good job in getting the bad behavior kids out of its ranks. It generally does not attract these types of youth to begin with. Its ranks are primarily filled with music majors and H.S. MB type kids. These are typically not your juvenile delinquents, nor your mentally unstabled. Those types of troubled youth are either in youth gangs, or are habitual friendless, loners,. Not typically the kid taking music lessons on a piano or a cello, or a trombone or a trumpet, for example. Of course there are some bad apples here and there found within DCI Drum Corps marching ranks. Whenever there are 3,000 or so youth in an activity like DCI Drum Corps, they'll be found such bad apples. But its a rarity.  kids in WGI and in DCI are not doing damage to others so that it becomes a big problem. The current focus, as it should be, are the young that are in potential risk of getting into trouble thru their association with adults in supervisory capacities. Thats where the biggest risk to youth and the vulnerable lie.

  Youthful marchers doing DCI Drum Corps in the summer are in far better safer environments in their summer tours than they are sitting in any school classroom or gymnasium in America in 2018. Youth on Youth damage to one another with DCI participation by Youth is very low risk.  The troubled kids today are usually not finding DCI  participation attractive to them. They don't  want to bust their arse in DCI Drum Corps, lets face it. The very few that are, are usually weeded out for the most part pretty quickly in DCI Drum Corps. 

 So as we discuss here on DCP today DCI / WGI youthful marchers who ( as DCP poster Guardling brought up here above) " go after adult staffers " to try and have sex with them, or are at a high risk of doing sexual assault with other similarly aged youth, lets all recognize that right now the focus is where it should be, ie making sure that DCI  weeds out the adults in supervisory staff positions that are FAR more of a risk to youth in Drum Corps, than are youth on youth, or Youth " going after adult staffers" to entice them into sex with that adult staffer.

 Finally. the people that have embarrassed DCI were not enticed by any youthful person. They all told the adult in a supervisory position to stop. Thats clear on here, right ?. In EVERY case reported by the Philly Inquirer, the sexual predator  was the adult person with the power over the younger marcher and/ or much younger staffer.  THATS what got DCI Drum Corps in trouble here... not youthful predatory behaviors on the part of the young toward adults. The young were VICTIMS. And they were not victims of predatory behaviors/ sexual assaults on the part of other useful marchers either. So as we discuss youth doing damage to other youth, or to adults. lets not get sidetracked into what it is that has DCI on the front pages of the national media at the moment... as it sure as heck is not the DCI youthful marchers that are causing the big problem for DCI at the moment.

Edited by BRASSO
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11 minutes ago, BRASSO said:

 So we don't get sidetracked here a bit... DCI does  not have a problem with marchers on marchers doing bad things to one another. DCI Corps have done a good job in getting the bad behavior kids out of its ranks. It generally does not attract these types of youth to begin with., Its ranks are primarily filled with music majors and H.S. MB type kids. These are typically not your juvenile delinquents, nor your mentally unstabled. Those types of troubled youth are either in youth gangs, or are habitual friendless, loners,. Not typically the kid taking music lessons on a piano or a cello, or a trombone or a trumpet, for example. Of course there are some bad apples here and there found within DCI Drum Corps marching ranks. Whenever there are 3,000 or so youth in an activity like DCI Drum Corps, they'll be found such bad apples. But its a rarity.  kids in WGI and in DCI are not doing damage to others so that it becomes a big problem. The current focus, as it should be, are the young that are in potential risk of getting into trouble thru their association with adults in supervisory capacities.

  Youthful marchers doing DCI Drum Corps in the summer are in far better safer environments in their summer tours than they are sitting in any school classroom or gymnasium in America in 2018. Youth on Youth damage to one another with DCI participation by Youth is very low risk.  The troubled kids usually are not finding DCI attractive to them. They don't  want to bust their arse in DCI Drum Corps. The very few that are, are usually weeded out for the most part pretty quickly in DCI Drum Corps. 

 So as we discuss here on DCP today DCI / WGI youthful marchers who" go after adult staffers " to try and have sex with them, or are at a high risk of doing sexual assault with other similarly aged youth, lets all recognize that right now the focus is where it should be, ie making sure that DCI  weeds out the adults in supervisory staff positions that are FAR more of a risk to youth in Drum Corps, than are youth on youth, or Youth " going after adult staffers" to entice them into sex with that adult staffer.

11

if you want statistics I also don't think there are hundreds of adults assaulting kids either. It gets attention for sure when there is even 1 As it should.. AS far as the kids Well , we will agree to disagree with how mature today's youth is. Your 1st paragraph states some pretty strong statistics. Has this been your experience? Just asking . not trying to attack your thoughts at all BUT I have seen quite the opposite over the years in almost every statement in there. Is it a majority? of course not, is it there and does every group need to deal with someone like any of those things every year? yes.

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18 minutes ago, GUARDLING said:

. Your 1st paragraph states some pretty strong statistics. 

 No. I never mentioned statistics. At all.

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44 minutes ago, GUARDLING said:

if you want statistics I also don't think there are hundreds of adults assaulting kids either. .

 Nobody said so, nor implied this either. So I don't even know why you brought such a number up( ie " hundreds " )

 1 is frankly" too many ", imo. Especially when it appears that  more than 1 of them in DCI could have readily  been prevented from occurring it now appears.

 Why are you even bringing up the issue of sexual predators being the youth preying upon adult staffers ? Is this what is happening in DCI ? is that why DCI is in the position it finds itself in ? If not, then why even bring this into the discussion ? The Youth arn't primarily the problem here, imo.  All the victims were youth, or young staffers with no political power, stature, control, nor say in the matter. All the perpetrators were supervisory adults in positions of authority that maliciously violated that supervisory position of trust. And the ones who then later hired these untrustworthy creeps were likewise adults in supervisory positions over youth that should have known better than to hire them, then retain them.

Edited by BRASSO
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