Corps Directors

[tomgolf8]

Tom, I hope you realize this is not what anyone wants. Obviously that's not the answer. Do you really think this is the only alternative?

Not at all. But when I read quotes like "Diversity in Corps Directors should represent the membership diversity", it appears that is what is being suggested.

Not that it has never happened, but I have never heard of anyone not getting a job running a DCI or DCA corps because of skin color or gender. I can also not quantify how many African Americans, women, Hispanics, Native Americans or on and on have wanted those jobs currently or in the past. But to suggest the absence of color or whatever is anything less than consequential in this industry just boggles my imagination. At the very least I think it's irresponsible.

And just so we are perfectly clear, sarcasm is only one of the services I provide.

[MarimbasaurusRex]

I'm glad to see this issue discussed. As a member. I saw no racism at all. People were very open to any person of any race or gender just because they were into drum corps and we all had that in common. But, the OP brings up a good observation. I don't think that diversity should be mandated in the sense that a certain percentage of corps directors should be female or of a minority. But their absence from those ranks points to a larger problem. DRUM CORPS DOES NOT SERVE AMERICA AS A WHOLE.

Directors wonder what they can do to be more relevant. Well here it is folks. If you want to be seen as relevant to the larger community, you have to do something relevant for that community. Drum corps used to do that and they generally don't anymore. In my opinion, for whatever reason, individual drum corps have placed far too much emphasis on winning/making finals rather than how they serve youth.

I expect that if the percentage of female and minority membership was greater, then there would be a greater likelihood of those people ascending through the ranks to be directors. Perhaps it's time to fix it, to reach out to people other than white males and find out why more don't join. Then, actually do something about it.

You can poo poo that statement all you want and say everything is fine. But as drum corps dies (even the top corps directors see the writing on the wall) this might be a good time to take a look in the mirror and ask - What have we done today for the greater good of all Americans?

[AlexL]

In my opinion, for whatever reason, individual drum corps have placed far too much emphasis on winning/making finals rather than how they serve youth.

I doubt that most members (youth) within these corps would say they arent being served, or arent being educated.

What youre REALLY saying is 'arent serving youth of a specific type (most notably lower incomes which is almost un-preventable due to the massive increases in fuel costs) i think they should be serving instead'.

[garfield]

I doubt that most members (youth) within these corps would say they arent being served, or arent being educated.

What youre REALLY saying is 'arent serving youth of a specific type (most notably lower incomes which is almost un-preventable due to the massive increases in fuel costs) i think they should be serving instead'.

[skywhopper]

Not at all. But when I read quotes like "Diversity in Corps Directors should represent the membership diversity", it appears that is what is being suggested.

It seems to me that in a perfect system, corps director (and staff) diversity *would* reflect membership diversity, given that staff and directors pretty much all come from membership. Sure, given that demographics of members have probably changed over time, you'd expect there to be a lag there. And given that our society is not "perfect", you'd expect some misbalance from that. And of course there'd be some statistical noise, as well.

So I think it's a positive effort to look at current leadership and try to determine if we see what you would expect. If not, then that's a good opportunity to look at how hiring and recruiting works to see if there's something going on there that might be contributing to a lack of diversity, without malice or intent. As lots of folks have said, drum corps is generally a very welcoming place for just about anybody. And while yes, the majority of members are white males, there are quite a few women, and a not insignificant minority presence as well. That's great! But if the staff and leadership are different, well, something is off.

If there's a problem, well it's not going to be fixed overnight, and diversity can't be mandated. It has to happen naturally. We just need to make sure we aren't preventing it without meaning to.

[corps8294]

And here it is folks. I'm surprised that it took this long for this subject to arrive on DCP. Geeesh.

Oh Louis Farrakhan where out thou! Ho-Ho-Ho, He-He-He, Ha-Ha-Ha!

