George Hopkins Charged with two Counts Sexual Assault

[garfield]

8 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

199k a year...  talked about ###### up priorities...... Hope everyone who donates to a corps knows how much staff is being paid. 

Somebody did a study once 

If I recall, it showed that Hop was, by far, the most highly-paid director.  I remember discussion at the time focused on the other profit-making entities (primarily USBs) and Hop's responsibilities in "running" them as businesses for justification of his higher pay.  Most directors that get paid make fractions of this, and many, very many, get paid little or nothing.

 

[George Dixon]

7 minutes ago, garfield said:

Somebody did a study once 

If I recall, it showed that Hop was, by far, the most highly-paid director.  I remember discussion at the time focused on the other profit-making entities (primarily USBs) and Hop's responsibilities in "running" them as businesses for justification of his higher pay.  Most directors that get paid make fractions of this, and many, very many, get paid little or nothing.

Heck in drum corps some are lucky it doesn’t COST them money to work at it lol

[garfield]

7 minutes ago, Tim K said:

A great deal has to do with how typical George Hopkins' situations is in the activity. I would say in many ways he is atypical. Yes every director wants what is best for his/her corps as GH did. He did push the envelope during his time with DCI, but again that is not that different from other directors. He called all the shots, but again that is not that different from other directors. However, what makes a difference is that we may be dealing with someone who could be diagnosed with a narcissistic personality, which should be stated at the outset is not an excuse for criminal behavior, and this adds a different dimension. His rants were like no others. When people disagreed with him, he reacted in a way that differentiated him from other directors. He also believed rules did not apply to him yet he made sure every rule applied to everyone else. The fact that some of the behavior GH is being charged with takes place in a wok environment and some may involve spiking a drink may make this situation unique. 

I don't think we're going to hear of this kind of behavior from most corps that have an issue with sexual misconduct. This is not to minimize the seriousness of sexual abuse and misconduct. We will hear about boundary violations, perhaps some coercion, and issues we know are wrong but criminally may fall into gray area with the exception of cases involving minors, which are always criminal . We may hear of more wrong hirings. We will hear of cases which will demonstrate why we need written policies stating zero tolerance, and if appropriate involvement with law enforcement may be necessary, but GH's situation may be different.

The GH situation may be at rock bottom, but of what other posters have said in this thread and others, we may not even be at the ledge yet since all we have are stories, rumors, and hearsay. 

 

 

"I would never belong to an organization that I did not control."  -- GH

I'm not buddy, buddy with every director, but many have passed my doorstep and spent the night, and I've never heard of or talked to one who had the same viewpoint as Hop.

OK, that's probably not saying a lot.  But, yeah, there's that.

[Tim K]

5 hours ago, MusicManNJ said:

I believe any additional article will come out once the reporters have locked done the details. I do not think this will impact the additional reporting one way or another.

I know someone who, when newspapers did not have to compete with the Internet and 24/7 news cycles, was a reporter and taught journalism. The rule of thumb she used as did others, was you could have the greatest story in the world, but if you did not have names, even if they would evenutually be  disguised or not mentioned, you did not have a story. What we have heard is that a story exists but no one is willing to go on record. I think that since this has been circulating since the summer, we may need to stop waiting, and if a story does appear, it may not be the one that is rumored. 

That being said, we don't need to wait for newspaper stories to be released. Every corps should be looking at every person involved and if necessary dismissing people and notifying law enforcement if appropriate. Policies should be changed as soon as one corps has been on the hot seat. However, this will probably not happen. You would think that as prominent institutions and organizations have faced similar issues, all would learn a lesson, but sadly that does not happen.

[Liahona]

2 hours ago, dooser11 said:

Can anyone post the link to the lawsuit Hopkins filed against YEA!?

You have to have a pacer (public access to court electronic records) account.  You can set-up here  https://www.pacer.gov/ and they mail your token in the mail in about a week for that...they charge per page of info that you access.

