2muchcoffeeman
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Posts posted by 2muchcoffeeman
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I can only imagine how deep the legal waters around all of DCI would be today if the G7 agenda had pushed through. It would have made The Cadets more synonymous with DCI than they already were -- and pulled the other corps deeper into their precarious orbit. Maybe the Cadets' legal issues would not be as transitive as I imagine they might have been, but with the quick and quiet way the Cadets were recently stripped of membership and erased from DCI communications, I have to wonder . . .
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87, without question. The way they ended that show at finals was perfection.
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Troop drops their repertoire for 2024:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/qvndheNRzkinuFST/?mibextid=xfxF2i
"The Other Side" / Tim Snyder, Paul Rennick, Sandi Rennick, Justin Shelton
"Hyperlink" / Peter Graham (1, 2, 3)
"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" / Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott, Sol Marcus
"Wait of the World" / Stephen Melillo (1, 2, 3)
And . . . HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN
I've been pining for Troop to put this on the field since forever.
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Very little of the guard at any corps is contracted at this stage of the off-season. Troop hasn't even really begun Guard audition camps, AFIK. The February camp is brass, perc and conductors.
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My takeaway from the article/blogpost is amazement at how Potemkin drum corps can be -- all fire and glory on the field, and utterly rickety behind the facade: “never slept, never ate, barely rehearsed" -- ninety-eight-point-zero, smh.
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21 hours ago, MarimbaManiac said:
- Regional tours only, with each corps staying in their region until the week before finals. Then have a number of shows in an easy driving distance from the finals site. Corps fly in and then bus around the area.
- Regional MEMBERSHIP only, negating the need for housing during spring training or pre-season.
- Hard spending cap on things like equipment, uniforms, props, staff, design, anything that isn't related to feeding or housing the corps.
With rules comes the need to have processes in place to enforce them. When it comes to membership and spending caps, the cure being prescribed here may be worse than the disease.
Imagine the IR$-like infra$tructure and auditing muscle that would be necessary to keep the Crossmen satisfied that the Colts didn't spend too much on their mellophone techs. And when SoA lodges a complaint in mid-July about the suspiciously extravagant Mandarins props, how to (quickly! before the regional!) adjudicate it in a way that doesn't crater the season for the members of the Mandarins? We're going to punish the tuition-paying sons for the sins of the father?
Just how "regional" is regional? For geographically isolated corps such as the Troopers, the recruiting region will need to be the Mountain Time Zone. For urban-center corps such as BD, it may need to be constrained to a few Bay-Area ZIP codes. And, again, imagine the administrative overhead that would be required to authenticate the geographic coordinates of the authentically full-time residences of a famously nomadic college-aged population. The member corps would spend more money on monitoring compliance with the rule -- and adjudicating the inevitable and probably numerous complaints -- than they would save on tour costs.
I know it seems, here on DCP, that the only response to genuinely earnest suggestions offered in good faith is to dump all over them. If I'm guilty in this case, I will say in defense that the nature of the challenges to the activity defy anything less than fundamental reconsideration of . . . the nature of the activity. Everything else comes up short. This is why, of the 3 remedies being suggested here, I believe the one that considers the tour model is the only one with potential to have impact.
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1 hour ago, keystone3ply said:
If the plaintiff were to lose the lawsuit, can the defendants not ask or require that they are paid for their legal fees? Or would they have file a countersuit for those fees? 🤔
This will vary by state.
It also will vary by subject. For example, in Colorado the Open Records statute requires the government agency to pay the legal fees of a Coloradan who must bear the expense of a lawsuit -- and then wins -- to force the government agency to comply with a law the agency should have simply followed in the first place.
Similar "loser pays" provisions are scattered across the 50 state statute books, but the situations in which it applies it will depend on what each state has decided is worthy of that kind of incentive.
AMEND to add that in civil suits, as this one is, it's common for the parties to ask the court to order the other side to reimburse them for their legal costs because the other side's claim/defense is so obviously wrong. That puts it in the judge's lap, and I assume each state has its own body of judicial procedures to guide the judge in reaching a decision.
