cybersnyder

Still thinking about the Maryland angle, and yeah, it won't happen, but another conflict would be that Maryland schools are county level. So if the county says, "No" to rehearsing at their facilities, you lose out on 13 high schools at once in the case of Howard County. But I really wish the area was more into band / corps. Plenty of money in the area, people will not blink at doing private lessons after private lessons for their kids, it would seem idea - except for the mindset.

Yeah, I'm a Steelers fan.

One more point about Maryland being a poor choice for relocation - I was in Baltimore Ravens Marching Band and they always scrambled to recruit enough players to field a band. (In no way equating them to a drum corps.) They drew from a two hour ride radius and that was for a band that paid members for practice and performances. If recruitment is tough for a gig where you’re paid $10/hour, how hard will it be when you charge $3000?

Oh, I'd like it too, don't get me wrong. I'd totally tell them, in my best Price Is Right voice, "Come on down!!" But, if I were a paid consultant, I'd probably have to say, "Nah". I'm having a hard time figuring out a better place than where they are now.

RiverHill killed their marching band for several years, looks like it may be returning this year. I just wouldn't move to this area based on cost versus interest.

I'd pick Annapolis out of those three, but only if you can march on a lacrosse field. That's LAX territory.

I'm in Columbia, MD and don't think there's much of a marching band appreciation in the area to justify moving in the DC metro area. Huge schools with smaller marching bands than tiny schools in PA. Add in the higher costs of the area, I wouldn't move here even though I think it would be cool. Haven't heard of a single person in the area joining a drum corps. Sports is considered a better resumé builder for college applications. (All statements are generalizations, individual outliers excluded.)

We tend to be visual creatures. I wonder how loyal we'll be to our favorite corps when they start looking completely different each and every year? Some variation works, like Phantom changing colors or some variations, but they still looked like Phantom. Maybe we'll just experiment in extremes for a couple years and settle in on what works. Maybe it will all look as silly as marching tympanis a few years down the road. Or maybe "standard" uniforms are as likely to return as G bugles.

I’m not anti new unis and new looks, but free range on everything really opens up the possibility for some very tacky unis. Maybe it will settle down after a few years. SCV - fantastic. Blue Stars - I’m still wondering if it’s all an elaborate prank. Crown du Soleil.

I would do it, but that's mostly because I keep kicking myself in the --- because I missed my eligible years while in the Army and didn't realize that 21 was okay, I thought when you hit 21 you were too old, like the drinking age. So, I could have marched one year. Do it if your health really isn't an issue. Your health comes first.

I thought I was getting old and grumpy and not liking anything this year. Freaking love Vanguard's show so far. Really, really nice!!

I can't be the only one that thought of the Winger song "Seventeen". Seems like a terrible logo, IMHO. Just too soon.

I'm also looking at this from the perspective of - "would I send my kid there?" No, I wouldn't. Too much risk at this point. They'll recover, but some time needs to pass before I would have a comfort level with them.

On the flip side, with something like this that has been going on for so long, with attention brought to the (former) board and nothing happened, the organization would need to earn my trust again. Three weeks doesn't do it, IMO. Do I think everyone knew what was going on? No. Do I think some knew? Yes.

Yeah, I guess it's a regional thing. If drum corps survived the fuel price crisis, it can survive anything.

I live in Howard County, MD where we have a county-wide school system, but you go to the elementary, middle and high school in which you are districted. It's a good school system overall, but we end up doing a poor job of sharing opportunities across the system. The reasoning behind keeping people in their districted schools is to keep white flight, or more accurately in our fairly diverse area, higher income flight from happening. Of course, it still happens to some extent but when your "bad" schools have over 80% going on to higher education, how bad are they really? So, with that background, we had a high school drop its football program last year due to lack of interest. If you were an awesome football athlete, your opportunity to do something with it completely dried up. They did not allow players to go to adjacent high schools to play and by adjacent, I'm talking only 2-3 miles away. Anyways, their marching band is one of the better ones in the area. Will be interesting (from an academic viewpoint) to see what happens to a marching band that no longer has a football team. In this particular case, I suspect they will survive as they have a pretty strong music program in general.

I voted "No" for the short term. There were definitely people within the organization that knew what was going on and they looked the other way. Until everything is sorted out and all the bad weeds removed, I would not allow, well, "pay" for my kid to march with the organization. That trust would have to be earned again.

I think this is the future of corps-style (allow me to loosely use that term) activities. You can fit the entire group in a bus and a trailer. Logistics are much easier and when you're playing indoors, you can get the Live or Memorex effect more easily. This isn't going to happen overnight, but it just seems like the current model of marching is in decline.

In my area we have high schools with graduating classes of 300-450 and you'll see 30 member marching bands. Some of the schools dropped their marching bands completely and just have pep bands. For the most part, band isn't seen as a good resumé builder for college applications, sports are seen as more beneficial. I don't know if this is happening elsewhere, but I still see huge bands from Texas and elsewhere.

Likely, I was just kinda curious what the possibilities were.

These countries do not have extradition treaties with the US. Mauritania, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé & Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican, Vietnam and Yemen. So, you combine that list with countries that do not require a visa to visit, and that would be my guess of places to start looking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens I would go with Micronesia. They speak English and there is no limit to the length of time US citizens can stay there. I feel like Jason Bourne.

Mr King's statement that he was unaware of any "sexual abuse" seems to be carefully worded. If anyone else comes forward to corroborate that he was aware of the harassment done by Hopkins and he did nothing, then he will likely be out. With the way his statement was worded, my $20 is on him not returning.

Ah. I was thinking "good luck" on battling inappropriate comments on Reddit. Heh.

It's Reddit.

Don't hate the reporter, she's not the one that allowed this environment to thrive. If this kills the Cadets, she won't be the one that kills the Cadets and it really won't be Hop that killed the Cadets, it will be many acts of inaction that allowed this to continue and flourish.