Posts from — March 2004

Thanks roommates!.

Just what I want to after two full days of convention, in addition to packing and getting a bunch of stuff set up on my laptop. Convention was good, though I felt exhausted continuously because of the last week being so hectic. Step shows were amazing tonight, as usual. I was glad to see KJ (Ken Jackson) elected NED president… he’s one of those people I felt like I could trust and depend on after meeting him only briefly. I realized he looked like my old manager from Travelers, Bo, too.

Plenty to do tonight, might as well get started…

OK, I’m at Kutztown now but I think I really need to clear things up. Three or so posts ago I wrote about margo leaving the band, and as of now there are 13 comments on that. Reading some of the replies to my post have honestly left me wondering what people were replying to, while others have made me think that my words are being misinterpreted. I’m only going to address Margo’s post for now, but I’ll write a much more detailed analysis later.

To quote margo (though she wasn’t the only one to say this):
Noticeably missing from the letter was anything to do with a sorority. I must say I was quite disappointed when reading all this today to find that it had even been brought up. The only comment I will offer is this: Theta is not the reason I left band, not even one of them.

Okay… not ONCE in my post did I suggest that Margo had quit because she was in a sorority. I know this isn’t the reason, honestly. In fact, I think the reference to Lauren’s quote that came to mind is in agreement with what she’s saying more than you might think. I DO NOT want marching band to be mutually exclusive of ANY organization, and I don’t believe that joining a sorority implies that you will quit band. In fact, I specifically stated that I hope this false correlation (between sororities and quitting) comes to an end. Although I stand by my words (I’ve read them over and over again to be sure that it’s consistent with what I think), let me clearly say that I in no way intended to offend anyone with that post. In fact, I think my post and the subsequent comments were praising of Margo’s contributions to the band as well as productive in looking for ways to improve in the future.

I do appreciate everyone taking the time to comment on the post and be up front about it, it’s good that the lines of communication are open.

I’ll write more about this later, but I’m currently at KKY districts in Kutztown, so I’m going to get off the computer

Well, I got what I had coming on the 201 midterm… it’s hard to teach yourself binary multiplication and finish the test within the time period. Oh well… I guess I have a better idea how to study for the final.

I played with some of the budget numbers this afternoon and figured out that the cost of switching from vans to buses far exceeds our new instrument budget (over two years). Awesome.. or the opposite of awesome.

Well, I can now comment on the topic I didn’t really want to write about last week. Margo officially resigned as student conductor last week (quit band, too, actually). I’ve unofficially known about it since before I became manager, but it wasn’t definite until recently. I sent out the reelection notice and made up this web page for the band to track the election and find answers. We’ll have a new student conductor within 3 weeks.

I’m sad to see Margo go (I hate how ‘go go’ sounds)… I think she worked really hard last year, even when not many were helping out. I’m worried that this will provide a cheap and stupid excuse for other people to quit. I don’t really see much I can do about this, though… people looking for an excuse will find one.

I’m hoping we can use this as something to learn from. For this reason, I asked her to write to me explaining her motivations and she was nice enough to write about a page-long letter. One thing I’d like to work on is the role of the execs in the band (which she mentioned in the letter). We are not gods of the band… we were elected by our peers to serve the band. We should be as firm and strict as we need to be to get the job done efficiently, but we should always get feedback from band members outside of practice and keep an open dialogue on how we can improve. Is this idea too vague to be implemented? Maybe, but I think if we shift our attitudes a bit it’ll trickle down and make a noticeable difference. Being responsive doesn’t mean being weak, and I think the more responsive we are, the more respect we’ll earn from the band. I’ll bring this up at a future exec meeting.

One random thing I remember from fall of 2002 was Lauren G. talking to Margo about how Margo was joining a sorority. Lauren said something to the effect of “Nobody who has joined a sorority their freshman year has stayed in band”. I remember thinking that was a sort of rude thing to say, and thought that Margo would break that streak. Hopefully Michelle and/or Jen will, though.

In other news, the powers that be in the music department have decided that we’ll only be taking buses to flames (away games) instead of vans. Conservative estimates show that this new cost will exceed our budget for new instruments over two years, which is quite bad since we need some new instruments. Provided that the student senate doesn’t mind allocating money for buses for some reason, I don’t mind too much, but I’m very worried they’ll see that this isn’t worth the expense.

I’m getting a good feeling about recruitment, though (probably without reason yet, but whatever, it’s good).

Remember how I wrote that I’d have a lot of free time this weekend… LIES! It was generally a good weekend, but I managed to make myself feel like I was busy even when I was bored (briefly). This week is going to be wild… so much stuff to do.