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Madison Scouts now officially co-ed


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23 minutes ago, madisonsmiley said:

Can anyone verify they're rebranding and changing their name to Sound of Indiana?

With the angst being generated here, you would think they are becoming the Madison Bon Bons.  (yes, I am old!).

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The timing of the announcement is questionable.  It makes it seem more like a 4th quarter hail Mary pass to the end zone, as opposed to an effort for gender equality among it's marching members.  I'm neither opposed to or in favor of making the corps co-ed, but until they make drastic changes in management and  develop a long term plan to get the Scouts back on track this is kinda of like putting lipstick on a pig.  

Edited by bluesman
grammar
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2 hours ago, bluesman said:

The timing of the announcement is questionable.  It makes it seem more like a 4th quarter hail Mary pass to the end zone, as opposed to an effort for gender equality among it's marching members.  I'm neither opposed to nor against making the corps co-ed, but until they make drastic changes in management and  develop a long term plan to get the Scouts back on track this is kinda of like putting lipstick on a pig.  

Exactly right. It's a self preservation move by the BOD and CK. If they were to fire CK now, just imagine all of the people who would flip out over the firing of someone who replaced a misogynistic, chauvinistic and sexist membership policy with an inclusive, diverse and woke policy. 

Edited by FlamMan
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Many many Madison alumns are cancelling their financial support of the Scouts. I have spoke with some of them and there is plenty of angst. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out for Madison. 

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Just now, FlamMan said:

Many many Madison alumns are cancelling their financial support of the Scouts. I have spoke with some of them and there is plenty of angst. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out for Madison. 

Scouts aren't exactly flush with cash. How much are these folks giving that are canceling? I suspect extremely little. 

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1 hour ago, George Dixon said:

Scouts aren't exactly flush with cash. How much are these folks giving that are canceling? I suspect extremely little. 

Madison alumni financial support has been declining for a while due to CK and the current regime alienating alumni. I believe the decline is now accelerating. 

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3 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

That’s what I’m afraid of happening.  Being all-inclusive is just fine but without some foundational changes and a solid plan for the future....  Hey, maybe this is all in the works.  Who knows?  Big time staff usually takes big time cash. 

didn't they just get a new board president?

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2 hours ago, Jake W. said:

And as I posted immediately after that, I disagree with that as well. No drum corps should be turning away a talented, hard-working kid with a good attitude solely based on the kid's gender.

If you're going to dig up posts from 200 pages ago in this thread, do it accurately.

it's been mentioned several times since.

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1 hour ago, MikeD said:

Bluecoats Beatles show in 2019 is "music only college music majors are familiar with"????  Blessed Sacrament and the Cavies both played "Eleanor Rigby" pre-DCI. BS played "Yesterday" in 1968, and the Polish Falcon's played "Michelle" same year.

Two corps playing Simon and Garfunkel, as  did loads of corps over time. 

I am a long time fan/participant, since 1963, and I recognize what is important between then and now...drum corps is the highest level marching.music activity that provides members and audience an amazing experience.

 

#### SCV playing Metallica

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Several years ago, some old marching buddies and I sat around at Allentown talking about old times and the subject of the corps we marched in possibly altering or eliminating certain traditions came up. As one would expect, there were various opinions expressed and the debate was lively.

When the topic of them possibly eliminating what we considered to be a extremely important tradition, we all sort of agreed that, "It'll never happen. The alumni would never stand for it."
As the years went on and I was teaching that same corps, I had plenty of conversations with board members and the director about all of this, and their perspective was enlightening to say the least. A perspective we rarely hear about on boards like this.

Firstly, there was indeed a very vocal portion of our alumni base who expressed their concerns about all of these changes. Which was fine. The admin was actively seeking input as they gathered information and considered their decisions, which took a lot of time. But it was the way that many of these vocal alumni expressed those concerns that really undercut their position in a big way. When you're the director or administrator of a corps and you spend countless hours/months/years working your tail off only to be basically yelled at by alumni, telling you how incompetent you are, how you're destroying the corps and sh**ting on everything that came before (in addition to other despicably vile personal insults and physical threats that cannot be printed here), you start to wonder, why are we trying to bend over backwards to please these people?

In addition, I was shown internal records being kept which indicated that a large portion of the most vocal alumni had not only never donated a single dime to the corps, but had never even volunteered to help out when the corps needed help. To be clear, this wasn't ALL the alumni, or even all the alumni voicing their concerns. But it did include many of the most vocal and combative alums. I found that to be extremely telling.

In the end, over several years, many of the traditions were updated to better reflect the times, some were (thankfully) eliminated, and the admin was pleased to know that the overall support from alumni about these changes was much larger than the dissent. And while the corps still reaches out to their alumni and can count on a certain amount of yearly contributions from them which is considerable, they also view some of the alumni as occasionally being part of the problem. The ones who don't contribute anything other than negativity, invective, and who honestly believe that the best course of action is to go back 20-30 years and do it exactly the same way they did it back then. Which simply makes no sense in 2019.

Just some two cents from somebody who never marched in the Scouts and really doesn't have any horse in this race.

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