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See and hear it here:
Ceramophone is a percussion instrument with keys made of porcelain tiles (dezeen.com)
I could see Cavaliers making athletic use of this instrument. Plus, maybe a cost savings -- 2 or 3 players per instrument, instead of 6 individual marimbas to buy/haul/maintain? -
On 12/6/2023 at 6:33 PM, Sutasaurus said:
Sinnerman, Unholy, where are we headed?
to a Dance with the Devil
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16 hours ago, Boss Anova said:
If DCI Hg did not themselves believe they had some degree of oversight responsibilities of its member Corps, and the authority that empowers them to police the internal affairs of any of its member Corps, and at their discretion, then they'd have not been at least a dozen examples since DCI's founding where DCI Hg has suspended, or put on probation, and even revoked membership of its member Corps
Yeah, no, I just don't think any judge would give much credence to this line of argument. Enforcing matters of membership -- whether SCV's membership requirements wrt DCI are in order and imposing requirements upon them to bring them into order -- is simply not the same thing, as a matter of law, as having managerial responsibility for the operations of the corps wrt to its own marching members and to whatever local and state regulators are relevant.
As a matter of PR and of protecting the brand, DCI has every interest in disassociating itself from bad odors. But as a matter of law, I don't see any line connecting the DCI dot with the SCV dot.
Maybe I'm wrong about that. Perhaps the lawyers among us can clarify.
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12 hours ago, Boss Anova said:
is precisely to limit their perceived possibility that some lawyer might future claim they failed in their oversight responsibilities of its member Corps.
Everything else, I'm with you. But this is where I lose you. If you've got evidence that this is "precisely why," I'm all ears. But I'm not even aware that DCI has "oversight responsibilities" of SCV or any other member. DCI runs a membership organization, not drum corps units. Its members have granted it powers to police the integrity of DCI, but there's no authority that I'm aware of that empowers or even obligates DCI to police the internal affairs of any member.
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18 minutes ago, Boss Anova said:
Cadets were also suspended by DCI , but also were listed as a " Member Corps of DCI ".
Seems standard OP . . . DCI bylaws say that if DCI suspends a corps (or, in bylaws language: puts it on probation), then the corps retains its membership status even as it sits out the competitive season. See: Spirit 2022.
But a corps that is not on probation (SCV 23) and does not attend nationals week (SCV 23), loses its membership status automatically, according to the DCI bylaws.
DCI can use sticks and carrots, to be sure. They can march a corps up to its room and make it miss supper until it learns to behave. This is true because the corps themselves have bestowed that ability upon DCI in the first place. None of that, I don't think, should make DCI lie awake at night worrying it might be sued because of the behavior of SCV, or whether SCV is listed as a world class corps on its website.
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22 minutes ago, Boss Anova said:
The Troopers of 2005 would beg to differ however that ( your words) " DCI has no such leverage over internal Corps matters ". DCI in 2005 after that season suspended the Troopers for the 2006 season and mandated that the Corps change mgt there as a mandatory condition of return to the ranks of DCI, and for the return to competition. Troopers took the suspension, and the year off in 2006, and complied with DCI's directive to change management there,. Once DCI Board of Directors were satisfied the Troopers had also complied with the submittance of IRS payments and verifications of such to DCI HQ, the Troopers were then allowed by DCI Board of Directors vote in 2006 to return to the field of competition in 2007. ( See historic info below )
Even if 100% accurate on those details, none of it establishes DCI being responsible -- i.e., legally liable -- for whatever the Troopers did, or didn't, do. DCI laid out conditions, and Troop decided to comply. Troop could have said no, and walked away, and DCI would have had no power to stop them.
Point is, such a set of carrot-and-stick facts is not the same thing as DCI having, or being able to have, any kind of direct control over the corps. If you want to establish that DCI has legal exposure because SCV is a member, Troopers 2006 isn't the precedent you need, I don't think.
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20 hours ago, Boss Anova said:
. . . The Corps name should be removed from DCI’s official website for the simple reason of limiting financial liability exposure in any future lawsuit . . . .
From one non-lawyer to another . . .
I don't share the same sensation of danger. A few reasons:
So you sue DCI. What are you going to get when you win? A VFW-era snare drum an old fax machine? It's a membership organization -- an office with some computers and a CMS system. All assets, such as they are -- 20-year-old eq trucks and beat-up horn lines, maybe a few buildings and a couple acres of real estate -- belong to the corps, not DCI. You'd spend more on the lawyers than you'd win in a judgment. The only motivation to sue DCI would be on principle -- to endure great personal expense to persuade a jury that the injuries DCI visited upon you are so severe they deserve the corporate death penalty.
. . . but that would be weird, because, most likely, the horribles you endured would have been delivered by a corps, not by anyone at DCI HQ in Indianapolis. I would venture to say that, as far as legal liability goes, the relationship between a member corps and DCI amounts to bupkus. As far as DCI's bylaws are concerned, "membership" is a status, not a contractual arrangement. You can't even equate it to a franchise agreement, where HQ at least has some responsibility for the ingredients in the secret sauce and the items on the menu. DCI has no such leverage over internal corps matters. DCI members get a vote on competition rules and association membership, and some of them get show payments. And that's about it, more or less. They are entitled to certain membership benefits, like someone with a Costco card.
