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The Cadets and GH history of sexual abuse (news article)


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10 hours ago, Daave said:

Simple rules to crisis management.  Violate any one of them and you're gonna have a bad time. Since this has been simmering for some time now, it would appear that they are about to have a bad time.

Tell the truth

Tell it first

Tell it yourself

Tell it all

I'm only fifteen pages into this thread and soon to run out of "likes", but this post certainly bears repeating.

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8 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

Well, let's be honest. Since the Weinstein stuff broke in the fall, the issue has been exploding everywhere. Starting in January isn't really that suspicious.

Yeah, the reporting by Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor, and Meghan Twohey were the pebbles that started an avalanche. We live in a different world than we did eight months ago. In the long run, that's a good thing, but the transition is painful.

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Pretty speechless at this whole thing. I echo the statements in this thread that hopefully there will be a reckoning for all abusers in the activity. I have no idea how widespread it may be but I also hope DCI betters itself and survives this. 

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22 minutes ago, NakedEye said:

To say nothing of the sponsors. They have to show a change immediately to not have the likes of Yamaha running for the hills. Some people may not realize how much this has blown up beyond the little world of drum corps. When a major daily breaks something like this, it can travel worldwide in an instant. 

To add to this, I just saw details of a winter percussion unit withdrawing from the US Bands event specifically because of YEA's unwillingness to publicly detach itself from the individual. This is why speed of response is of the essence. You don't have the luxury of moseying along in a situation of this magnitude.

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59 minutes ago, MikeM said:

Actually, and this probably won’t win the day - but I’ll toss it out there:

YEA needs to pull The Cadets and Cadets2 from all competition for the 2018 season.  

Why?  There will only be this distraction for this year.  Heck, parents may pull their kids out and leave them barely able to field a corps.  Take 2018 to revamp and restructure the organization.  Comeback after finals with everything in place to start the 2019 preparations even stronger.  Show everyone that hey, yes this happened.  But we’ve taken steps to make sure it won’t happen again.  You can’t run a tour and try and recover from this.

Thoughts?

Have you thought this through?  Try to refund 154 times the tour fees plus show commitments (especially home shows) and and any DCI corps other than BD or Crusaders would cease to exist permanently.  If there are to be any consequences from proven wrongdoing (and the author of the article certainly believes this will be the case), they should fall 100% on person(s) who committed such acts.  And if so, that anyone who knew or believed that such a situation existed at the time they occurred and remained silent should endure a lifetime of shame and guilt.  

In either case, punishing the current members for allegations of incidents that took place a long time ago, in many cases before they were born, seems highly misdirected.  "Coming back stronger" is an alumnus or fan talking, not a current member for whom this activity is designed.  Not a single allegation is directed at any current staff member other than the director.

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1 minute ago, NakedEye said:

To add to this, I just saw details of a winter percussion unit withdrawing from the US Bands event specifically because of YEA's unwillingness to publicly detach itself from the individual. This is why speed of response is of the essence. You don't have the luxury of moseying along in a situation of this magnitude.

Hence my stop the bleeding statement.  I want the Cadets and YEA to thrive.  It’s good for the activity to have many strong groups. 

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1 hour ago, MikeM said:

Actually, and this probably won’t win the day - but I’ll toss it out there:

YEA needs to pull The Cadets and Cadets2 from all competition for the 2018 season.  

Why?  There will only be this distraction for this year.  Heck, parents may pull their kids out and leave them barely able to field a corps.  Take 2018 to revamp and restructure the organization.  Comeback after finals with everything in place to start the 2019 preparations even stronger.  Show everyone that hey, yes this happened.  But we’ve taken steps to make sure it won’t happen again.  You can’t run a tour and try and recover from this.

Thoughts?

This would be so unfair to the members.

What about the 2018 age-outs? Kids who worked their way up for several seasons to finally finish their drum corps career with The Cadets? It's April. Drill is on the field, spots are assigned. It won't be simple to move to another corps. And what if their dream was to spend their final season wearing maroon?

Nah. The 2018 Cadets shouldn't have to suffer for this. This is on George.

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6 hours ago, gbass598 said:

No, you are twisting my words. The article says that this issue and these women were brought to the attention of the board by a small group of alumni who were concerned about his leadership. My concern is that the people who facilitated this could potentially have other motives to exploit these for other means. I’m not saying they did or that they are but the statement doesn’t eliminate that possibility. There seems to be a 3rd party that facilitated this as it appears those who were directly impacted by this behavior we’re not the ones who initiated the reports.

I quote directly from the article:

”The women had agreed to share their accounts after being contacted by a group of alums of the organization who had concerns about Hopkins' leadership.”

You could be right about some people having ulterior motivations, I suppose, but it doesn't matter. If the allegations are credible--and everybody here seems to believe they are--how they came to light is irrelevant. Sexual predators who don't want to get caught (and it should go without saying that I do want them to get caught) shouldn't make enemies.

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I would bet a crispy that DCA cuts ties with Cadets2 . They really had a thorn in their side over hotel gate and were looking for a good reason to bump them . Bet Cadets2 is gone 

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6 hours ago, camel lips said:

I won't go so far as to say Cadets are done or YEA are done. Hopkins no doubt is done with the Cadets and YEA IMHO. No way can the organization let him stay on.

YEA and The Cadets have to get out on front of this and be aggressive. Start with firing Hopkins and appointing a independent counsel to investigate everyone top to bottom within the organization and let the chips fall where they may. Gaining the parents and public trust in the organization starting NOW will depend on the long term survival of the organization. Its going to take some short term hits. If the investigation finds that the allegations are unfounded and or that No one at YEA or The Cadets were aware of the allegations then as they say..the show can go on. 

And that includes the board--and how can people who are under investigation be left in charge while that's happening? I feel like the entire organization needs to be put in some sort of receivership, as it were, until the investigation is complete. Does anyone know of a good precedent for how that could be done?

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