cixelsyd

You say this, after the 38 years it took with Hopkins?

What difference do background checks make in this instance? As I understand it, his background check was clean until the day of his firing.

With some threads, you know from the start what is coming:

That is not accurate. What you describe above - holding people accountable - is something that needs to be done with the appropriate specificity. The problem with "cancel culture" is that it often sweeps up a lot of other people in the collateral damage. For instance, three years ago, people were calling for the entire Cadets 2018 season to be cancelled in the process of holding George Hopkins and his BOD enablers accountable. You were singing a different tune then: That is the kind of thing I refer to when using the term "cancel culture". See what I mean?

True... but I would add that the stories also need to be vetted.

Three Mile Islanders might make an interesting corps name. And the corps logo would be intuitive:

All it would take is one nasty enough antagonist with a prominent Waldo tattoo...

"Vanguard vetting process" has been the punchline of the darkest jokes for a dozen years now. However, suggesting people become unemployable "after having a predator on their staff", regardless of if/how they dealt with the situation, is never a good look.

In this instance, I agree word for word. Additional thoughts come to mind: a. It is just a logo, so they can use whatever they want. No big deal to me. However, whether it is a big deal to them depends on whether "they" are all on the same page with it. b. This is not to write off the impact of "cancel culture" generally. Frankly, "cancel culture" may be the biggest threat to survival of this activity. A number of people have contended that the effect of the Vietnam war (not just the draft, but public sentiment toward the military) was/is a pivotal factor in the decline of drum corps participation and support since then. I think there is some truth to that. So 50 years ago, people were already turning away from drum corps because they felt (rightly or wrongly) that it symbolized something they found objectionable.

I am not ignoring it. I just have nothing to say about it that has not already been said here. Thankfully, the 2021 experience might enable some corps to use virtual rehearsal more and more for music. But learning the visual show still needs to take place in-person. It will still take a corps about 4 weeks in-person to get properly prepared to present their whole show in competition. Those corps who can afford to extend that to 5 or 6 weeks (and who have few/no HS kids still stuck in school) will still pay for that advantage. The budget impact of spring training is in cost of renting facilities (both for rehearsal and housing), and food. Back in the day, we avoided all of those costs by rehearsing on vacant lots, recruiting locally, and trimming rehearsal hours to allow members to feed themselves and sleep at home each night. But over time, the richest corps found that legitimate rehearsal fields, out-of-state talent, and the full-time focus of a "moved-in" drum corps were advantages that came within their reach. Unlike "stuff", there is no practical way to regulate these behaviors. I doubt rules could be written (much less enforced) to cause corps to abandon their global talent searches, cut back on rehearsal hours, or limit visual shows to only what can safely be performed repeatedly on pavement. Past threads have illustrated that futility, if I recall correctly.

Pay for itself? By all means, if corps take on these self-imposed expenses, and tactics such as you outline enable them to chip away at the costs, good for them. But there is no magical way for all this "stuff" to "pay for itself". If there was, corps would be buying 100 times as much just to lease/resell for profit. In that dream world, they should be buying woodwinds whether they use them or not. I have no idea why you try so hard to minimize, or flat-out deny, the cost of all this "stuff" added to the drum corps activity in recent times. But it does keep the conversation on topic, so have at it.

Not enough to cover their cost.

And that reminder does seem warranted right about now.

Equally concerned about both. We need to use all the available reporting tools.

And they are all going up (particularly this year). Yet you keep saying this, as if it is justification for piling on any number of additional self-imposed expenses. Just make sure no single self-imposed line item becomes a top 4 expense. Never mind how they add up.

Sometimes, I get a 503 error that prevents me from posting. Only happens with large posts. Rewording something occasionally works, but usually I end up locked out of DCP for an hour after 3 such errors (and losing what I typed). So I have learned... when you see that 503 error, click the browser back button, copy the post you were formulating somewhere, then try posting it a piece at a time (Twitter style).

There are others in the drum corps audience who are the same way, myself included. But we do not jump up and give hollering standing ovations for appreciation of the craftsmanship of something we otherwise dislike. In this context, appreciation is a positive opinion, but not enough to "elicit a positive response from the listener" by itself. I understand that as judges, teachers, or anyone else charged with the task of evaluating what people do without personal bias, "like" is a four-letter word banned from use. You probably will not see it on a judging sheet, or hear it in recorded commentary. But is likability getting swept up in this purge too?

Then you can understand my concern each time the drum corps activity heaps an additional self-imposed challenge on top of that pile.

True, and a reasonable enough description.

You have been involved in the percussive arts in various roles for decades. Do you "like" percussion, or are you just "consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities of percussion rather than their absence"? Okay, I have not explained myself adequately. Starting over. You linked to a WGI percussion effect sheet, and asked where "like" is listed, implied or even hinted at. I cited the phrase "elicits positive responses from the listener". It is worded in third-person; therefore, it does not ask for the personal preference of the judge, but rather whether the judge feels that the effect elicits positive responses from a general audience. I think that positive responses imply that the listener likes something about what they are hearing. Do you think that phrase does not even hint at likability?

Who said that? That is unrealistically extreme. But that would be the opposite extreme - to pretend DCI had nothing to do with it. The truth is somewhere between those extremes.

Then there is no room for discussion with you. We have a fundamental philosophical difference of opinion. You apparently believe that any drum corps that is no longer in operation at that scale or larger (i.e. Blast!) was mismanaged, by definition. Drum corps are mission-driven, non-profit organizations. In many cases, the mission was to provide a youth activity to the local community. In many cases, there came a time when that mission ended because: declining youth population available in the community burnout due to increasing time/money required for drum corps declining performance opportunities Add to that some number of other orgs who found their mission more readily achievable via a different art/sport. Even switching to WGI is just another form of "mismanagement" in your worldview. We will just have to agree to disagree.

If they folded prior to 1972, DCI had nothing to do with it. If they folded 1972 or later, DCI had nothing to do with it. Got it! Sincerely now, a question. Can you name two corps no longer with us that were not "mismanaged"? Or does their absence prove "mismanagement"?

I doubt that. The judge should be sufficiently street-wise to separate generic cheering (home team, for instance) from a specific response to some portion of the show that the crowd genuinely liked. (Oops, that word again.)

List of competing junior corps from Maine in 1972 or later: 5th Maine Regiment (Portland) Pine Tree Warriors (Lewiston) Firettes (Portland) Maine Brigade (joint venture of 5th and Warriors in 1977) Northern Lites (South Portland) Aurora (merger of 5th and Northern Lites in 1980) The Corps (merger of all the above in 1981) 20th Maine Regiment (Oakland) Most, if not all of these, should qualify as southern Maine.