He filed suit against yea on 8/9/2018 and the case # is 5:2018cv03393

The fact that YEA has a pending civil lawsuit against them is not a good thing from a financial perspective...perhaps this might be one reason they haven't been given clearance so to speak form DCI...I'm only speculating though...

 

[Fran Haring]

22 minutes ago, garfield said:

"I would never belong to an organization that I did not control."  -- GH

 

Well... the way things are going for him, he'll be fortunate to belong to any organization in the future.

[Terri Schehr]

 

[Terri Schehr]

3 minutes ago, Liahona said:

You have to have a pacer (public access to court electronic records) account.  You can set-up here  https://www.pacer.gov/ and they mail your token in the mail in about a week for that...they charge per page of info that you access.

He filed suit against yea on 8/9/2018 and the case # is 5:2018cv03393

The fact that YEA has a pending civil lawsuit against them is not a good thing from a financial perspective...perhaps this might be one reason they haven't been given clearance so to speak form DCI...I'm only speculating though...

 

Tricia posted the lawsuit in the article I posted below.

[garfield]

2 minutes ago, Tim K said:

I know someone who, when newspapers did not have to compete with the Internet and 24/7 news cycles, was a reporter and taught journalism. The rule of thumb she used as did others, was you could have the greatest story in the world, but if you did not have names, even if they would evenutually be  disguised or not mentioned, you did not have a story. What we have heard is that a story exists but no one is willing to go on record. I think that since this has been circulating since the summer, we may need to stop waiting, and if a story does appear, it may not be the one that is rumored. 

That being said, we don't need to wait for newspaper stories to be released. Every corps should be looking at every person involved and if necessary dismissing people and notifying law enforcement if appropriate. Policies should be changed as soon as one corps has been on the hot seat. However, this will probably not happen. You would think that as prominent institutions and organizations have faced similar issues, all would learn a lesson, but sadly that does not happen.

Oh, I disagree whole-heartedly, Tim.  THIS above is absolutely happening, or has happened months ago, and many corps had very rigorous policies already in place before the Hopocalypse happened.  Now?  I'll bet you couldn't find a corps in the entire activity that has not already adopted, or is in the process between seasons adopting, the very strenuous kinds of activity-side P&P that the most critical are calling for.  And procedures are being both shared and adopted as practice standards directly by the corps.  Many corps (Pacific Crest comes to mind) have researched and developed such strong and robust policies that they share them freely on their websites for others to adopt and amend.

Frankly, I know there's lots to discuss in the "What's wrong..." category, but I can confirm from direct experience that the religion of strong P&P that protect participants (kids and adults) is widely, if not already, completely adopted by the corps active under DCI's command.

I know many are going to question, so let me offer that there is no point in arguing that DCI should have had these policies in place to "police" the drum corps.  In the weird world of the co-op that is DCI, any central practices and procedures established are the RESULT of policies adopted by the drum corps.  That WAS the way it was.

Now, there's a new Board chair and unanimous agreement among many (not all) corps that DCI's BoD structure and power path have to change. 

[garfield]

5 minutes ago, Liahona said:

You have to have a pacer (public access to court electronic records) account.  You can set-up here  https://www.pacer.gov/ and they mail your token in the mail in about a week for that...they charge per page of info that you access.

He filed suit against yea on 8/9/2018 and the case # is 5:2018cv03393

The fact that YEA has a pending civil lawsuit against them is not a good thing from a financial perspective...perhaps this might be one reason they haven't been given clearance so to speak form DCI...I'm only speculating though...

 

The question is whether or not the BoD authorized maintaining liability insurance.  And, if not, I'd bet one could find $600m in assets from their prior BoD's personal possessions (and umbrella insurance proceeds).  In fact, I'd bet there's a lawsuit against Hop, personally, and against the prior BoD, personally, that current Cadets lawyers would enjoy tackling.