ouooga

Hey, I'm Internet famous!

That survey felt unnecessarily long, but I did finish. I'd be curious to see the results.

SCV 2004. They were so strong and had such a phenomenal show. I remember them trailing Blue Devils throughout California, and then somewhere around Oregon or Washington (I think?) SCV finally pulled ahead, and I remember thinking "well, this is the beginning for them!" But no, they never beat BD again, who ended up coming in second that season anyways.

The perfect example of a show that peaked too early. I remember watching it get better and better every week until around San Antonio, and then it just sort of stopped getting better. It made me really appreciate how important layering is in show development over the season.

I'm going with 15 for competitiveness. There was a show about a week before finals where the Top 4 corps all ended up scoring 93.X. I don't think I've ever seen it that close!

No, you’re very much missing the point of what I’m saying. I’m not advocating that the punishments be pre-determined at all. Private organizations don’t have to outline the punishments (we agree on this), so we default to the judgement of the CEO. The discussion here is that several of us do not agree with the CEO’s judgement in this case. And again I’ll state, that’s an opinion we’re entitled to have.

On the actual rule breaking , I'll generally play Devil's advocate on that side of the argument, purely because I've had to make that kind of call and I realize it's a bit ambiguous when you have stakeholders who are angry. But, to the defense that it wasn't an official rule violation, when DCI's own media partners literally publish an article praising the offer (referring to FloMarching, can't find the article link), and when the brass caption head of one of those named organizations literally posts a thank you to Arsenal for the offer to those members, maybe it's a good time to weigh out whether or not the rule-violation-decree should be so damning.

Royal decrees never apply to the monarchy.

DCI has rules in place. DCI does not have pre-outlined punishments in place. No one's arguing that a rule was broken, they're arguing that the punishment does not fit the crime. A guy is doing 5 MPH over the speed limit. He gets a ticket, and a judge ultimately decides to give him life in prison, because the speed limit is a rule that was broken. Most people would assume that's not just, and would argue that the law has clearly-defined punishments for specific crimes, and this decision is outside of that. DCI doesn't have those prescribed punishments, so instead the organization defaults to the decision of the CEO. In this case, many of us view that the CEO did not act within the best interests of all involved. That's an opinion, sure, but it's one we're all very entitled to have.

That kind of 'what if' argument is an incredibly terrible way to make business decisions or view anything in hindsight. By that logic, the whole Arsenal discussion is theoretically moot because there's always a chance the corps' hall could get hit by a comet. I have to assume that if a corps was going to take the time to submit for evaluation, then at least internally they anticipated passing.

While I appreciate hearing that the relationship between DCI and Arsenal is still in-tact, with room and desire to grow in the future, my main concern is on the damaging impacts from the change from 2019 to 2020 in the evaluation. The corps was planning to do an actual tour this summer (short tour, but a tour nonetheless), and had paying members traveling from out-of-state to participate. That's all part of the package they sold this year, that unfortunately cannot be. To DCI, maybe, a year off isn't a huge deal, but looking at any corps that's ever taken a year off - heck, even what we anticipate 2019 is going to do to OC - we all know that taking a year off can be permanently detrimental to any corps' future recruitment efforts, let-alone a startup. That, combined with any rumor-mill products from CMMs re: the DCI/Arsenal relationship come next season, and Arsenal has a much more up-hill battle for recruitment in 2020 than they ever did for 2019.

I mean no disrespect to Dan when I say this (and preface that I'm still angry about the Arsenal debacle), but for what drum corps has become today, along with what is required of an activity like drum corps in our hypersensitive 2019, I just don't think any music educator has the adequate training and know-how to lead DCI. I'd rather see someone who has run youth summer programs or youth travel program, or national touring music programs, or even someone with massive logistical knowledge from the SCM arena. Every one of those types of leaders could provide benefit to how drum corps do drum corps.

So, I thought about this more last night, and stand further behind my decision that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. DCI's evaluation for Arsenal was planned to take place soon. As a part of that evaluation, DCI evaluates the qualifications and competency of Arsenal's staff. Considering the breaking of the rules by the Director, DCI does have every right to decide that the corps is not fit because of decisions made by its leadership at the evaluation. The decision was not that Arsenal wasn't fit for OC; it was that the Director wasn't fit, and the consequence was a punishment to Arsenal. Basically, as I see it, if DCI had repremanded just the Director (request his resignation) that would have been fair, and to decide Arsenal wasn't fit for tour as a result of this would have been fair, but to rescind the entire evaluation as punishment to one individual, that's just malice.

Try a different browser.

I'm still angered by the decision to take away the corps' evaluation. If you (DCI) don't like what a Director did, fine, I can get behind that, but leave the punishment with the Director. If the corps is still deemed fit to tour, there should be no reason to hold that process up. If the organizing body deems it appropriate for a corps to still participate in the season when its Director is alleged to have been literally raping the corps' staff and former members, surely another corps can still be evaluated for to compete in open class when their Director posts something on social media, right?

It looks like Tricia is on the case!

Considering the mismanagement of sexual abuse and performer safety among its drum corps ranks, that timeline sounds exactly like what I'd expect from this organizational body.

The problem: how to make DCI feel effects of the problem while still keeping DCI alive. Protesting DCI-sanctioned events doesn't seem like the best opportunity for this. I'd rather see more of a protest-at-shows style thing, where we all show up wearing "This drum corps fan supports Arsenal over DCI" shirts. We could even send the money back to Arsenal to help them get ready for 2020. I hesitate to jump on a Protest Dan Acheson bandwagon just yet, the same shaming technique can easily be implemented if we ever want to instigate change at the executive level. There's no way to get past the ticket price, but there's plenty of ways to support the corps that day without DCI and/or to cause a ruckus of discussion without violating any stadium rules that will get you kicked out. And if you do get kicked out, be sure to film it and post it on Reddit! I don't think DCP members have to sign any media policies, right?

I'm sure we're all curious to hear a little more about this bolded part.

No corps in my state. Is it viable to join a board or volunteer when you're from out of state?

As a die-hard fan, does anyone have ideas on what I (we?) can do as a next step? From top to bottom, I think the drum corps activity is run completely wrong. Not just from the focal point of this article (though that's huge), but the entire activity is just not set up in a way that's not 1) safe for the members, 2) maximizing profits, or 3) cost effective/efficient for anyone involved. I want my kids to march someday, if they have interest. More importantly to me (because I don't want to force drum corps on them) is that drum corps, in general, continue in the healthiest manner possible. So I ask you, DCP, what can I do? I want to do something, anything, to help.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBlueDevils/videos Does anyone know the backstory? Did some laws recently change to music licensing rights?

Wow, Cavaliers coming out west! (not sure if we already knew that)

I was just thinking about that this morning, the first Classic Countdown. It was 3 from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, so a full finals lineup of 12 shows. Each corps only got one show in the mix. I'm pretty sure Kingsmen were 73 or 74, BD was 76, SCV was 89, Phantom was 96 and Cavaliers were 02. Can't remember the rest.

I feel like there's some hostility in your response. I was answering your question about what ponying up means. Also I live in a west coast city, and would love to see more shows over here. Sorry if you were offended. As for the "if a west coast city is offered to host" first part, that's just not how it's done. Cities and venues solicit business, especially when the prospective business already has a relationship with a competing city/venue.