DCI member corps agree to abide by certain rules of conduct that are meant to support member safety, financial stability, tax compliance, and the like. But (again: Not a lawyer!) these are expectations placed upon membership, not statements of DCI responsibility. In other words, the "enforcement" is in the possibility of being discovered and having membership revoked. There is little in the membership relationship between DCI and its members that bestows affirmative enforcement and investigative duties or powers upon DCI. In still other words, DCI is not on the hook to be the cop -- it is the members that created DCI; not the other way around.
If an individual corps behaves badly in financial, safety or other matters, responsibility for that misbehavior sits first and only with the corps itself. Suing DCI for the bad behavior of a member would, I imagine, be the legal equivalent of suing the American Automobile Association for the DUI of an individual motorist.
I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong about all that. All I know is that, if I were on a jury and a lawyer was trying to persuade me to find against DCI for the misdeeds of an independent member organization, I'd think to myself, you're barking up the wrong tree.
(The matter of SCV's world-class status is separate from DCI membership. It is possible to recruit, train, transport and put onto the field a corps that 1) satisfies the DCI definition of "world class" yet is 2) not a member of DCI. And that is what SCV in 2024 will be -- a world-class non-member -- if it can pull it off.)
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5 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:
My understanding of DCI membership is SCV lost it when they stopped being a competing Corps. When they go forward into 2024 they will always perform LAST
The Cadets will be in the same boat too.
Correct re SCV: They failed to show up for nationals in 2023, so they lose DCI membership in 2024, per DCI bylaws.
Not sure re Cadets; If DCI places a corps on probation, then their membership status does not lapse. I have no info on what, if anything, DCI plans to do wrt Cadets and probation
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6 hours ago, keystone3ply said:
Is this the movie with the bowling pin scene?
It is, and it's why you could find a bowling pin on the front sideline of Troop's 2022 shows.
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Hell of a show.
I love that Troop does it the cowboy way. Nothing coy, just "Here. We know what we're going to do. Marinate in this for the next 6 months."
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3 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:
SoA is the only entity in the field that summarizes and publishes their reporting process
Troopers publish their reporting/investigation process, here, under Member Health and Safety. It would surprise me if most other corps don't do something similar.
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"Until this lawsuit is resolved, CAE cannot further comment on it or CAE’s financial challenges."
Appears to directly link the current financial state of affairs, and by extension the cancellation of a 2024 tour, to the lawsuit.
Which, as others have noted, puts the org's stated reasons for cancelling 2024 into a new and less forgiving light.
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Forget the debate about hats. We should be talking about helmets.
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50 minutes ago, Jurassic Lancer said:
Exactly. Why donate to GoFundMe when they will take a cut?
Yeah, GFM is a solution for a person or organization that doesn't have e-commerce functionality. Every WC corps is able to take donations directly through their own websites. They have no incentive to promote donations through GFM as the middleman cut is deeper than it is with the e-commerce vendor they're using on their site. For those reasons, and to the OP's question, I see little significance to the numbers registered at GFM so far.
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He drifted in and out of the drum corps orbit, to varying reviews. My own memory might be altering the reality of the event, but I recall a short visit by the coach to our corps in which he praised the work ethic and devotion to excellence that he saw in the activity.
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Via NYT:
Bobby Knight, one of college basketball’s signature coaches and a singular personality renowned for his tempestuousness and hubris, qualities that helped bring him to the pinnacle of his sport and also tainted his success, died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 83.
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3 hours ago, HockeyDad said:
We were sold a lie !!!!!!
Ok, actually, everyone knew at the time the - we can reduce pit size - was a load of B.S. In drum corps as in the government, a thing once introduced can never be taken away.
You can look at the front ensemble in the same way that you look at a bloated government program.
Or you can look at the modern front ensemble as the kind of performance group that young people audition by the thousands to participate in. Where else but DCI can a young person who isn't pursuing first chair in the NY Met get the opportunity to perform to such a level of professional musicianship in such a powerful percussion ensemble? There are a lot of young people in the FE because there are a lot of young people who like what the FE is. The USS Front Ensemble can't be seen only as a fever dream of some undisciplined show designer; it meets a demand.
Maybe FEs need to be scaled back for the financial health of the activity. Fine. But let's not delude ourselves that the FE has become some kind of external burden that's been foisted upon us by a nameless bureaucracy.
Troopers 2024
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
At 07:33 I'm going to ascend from my seat directly into heaven.
. . . or straight to hell, as the case may be.