“Failure to Protect”

[Weaklefthand4ever]

4 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

For instance, I had to look up FUD.  I was thinking, is that like FUBAR?  (It isn’t) 

Don't feel bad...I did too LOL. 

[JimF-LowBari]

35 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

Thank you for that perspective.  It seems that the price tag for ruining a life is very low. 

But can’t fire Paterno... #### think of what it will do to the football program.

oops hit a flashback..... yet another parallel

[Terri Schehr]

6 hours ago, BigW said:

Hmm. All of this should hopefully make 2019 safer, but it shouldn't have taken a hue and outcry of this magnitude to do that. Keep in mind Larson was with the Cavies SoundSport team as of last season. For whatever reason, people have let this guy slide over and over. I have my thoughts why, and they're disturbing. The risk of having people like that around is insane for many good reasons. Promises that it won't happen again/they will behave really don't cut it.

 

I have had my thoughts on this subject now for years since Sandusky blew up all over the place out this way. I'm coming to the conclusion that crimes of this nature are sentenced too lightly by the current laws in place. Sandusky got 30-60 years for 45 counts. Do the math as to how many years the average sentence time for each crime was.  A person can get 3-7 years for check forging in PA, a 3rd degree felony for example. Food for thought.

Thank you for that perspective.  It seems that the price tag for ruining a life is very low. 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Terri Schehr

[karuna]

23 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

Thank you for that perspective.  It’s seems that the price tag for ruining a life is very low. 

I think a lot of people were misguidedly trying to "protect" their corps or the activity as a whole.  So they "hushed" things up.  Additionally most of these folks were around when drum corps was far less careful with the well-being of the members.  So they have a very muted reaction to (for example) a staff member and a student having a consensual sexual relationship.  

The unfortunate result is that when these abuses are finally out in the open,  the fact that so many adults in a position of authority failed to act makes the attempted hushing up even more egregious.  It's one thing to have an incident;  it's quite another to have those you trust actively enable more incidents by covering things up.  

Not excusing this behavior -- just trying to explain it.  They all knew better.  

Edited December 16, 2018 by karuna

[HockeyDad]

5 hours ago, garfield said:

I did not get all "pissy" with you last time you brought up Larson, I got all pissy with you because you insist that Dan A had some obligation to do something that he didn't do.

That's been my contention against your Larson discussion; the man sounds like a pig to me (and looks like one, too) and I wouldn't defend him or his actions in any way.

I'm focused on the morbidly mistaken and foolhardy notion that getting rid of Dan for optics reasons makes any sense at all.  You keep saying he ignored you and didn't act.  He did act.  He just didn't act in the way you think he should have.  I don't think many people take into count how small our activity is and how difficult it would be to replace Dan and his staff for the money they are now being paid, train them, then expect them to both step into tour management AND pull off the season just beginning.  

Hobbling DCI's ability to hold a tour and generate revenue is not the solution to holding Dan accountable for Larson's participation OR not doing what you think he should have done.

 

Holding the man in charge of DCI accountable for having sexual predators scattered about all over the activity is hardly for optics. And if I hear one more time that the Executive Director of Drum Corps International has no ability to act due to the structure of DCI, then DCI needs to fail due to its rank incompetence at organizing itself. 

Look, I know in this day and age everyone yearns to be a victim and no one is accountable for anything. So yes I’m swimming against the current of our culture. But if you’re in charge, you need to be held accountable, if only because you’re in charge. Even if you personally had nothing to do with it. And also, nobody is irreplaceable. Nobody. The care and well being of the participants in the activity are what need to come first, not the ability to tour and the endless pursuit of money.  Maybe having these priorities backwards played a part in creating this mess. 

[Terri Schehr]

11 minutes ago, karuna said:

I think a lot of people were misguidedly trying to "protect" their corps or the activity as a whole.  So they "hushed" things up.  Additionally most of these folks were around when drum corps was far less careful with the well-being of the members.  So they have a very muted reaction to (for example) a staff member and a student having a consensual sexual relationship.  

The unfortunate result is that when these abuses are finally out in the open,  the fact that so many adults in a positions of authority failed to act makes the attempted hushing up even more egregious.  It's one thing to have an incident;  it's quite another to have those you trust actively enable more incidents by covering things up.  

Not excusing this behavior -- just trying to explain it.  They all knew better.  

I talked to a girlfriend of mine about this on Friday.  She knows absolutely nothing about drum corps.  A civilian as I call my non-drum corps friends. 

I text’d her the article from Thursday and asked for her perspective as a civilian.  

