Slingerland

Top corps tend to attract more 20 and 21 year-olds, so anyone who was a 20-year-old in 2022 isn't eligible to march next summer. Fewer vets than usual shouldn't be surprising.

If a judge clears DCI on the lack of evidence that they had knowledge of or expressed responsibility for the situation from forty years ago, it doesn't help the original complaint from an optics standpoint. Piercing the veil requires a high level of proof, and unless Donald Pesceone knew something forty years ago that no one else did and kept official records of it*, my guess is that it mayl be difficult to keep DCI attached to the claim as it progresses. *I should specify that I don't know if he did or didn't: but that would be the smoking gun, in this case. If you're not aware of who Donald Pesceone is, congratulations: you're under the age of 50. 😎

The letter notifying them that CA was identifying them as being delinquent this summer includes language that specifically says "an organization that is listed as delinquent.....is prohibited from engaging in conduct for which registration is required, including soliciting or disbursing charitable funds..." We can argue whether having a web page encouraging people to donate funds is "soliciting" or not (it is, to me, but your mileage may vary), but at the very least, it's a little murky.

Did they increase the amount of payouts in the interest of attracting more players? I don't know anything about the Bingo world, but I'm guessing that increased odds of payout would attract more players (and clearly that's a big bump in gross revenues from 19 to 22).

Exactly correct. In theory, it's a good idea: practically it could be an absolute nightmare and have an opposite effect to the intent.

Not sure whether that is more a picture of a train wreck or a dumpster fire.

In an ideal world, there would be a formal database of those working in the drum corps, WGI, and marching bands worlds that can serve as a clearinghouse for information regarding their past working experiences. That said, the legal and practical challenges involved would be huge, not the least of which would be setting a standard of what counts as genuinely reportable. There have been multiple cases I can think of where an eventual offender turned out to have been under investigation someplace else, but resigned prior to completion of the investigation, rendering it dead and their record unsullied. Lots of challenges, but a concept worth looking into.

Just a simple deduction. There's no historical evidence that DCI, even in 1982/3, had a mechanism for vetting or supervising behavior between corps members and staff. Since that appears (relevant cautionary word on my part) to be the case, and since damages are the desired outcome (why else file a suit?), when there's nothing to get from one party (CAE), the plaintiff's attorneys will keep working up the tree looking for someone they can claim should be attached, with the understanding that often, the defendant's legal advice will be to pay off the plaintiff as a cheaper alternative to paying a mounting legal defense bill. Lawyers get paid to try and win damages, so it's the legally responsible action on their part. As such, while I find it unfortunate, I don't actually see it as unethical, if that makes sense. Everyone's got a job to do. Re: the "should have known" element, that is one of those things that is informed by hindsight, which we all know is 20/20. I was around as a performer in that 80s era, during the transition where the old ways of hiring instructors (a warm body age-out who could be on tour) was evolving to the current model (professional educators). Would it have been better for DCI, back then, to have a strong ability to oversee who was being hired, providing reporting mechanisms for clams of inappropriate behavior, etc, YES, without question. But, regrettably, that level of oversight wasn't part of the culture at the time - not just in drum corps, but in the educational field, for churches and Scout troops, etc, etc. It should have been for all of those examples, but it wasn't, at least at the levels we would now consider acceptable. My takeaway from that fact is that it's up to the alums of the activity who care about these issues to make sure the corps today ARE embracing best practices and standards, using the hazing or other inappropriate things we saw first hand as a model of what NOT to do. The vast majority of corps seem to agree with that position. But we also have to recognize that there are reasonable limits to what can be fixed or addressed from 25 or 30 or 40 years ago via the legal system. It's why statutes of limitations exist: not just to recognize that evidence gets harder to verify as time passes, but also to acknowledge, implicitly, that customs and expectations change over time. We can't sue GM today for an accident in which a family member died in 1952 because there weren't seat belts in the car, because the laws acknowledge that the world of 1952 wasn't what it is now. Based on experience, laws changed to make it less possible for that type of death to occur, just as the operations of DCI relative to the corps have changed to give the organization greater ability to oversee and address concerns. It's never going to be perfect, in any situation, but as long as there is an acknowledgement that, under today's standards, there is and should be accountability for how the corps operate now, that's a big step forward.

Not an attorney - just attorney(s) adjacent 😂. But based on business law, yes, it would be a large factor. Structurally, DCI resembles a co-op now, but in reality, it was an independent non-profit whose primary job was to generate and devolve revenues to individual drum corps, with the corps who benefitted from those funds changing from year to year based on the individual corps' competitive success. To that point: - being a "member" of DCI in the early 80s simply meant that you had made Finals the previous August. The current concept where everyone who competes is "a member" didn't exist, and membership could be lost by failing to make Finals two years in a row, if I remember correctly. That doesn't speak to an organization where the "members" have much power. - Flipping it around, the founders very specifically did not want an organization that could get up in anyone's business on a corps by corps basis, so DCI was not given tools to drive or enforce standards outside of anything on the competition field (age limits, instrumentation, etc) and a requirement to appear at enough shows to protect the value of the brand. Thinking of the personalities involved in creating DCI (Warren, Jones, Bonfiglio, et al), they were, to a person, protective of their organizations to a degree that makes it unlikely they would have wanted a powerful central organization when it came to enforcing standards at their individual corps. The change in DCI to having a say in how corps operate and the ability to enforce standards is a relatively recent development, and the change was driven by the voting members (in the current sense) starting 9 or 10 years ago. I see no issue with the plaintiff's decision to sue the Cadets organization, for the record. The laws are clear in support there, but trying to add another organization that literally had no power to control or manage the instigating incident seems driven by a desire to force DCI to pony up some money to make things go away for them, not because there was a genuine ability or "should have known" basis for adding them in the first place. But hey, just my take based on what's out there.

