Fran Haring

The reporter actually does a pretty good job of providing context... she certainly covers the fact that DCI has now changed its policies, and is in the process of seeing what else needs to be done. And nowhere... at least from my reading of it... does she say that DCI AS OF NOW has no disciplinary mechanism. In fact, she points out that they do... in the cases of the Cadets and Pioneer. I can't speak for her, and none of us are mind readers, but... again, from having been in the business, I would be willing to bet that when the reporter said DCI has never disciplined a corps for member-safety issues... she meant in any matter regarding sexual impropriety/sex crimes/etc., since that is what her entire series of articles is about. She can easily correct that oversight... and that's what it is, an oversight and heck, I might even send her an email pointing that out. But it's not some mean-spirited attempt to "bring down" DCI with her words. If she were writing about the other "member safety" issues and neglected to mention DCI indeed did intervene in several cases, then THAT would be completely wrong and misleading on her part. But she's not writing about that. I absolutely agree that the DCI front office has taken steps to deal with this entire mess, should be given credit for that, and should not be put in front of a firing squad or any such thing for, among other things, following the rules as they were written in days past (meaning the BOD member corps made and enforced... or at least were supposed to enforce... the rules, not the front office). Those were the rules then, and DCI followed them. But G, I gotta be honest... you have a tendency to blame the reporter in this whole situation. For one thing, it's not her fault that Dan Acheson didn't want to answer her questions... she reached out, and again is under no obligation whatsoever to provide him with questions in advance, etc. She is not being unfair. She's just doing her job... and in my personal and professional opinion... she's doing a good one.

Never said you did. And of course accuracy is important. Heck... when I was in the biz, errors such as the one you pointed out (getting a name wrong on a caption, etc.) were unacceptable. And easily correctable, as we've seen in this case.

That boggles the mind.

If the guy had served time for, say, buying a dime bag of pot when he was a knucklehead 21-year-old... sure. There but for the grace of God go a lot of us. But something to do with children? Holy mackerel. Wow.

Saw that. Obviously an error. I've also noticed that the error has since been corrected. Certainly doesn't dilute the impact of the overall story.

The Free Players and the non-North American corps rule... good stuff!!! The shorter performance time... my first thought is, it could (should) make it easier for all corps to put a finished product on the field, their first show out. ("Finished product" by early-season standards of course... obviously the shows get better as the summer goes on.) Finished products = good news for paying customers at early-season shows. Their money is as green as the cash spent by fans at late-summer shows. LOL

That was a scary situation. I went to Finals that year with some friends from our local-circuit junior corps in NJ ( our corps never competed at a DCI title event)... and several of us brought our own food with us because of the uncertainty regarding that outbreak.

And that same corps director was outspoken in his contempt for DCI, from the outset. I'm guessing that also didn't help his corps' case.

That is scary.

We went to DCI East prelims that year specifically to see SCV, and to see the Bottle Dance one more time. What a great show.

The Phillipines. He'd be flown into Vietnam from time to time, but thankfully never on the front lines. He worked in cryptology.... and for years after, a lot of the stuff he worked on, he couldn't talk about. By now though... most of it has been declassified.

Yeah... I "aged out" at 24 after my six years with with Sunrisers. LOL. Had an outside chance to go to the Blue Stars for my junior ageout year in 1979, but the plans fell through. Obviously got into other stuff involving drum corps, but never had any desire to return to a competition corps.

Holy mackerel. The sheer power of that horn line. Breathtaking.

That '76 BD performance at Finals... half a minute in, it was "this show's over." Such a dominant, game-changing corps that year.

The show the Muchachos performed in '75, the day after their disqualification. That could not have been easy for them. I can only imagine the emotions.