AlexL

https://twitter.com/Jaccii/status/1057696103200681984

I believe you in that you and your son had a positive experience and didn't see things on the level reported. Unfortunately its rather meaningless that that's what you saw. Here's the thing. It is incredibly easy to not see a lot of these things if you are not one of the ones directly affected. People get pressured not to talk, or feel ashamed to talk. Hell, in some of them the younger victim of mistreatment may even not recognize anything was wrong with that situation until years later. I'm actually quite amazed members are posting publicly their disapproval of the group, as it seems like most DCI groups have a 'keep issues within the family' mentality, for better or for wors.. And it happens and has happened at far too many places. I, like your son, had the greatest few summers of my life with Blue Stars. But i know now, some from information that came out years later, that there were some that did not due to some staff members behavior. Hell, one of my favorite (at the time) vis techs from 05 is now serving 15 years for ####### 8th graders. You just never know.

http://www.bluestars.org/story.php?story_id=902

The question being, how hard was 'better' looked for? Over the years, its easy to notice that its often the same names getting recirculated among the corps. Drum corps prefer to hire people who already have a drum corps history, rather than go for someone 'up and coming'. By doing this, are others not given an opportunity? Could a section tech have excelled if given the chance at a caption head job that was instead given to a retread? Could a spot have been filled just as well by someone new, outside the existing staffing 'circles'. I've never been involved in hiring or the search for staff, so i'm kind of curious what the applications:hires ratio looks like.

Then you'd have to do that for all the shows. Your show is not special. Every one of us have had shows rained out and didnt get a rain date, nor could we be expected to. The tour rolls on.

Those corps are already multiple hours down the road towards their next show at this point.

Have to wonder how much of that is because of the show being on 2 nights (and 2 separate tickets) vs other regionals. A little harder than just flying in friday night\sat morning and coming to the show saturday. Combine that with the rain risk that isn't there at other regionals and it becomes difficult for some to pull the trigger on.

Cinema show is always thursday.

Its extremely hard to do. Just because there isnt much going on for the schools doesnt mean that every school wants to host a drum corps. And plenty of places don't want to. Hell, i think in 07 I was driving and we got our housing site while en route to Allentown. A few of the corps already didn't have housing until just a couple days ago. And ome of the sites flip out corps- so one comes, rehearses friday, goes to perform, then another corps comes and takes the site later that night for the next day. Finding another dozen housing sites on the contingency that some might need to stay around for saturday is not a reasonable proposition.

Problem is most of them would need a housing site for tonight in Allentown. Housing is already scarce near there.

Playing some shows in the rain used to be a fixture of DCI tours. Times change.

Domes? Not many. Facilities that might better handle an all-day show with a full lineup? Probably. Still a rainout at risk either way. Maybe a flaw of having the final regional every year be the one place at risk for rainouts and having to split everyone up (and thus have a bit of inequality in the scoring as well)

Yeah, i've never been a fan of it for that reason. Its always felt like those going on saturday have a slight edge in the seeding. Doesnt matter as much for those positions that are fairly locked in, but if you're talking tenths differentiating the prelims lineup, it has an impact.

June 30. Dropped from 67.7 on the 29th to 67.45. Otherwise you're correct.

Absolutely it is. This could massively damage and even kill the cadets. I hope they survive it, with needed changes. Much good has come out of the organization, like all drum corps and it would just be piling on one bad thing after another if it went away. Blame Hop, and blame the board that has enabled him.

Absolutely, @Jeff Ream This is an activity in which parents trust their kids to be left in the hands of staff for 2-3 months, 24 hours a day, hundreds to thousands of miles away from home, when many times these kids have never spent more than a week or two fully away. This kind of damage will bleed over. Parents are going to be asking more questions. Prospective sponsors are going to be asking "what are you doing to make sure this isnt happening in your organization, as we only want to associate our brand with you if you are seen as a positive organization". I'm not sure what the next steps are. Should DCI start its own independent inquiry and effort to try to get people to come forward to DCI so that problem elements can be rooted out of the activity in a proactive manner, rather than through the press?

Add the prop proliferation to this. How many corps are running an extra truck all summer long just to haul them around.

Yeah, that makes sense as well. There's a reason Blue Stars did similar starting many years ago, moving camps first to MSP and then to Indianapolis.

Recruiting in texas isn't a mistake. Its a large state with large metro areas with lots of good programs, with a range of talent. Not everyone will make top 8\12. If done like some do, with remote camps, they can be a decent fundraiser. Charge $100 a head, get a couple hundred kids to show up. Hopefully you find some good additions, even if they no one from that site makes it to everydays, you've gotten paid.

Honestly, this thread might be better off with a restart, with all the currently announced changes put in the first couple posts, and then strict on-topic moderation.

####. I love Frank's stuff, was hoping for more from him.

this is quite possibly the most worthless 57 page read ever. if you know something, say it or say nothing. otherwise this thread should have just died for a month and offtopic talk gone elsewhere.

I'll miss the ease corpsreps had for searching old scores. This new one seems harder to do so.