She said that she believes that there was a deep coverup because people don’t want to lose an activity that they fiercely love.  

[Weaklefthand4ever]

7 minutes ago, karuna said:

I think a lot of people were misguidedly trying to "protect" their corps or the activity as a whole.  So they "hushed" things up.  Additionally most of these folks were around when drum corps was far less careful with the well-being of the members.  So they have a very muted reaction to (for example) a staff member and a student having a consensual sexual relationship.  

The unfortunate result is that when these abuses are finally out in the open,  the fact that so many adults in a positions of authority failed to act makes the attempted hushing up even more egregious.  It's one thing to have an incident;  it's quite another to have those you trust actively enable more incidents by covering things up.  

Not excusing this behavior -- just trying to explain it.  They all knew better.

I think you hit the nail on the head. The question in my mind is "why?" For years and years, companies avoided the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace for a multitude of reasons. To protect "talented" executives who were making the company money, to protect themselves from potential backlash if investors did not prescribe to the 'ole boy "circle the wagons mentality, and to keep one type of investigation to leading to other investigations. Hell, they're still doing it today in some ways with a large percentage of employees signing forced arbitration agreements at the point of hire (and probably most not knowing what that even means for them.) 

Granted, I was only a MM, but I can't see any of that being pertinent in DCI or DCA. There are no huge sponsors contributing millions to individual corps. Perhaps there is an "Ole Boy" network type of mentality and I've simply tuned it out. But regardless of all of that, an individual corps would more to lose than they would to gain from covering up abuses. 

I truly don't get it. smh

[Weaklefthand4ever]

13 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

Look, I know in this day and age everyone yearns to be a victim and no one is accountable for anything. So yes I’m swimming against the current of our culture. But if you’re in charge, you need to be held accountable, if only because you’re in charge. Even if you personally had nothing to do with it. And also, nobody is irreplaceable. Nobody. The care and well being of the participants in the activity are what need to come first, not the ability to tour and the endless pursuit of money.  Maybe having these priorities backwards played a part in creating this mess. 

This...right here. Well said.

[Weaklefthand4ever]

20 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

She said that she believes that there was a deep coverup because people don’t want to lose an activity that they fiercely love

That certainly could be valid, although I don't think that may be the majority of the reasoning (certainly some of it though.) I think that the culture changed (thank GOD) and that the people at the top levels of the organization, be it DCI/DCA or individual corps, never moved on. They stayed at the tops of their respective boards and committees and continued to "do things the way that things had always been done." 

As my girlfriend said after I lost at the US Open this year (she makes me feel old) "Baby, if you can't cut the mustard, you can always still lick the jar."

It's time for the old guard to move on perhaps. 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Weaklefthand4ever

[Slingerland]

A standard police background report won't indicate an instructor with a history of flirting or making suggestive comments to students (that's gross, but not a crime), or one who entered into a consensual (if totally unethical) physical relationship with an adult member of a band or corps, or one who was investigated by his or her prior employer but then quit before the investigation was finalized (which has been the case in numerous situations, both those reported and those that are generally well-known at the top, but haven't yet found their way to publication).

So what should happen is that each instructor or staff member has to agree to sign away their rights to sue others they worked for if that other employer discloses to their next potential organization that the employee was, in fact, engaged in behavior that would violate the standards of the activity. Let's say that happens: in January, DCI passes a rule that you can't work in drum corps without giving your corps the right to investigate your past fully, signing away any rights to sue if information detrimental to you turns up. Great: so then comes the hard part: no school or other past employer's lawyers would dream of letting them tell another potential employer that you (the instructor) in fact were kind of a creeper, because they don't want to open up even the faintest possibility that the org could be sued for defamation, even IF there's a piece of paper you signed giving them the right to do it.

There are some things that could be instituted: mandatory reporting by the corps of all investigations into their staff members for inappropriate behavior, those records held at the DCI office, would be a start, but it's unclear if even that would have headed off some of the most egregious offenders (no one at YEA's BOD cared to look into Hopkins, so there would have been no record, and I hadn't heard that the latest d-bag in the Inquirer story was ever investigated by a drum corps, prior to OC's investigation).

This would mean that DCI's relationship to the corps has to change dramatically, which WOULD require bylaws changes and structural changes, giving the office in Indy much more power to direct the activities of the member corps than DCI currently has. But the way it's set up right now, based off a model from 1972, DCI isn't charged with that level of responsibility, so calls for them to retroactively "do something" with information they didn't have is a non-starter.

 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Slingerland