No, not really. An attorney did some due diligence and realized that CAE, effectively, is dead. There's nothing to get, and it's unlikely they'll be back. Sorry for that, Cadets alums. So who can they add to the suit who's still alive, since the original suit named a bunch of dead organizations?....oh yeah! Drum Corps International, who had no real or implied role to play in vetting, hiring, or managing staff at the Garfield Cadets in the 1980s, but is still alive and unlike the Garfield/YEA/CAE Cadets, has a pulse and checking account. At the DCI level, this is a nuisance lawsuit, and they'll likely be bumped from it soon, as well they should.

Ok, to clarify, with the odds in Lotto being what they are, I don't consider it "gambling" so much as "guaranteed losing." 😂

Just went to their website, since I hadn't been there for awhile. Their most recent 990s are posted and public, along with all of their member, volunteer, and staff policy handbooks. Hoping other corps can follow this example, if they aren't already.

Their model is a fundraising board, not a mom and pop operations board. More interested parties who want to go be evangelists and raise money for them, more power to them. They don't have Bingo; they need to fundraise through personal connections and good for them on that. If BD and SCV didn't have their cash cows based on old heads spending their Social Security money on the lowest grade form of gambling imaginable, they'd need bigger boards too.

A solid organization doesn't depend on one person being there. Someone leaving shouldn't be the reason why an organization fails to function; Charles Frost leaving SCV after 2019 shouldn't have been a reason why no one at the BOD was able to make sure they stayed current., for example.

It's a family business, as far as he's concerned. So no.

Will depend on recruiting. Percussion should have no problem replacing age outs with similar talent. Hornline seemed young and they didn't get a lot of credit for the more acoustic (less mic'd) approach, but if they have enough vets back, it's a solid base. Musical choices and visual design were both....kind of bad in 2023. Visual was the corps' biggest obvious weakness, and with a corps that was historically thought of as a visual powerhouse, the flaw was glaring (and a little painful to see, to be honest). Musically, it was a mistake to go "tribute" since none of the callbacks had anywhere near the power of their first versions, and only made the 2023 corps look weak in comparison to their predecessors. IF the program team can recognize that fact and decide to face forward, they have a shot of being relevant again. But that's all a lot of 'if's.

Weirdly enough, they have more money than anyone but BD, but consistently, the worst financial (and self) controls in the business. What happened? Well the problem is that they couldn't really tell ya. Staff turnover at the admin level has been a problem for at least a decade, so there's that.

Net profit on their 2019 990 shows over $3 million from gaming, from $11 million in gross. NET profit, after payouts. It was/is THAT much.

No non-profit, no Bingo. No Bingo, no Vanguard.

No difference on souvie sales, since if you're in state and selling, you have nexus. Some states waive the sales tax collection requirement for non profits, some do not, but you have to be up to speed on that end of things in any case.

"Member" in DCI terms is more specifically geared to voting rights and payment structure for performance. Vanguard will have neither for the upcoming year, but they are still an active organization who will be on tour next summer (unless someone outside of DCI has something to say about it). Using the WaybackMachine, I found DCI's site from May, 2006, and Troopers still show as a "Member Corps" for that season, despite the fact that they had been disallowed from touring.

If and when Cadets are back on the field, they will have to compete as non-members at World Class, same as SCV next summer. But I don't see how Cadets pull out of the current situation. Hopkins will get a last laugh. The world sucks, sometimes.

To be more exact, they had federal compliance issues (not filing 990s for multiple years in a row). DCI's Board had told them to get right numerous times and they still failed to comply, at which point DCI cut them off in the interest of keeping Troopers' IRS problems isolated from the whole organization. It was the right call. Just as DCI giving Vanguard keys to the tour again before SCV has shown that they are in full compliance with state and federal filings was most likely NOT the right call.

I'd be kind of curious as to who is auditioning for them this year. Between no show for anyone in 2020, then sitting out 2021 (a video doesn't count), a pretty meh show in 2022 (just being honest), and being unable to field in 2023, what kind of memory would any 20 year old have of Vanguard to make them a destination stop? There are enough other options that anyone with only a year of eligibility should be looking elsewhere if they want a guarantee of having the summer on the road.

Kids shouldn't be giving Vanguard money at this point unless SCV has set up an escrow account to hold the monies pending a ruling that they are in the clear and can move forward, as an organization. If it's March, and SCV gets a letter that their non-profit status in Cali has been revoked, there won't be enough paper towels in the world to clean up how much doo doo will be in the room.