barigirl78

Every Situation Is Unique These cases are "similar" only in an extremely broad way.

"like handling a pyromaniac a lighted torch" is a bit over the top in the Moody case. You are implying he has some sort of addiction without any evidence to support it.

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As an aside, I know the Philadelphia Inquirer has a pretty good Pulitzer record. This is really fine investigative journalism and wonder if they'd consider entering it for the award.

Most will be protected by the "I know of someone, but I'm not willing to say their name" phenomenon that seems to dominate such a discussion--even here.

One of the things that strikes me about this article is that its primary focus is on the hiring of people who had FORMER charges against them. What about people--like Hopkins--who hadn't been charged before, but may be guilty of misconduct within drum corps? Do we believe that there aren't any of those operating in drum corps today or recently?

One of the things I like about the 2019 schedule is that the Crossmen will be at the Chester, PA show. This show is in Delaware County, which was where the corps was born in the 70's out of two smaller corps. For the early years, they practiced just a few miles from the stadium in a parking lot at Boeing. The parking lot was lovingly called "Boeing Beach".

No publisher would publish an incomplete report. It depends on why the report is incomplete. If it's because it's been low on the reporters' "to do" list, that can be accelerated. Everyone else has hammered how drum corps is "nich". So, I can imagine it hasn't been a first priority to finish the story. If it's for other reasons, I guess it depends on what those reasons are. People not coming forward?

Unless the editors take a "strike while the iron is hot" approach and put it on the front burner.

With this, things move to a whole new level. I wonder if this will garner more national attention to the activity that even the previous press didn't get. Also, I wonder if that additional article with other cases that has supposedly been in the works for a while will come out now.

Keep in mind that USA Today is the lead paper of the Gannett Newspaper group. They have papers and resources all over the country. They may be the paper publishing, but they could have used local resources to research the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Gannett_Company

Based on a photo I found on their Instagram page, it may have only been four. The male singer last year was a member of the guard.

Crossmen to field all-female color guard: http://www.crossmen.org/news#Section33395322

I've been thinking of how to articulate why this move bothers me. Besides the fact that I've always enjoyed watching them do their thing, I think it's because I LIKE that different corps have different instrumentation. The variety is appealing. To have a few more corps, including my beloved Crossmen, get rid of marching cymblas means there's a little less variety. We like it when color guards vary their equipment from one corp to the next. We like when the hornlines have different mixes of instruments and this has been encouraged by allowing the trombones and other horns get included. This move seems to be in the opposite direction. It's a move from being a little different from most of the other corps toward sameness.

Valkerie from the last Thor movie:

For the last two decades, the Crossmen have varied their style a lot from year-to-year. I suspect many people's idea of what "a Crossmen show" is goes back further than that. What seems to be implied here is that they will have more of a storyline. I'd like to see that. While, I have enjoyed the shows of the previous years, the storylines have been abstract, vague or non-existent. Being more literal vs. conceptual would be a nice shift. I don't know how many times in the last few years, I've heard DCPers ask "what is this show about?" when it comes to the Crossmen.

That show brought tears to my eyes. I was in NY that day and they really brought the feelings across.

She does sort of look like some of the female warriors in that Vikings TV show. But, the statement is about defense. The Vikings were known as being on the offense, not the defense.

Does "drum corps" even want to be more popular? As each individual corps goes into a season, I don't think anyone is concerned with popularity. On the "DCI" side, are there any real marketing resources thrown at the issue of "popularity"? I know they have started Drumline Battle and Soundsport, but I don't know if either is a "grow the awareness of drum corps" initiative. In the 70's, DCI organized shows in parts of the country that didn't have many drum corps. I performed in some of the first shows ever organized in Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, and other places. It was pretty successful. Despite these being "first shows", the stands were packed. Now, there are corps from many of these states. But, the cost of the tour model is a big implosion in areas of the country that were once drum corps hubs--the Northeast in particular. I honestly think that as long as the corps are bringing in enough revenue to pay for their ever-increasing budgets for their productions, no one will really tackle the popularity question. Growth doesn't seem to be a high priority goal. Maintenance is. Baseball is different. The owners of baseball teams want to make a profit and their revenue is dropping as the sport drops. Meanwhile, player salaries aren't getting any lower. They have TV networks with contracts that are seeing lower ad revenues and are going to push back on contracts. I don't think drum corps will really be concerned with popularity until there really is a revenue crisis.

Everybody has their thing that they are picky about and surveys are mine. What you are saying about political polls is a good example of needing methodological information. Not all polls are created equal in terms of methodology. Some can be "rubbish" and others can be better than that. Understanding which methods are better than others and what the margin of error is, is quite important to distinguishing between them. Part of the problem is that the public--and even many journalists who write about polls--don't know how to interpret what they are reading. That's why when I see a poll written about by a journalist, I often ignore what the journalist is saying and go straight to the original material and interpret it myself. I can enjoy a "fun" poll, but that doesn't mean I'm not curious about how it was conducted. Most "do it yourself" fun polls will tell you how many people participated. Also, to be honest, since it was non-scientific anyway, I'm a little disappointed I didn't have an opportunity to participate and weigh in on the questions.

"Not so Scientific" is right. The professional researcher in me bristles when I see a "survey" that doesn't include any description of methodology. Who participated? On what platform? Over what period of time? How many respondents? What was the survey design? Was it open-ended or multiple choice? Arrgh. I don't recall this survey being conducted. Does anyone else?

There was a rumor before Finals week that a major newspaper (not the Philly one) was going to come out with a story and it never materialized.

I have just a general question about corps contracts and membership fees because I come from the days before such things existed. When a member is "contracted" with a corps is there an agreement to what the corps will provide them? When a member pays his or her fees is their an agreement or promise from the corps to what they will provide the members for the money they've paid? I guess this discussion makes me curious about what today's corps actually promise they will deliver.

This site has an excellent database of which judges judged what shows and what captions: http://www.frontensemble.com/

While judges do see the shows several times, I think they are intended to judge the performance that is in front of them. At some point in every season, they are seeing a corps for the first time. DCI tries to rotate judges to different captions over the course of a season. There were two judges in Finals--Rothe and Romanowski--that only judge three shows prior to Finals. Rothe saw SCV twice before. Romanowski saw them only once prior to finals. I don't know to what degree judges watch shows when they aren't judging. Are they supposed to? But, it's not a given that they've seen the shows more than the fans have.