Edited September 9, 2010 by shortn'sour

[soccerguy315]

Post jobs and have interviews for positions instead of simply "installing" people into positions. I've watched the activity for a long time, and one thing I always hated was how instructors went here and there and people just show up in places. No interviews, making deals behind closed doors. This is especially present in DCA, where captionheads sometimes make a rotation of the whole circuit. This is a "good ol boys" club. This leaves very little opportunity for anyone new to break into the activity. Did SCV post a job for percussion captionhead that anyone with the credentials could apply for? I doubt it. Not that Rennick wouldn't have gotten it anyway, but who knows? Maybe someone we never heard of would have had an awesome interview and took SCV to places they've never seen before. I think DCI should mandate that every corps should conduct at least 3 interviews for every captionhead position, every director position and every administration position.

this is an interesting idea. Should the openings be posted in one place for everyone to see? like, dci.org/jobs or something? Of course, the counterargument is that if they know who they want, everyone's time is wasted posting an announcement and pretending to look through applicants.

[skywhopper]

In case anyone's curious, I checked all the world class corps' websites to try to find staff and board information. Obviously you can't judge race from lists of names, or even from pictures, so I just decided to count by gender.

I could find staff info for 17 of the 23 WC corps. Some of the numbers were clearly 2010 staff. Some were just the announced staff for 2011. Some were a mix of both. One or two were just executive staff. But I figure the overall numbers are basically going to be representative.

Out of 658 staff members listed, 103 were women, or had names that I judged to be women's names. If there was no context to the name (like a picture or a bio), I marked it as a woman if it was a name that could go either way, except for the name "Chris" which I always scored male. That's 15.7% female staff. If you exclude Madison and Cavies since they are all-male corps (though it's worth mentioning that they each do have a few female staffers), then you get 17.1% female staff. The highest ratios I noticed were Crossmen with 7 women out of 17 listed staff, and SCV with 15 women out of 46 listed staffers.

And for the 16 corps that I could find board member listings for, 30 of 187 board members were female, which at 16% matches the ratio of female staffers pretty closely. Three corps did not appear to have any female board members. Worth mentioning, the highest percentages were Pioneer with women making up half of its board, and Blue Devils with 6 out of 14 board members as women.

Also notable, Boston was the only corps I found that listed membership leaders (I wasn't actually searching for this information so there may be other corps who do so), and of the eight positions they listed (presumably 2010), half were women, including the two guard captains, the trumpet section leader, and the horn sergeant.

So about a sixth of both board members and staff members are women. That's higher than I expected, so that's a great thing. It's about three times higher than the ratio of women to men in terms of DCI directors both WC and OC, where there are three women directors in 46 corps. But that may well be evidence that the difference there is mostly due to time lag, and in 20-30 years things will look a lot more balanced at the top.

So my next question is, what's the ratio of women to men in terms of marching members? Does such data exist?

[AlexL]

It seems to me that in a perfect system, corps director (and staff) diversity *would* reflect membership diversity, given that staff and directors pretty much all come from membership. Sure, given that demographics of members have probably changed over time, you'd expect there to be a lag there. And given that our society is not "perfect", you'd expect some misbalance from that. And of course there'd be some statistical noise, as well.

So I think it's a positive effort to look at current leadership and try to determine if we see what you would expect. If not, then that's a good opportunity to look at how hiring and recruiting works to see if there's something going on there that might be contributing to a lack of diversity, without malice or intent. As lots of folks have said, drum corps is generally a very welcoming place for just about anybody. And while yes, the majority of members are white males, there are quite a few women, and a not insignificant minority presence as well. That's great! But if the staff and leadership are different, well, something is off.

If there's a problem, well it's not going to be fixed overnight, and diversity can't be mandated. It has to happen naturally. We just need to make sure we aren't preventing it without meaning to.

I dont seem to recall membership being all that diverse either... marching band (being the pool we draw most members from) in general is mostly a bunch of white kids, with the pool of that we draw from being skewed way male due to brass sections in marching band even being heavily male, with flutes\clarinets, etc being predominantly female. Being that the pool we draw from is that way, the membership will ultimately skew that way, and ultimately, the leadership will skew that way.

[Tom Brace]

this is a great thread...truly outstanding job by the OP here.

Both NFL and NCAA Football teams have this issue as far as minorities....forget about women coaches...they are far from being that progressive.

One of my favorite II/III corps directors was Mary from the Bandettes. I'm sure she has been mentioned in this thread. I would say II/III was FAR more diverse during the 1990s than WC has ever been. And how's DCA as far as diversity now that we are asking. Is it the olde white man's club?