Should you March? — An analysis of the state of Drum Corps from a new member.
So, you’re looking at joining a corps. That’s a big decision, one with a whole lot of implications for your time, your money, and who you want to become. With the commitment that this activity requires, you need 100% confidence in your desire to compete, to push through adversity, and to give your all to the activity.
With this in mind, let’s dive in.
What actually is Drum Corps?
The easiest thing to compare Drum Corps to is to Marching Band. While it’s not a perfect comparison, corps actively call themselves “Marching Music’s Major League”. An average corps consists of 150 brass, percussion, color guard members between the ages of 17–21, participating in high level competitions with other corps at events around the country, called the DCI tour. The average tour consists of several parts — auditions, winter camps, spring training, and the tour.
Auditions typically begin mid-November, just as the high school and college marching band seasons are coming to a close. Most corps traditionally hold a mix of weekend-long and single day audition, supplemented with video auditions to filter through each potential member. Corps auditions generally require two things — a music audition and a visual audition. Music auditions generally consist of the playing of several etudes, often accompanied by corps warm-up exercises or other material covered during the camp. For visual auditions, the potential member generally has to, either in a block or individually, complete several basics exercises while either playing or holding up the horn. These two scores, accompanied by input on one’s attitude during the camp, are summed up to determines one’s place in the corps. Generally, 65% of audtionees get into a corps on their first attempt, and 90% by their second.
After their audition, members generally get one of three verdicts — a contract, a callback, or being cut. If a member is contracted, they are officially a member of the corps! They commit to march with the corps for the coming season, and officially get a spot in the line. If a member gets a callback, the corps invites them to another camp, where they will get another chance to prove they belong with the corps. If a member is cut, the new member does not make the corps. However, members that are cut are allowed to march for another corps or may be given another opportunity to join the corps further down the line.
The next step, after a contract, are the winter camps. For horn-line members, the corps gets together about once a month to keep member marching technique in top shape and to begin learning show music. For color guard and percussion, corps generally hold camps much less frequently, to allow for participation in WGI groups.
As May comes around, corps begin move-ins, starting the largest leg of the season. From then on, you’re living, eating, sleeping, and marching with the rest of the corps until World Championship Finals. Over the course of about a month, the corps learns the show, putting together drill (the movements on the field) and music to build the final product. Members sometimes rehearse up to 16–18 hours a day, pushing each member to their “wall”, their physical and mental limit. This gets the member ready, however, for the challenges about to be put in front of them throughout the tour.
The majority of the drum corps experience is on the road. After spring training, members pack up their belongs and get ready live on the move. Corps travel around the US, performing at competitions in high school, college, and NFL stadiums in from coast to coast. Sleeping on buses and school gyms, rehearsing in high temperatures during the hot summer months, the tour is the opposite of easy. The experience that comes with it though, performing in front of thousands every night, the friends you make through it, and life skills you develop are difficult to make anywhere else.
While this is considered the “standard” drum corps experience, there are other ways to get a drum corps experience without the level of commitment required in world class. Open Class corps have a similar schedule to world class corps, but begin their spring training later to accommodate high school students, along with a shorter, split tour to allow some rest and recovery. Drum Corps Associates has an even easier schedule, with performances and rehearsals limited to weekends only. While these corps often have more winter camps, the weekend only model allows performers to both have a job and to go home between performance weekends.
Drum Corps does not come without a cost, however. To house, feed, move over 250 people for an entire summer, along with paying salaries for 40+ staff member ends up costing each member about $4,500, including travel costs for winter camps, items for tour, and the occasional souvenir. Membership fees vary great from corps to corps, however, costing between $3,000 and $5,000. Open class corps generally have a total cost closer to $2,500, and many DCA corps cost just over $1,000.
Drum Corps is a big commitment — in every form of the sense. You give up an entire summer to push yourself to your mental and physical limits, performing in front of thousands in stadiums around the country, in far from comfortable conditions. However, from it, you build a sense of community, character, and perseverance rarely found, and hard to replicate. You join a community of people of which you’ll share a bond which no one else could possibly duplicate. And, perhaps most importantly, you come out with a life experience that will shape you, how you act, and who you are for the rest of your life. Very few other things can have such an effect.
The Elephant in the Room.
Drum Corps did not had a very good year.
Recently, several major scandals have hit the drum corps community. Let’s dive into each of them, and figure out what they mean for the activity as a whole.
On April 5th, 2018, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a report detailing several cases of sexual assault by the longtime director of the Cadets, George Hopkins. Over the course of 40 years, Hopkins made unwanted advances on several women, including organizational staff and corps members. Since the report came out, nearly 8 months from the time of writing, the Cadets have done all the following:
- Fired Hopkins, removing from his positions as director of the Cadets and CEO of Youth Education in the Arts.
- Replaced the entire board of directors for the Cadets parents organization, Youth Education in the Arts.
- Replaced Hopkins with Scott Litzenberg as Cadets corps director.
- Replaced Hopkins with Vikki Ferrence Ray as new Executive Director of Youth Education in the Arts.
- Replaced Youth Education in the Art’s board of directors with new, more diverse board.
- Completed outside investigation into Youth Education in the Arts, specifically with a focus on inside knowledge on Hopkins’ prior misconduct.
- Completed an outside audit of finances, and cutting operational costs by folding feeder corps Cadets², cutting staff, and selling unused resources to maintain financial stability.
- Performed in the 2018 DCI Tour despite a late re-write of their show, and major staffing changes just before move-ins.
Beyond Hopkins, Pioneer Drum and Bugle Corps came into the spotlight for the 2019. Pioneer, and their longtime director Roman Blenski, have had a history poor quality of life for members, medical negligence, and questionable hiring decisions. Within the previous 10 years, Blenski has:
- Knowingly hiring a sex offender to the percussion staff, and refusing to fire them after the public was made aware.
- Hired a bus driver with a criminal record including grand larceny and drug possession.
- Refused to treat injured corps members — leaving care to other members in the corps.
- Left injured corps members at hospitals or urgent care centers without corps staff to monitor the injured students, or leaving them behind at said care centers and continuing tour.
- Not maintained the corps owned buses — leading to several cases where members were stuck in unlivable conditions on tour, or even forced to sleep in a parking lot overnight while a bus was being fixed.
- Made several racist comments — including calling skinny members “Auschwitz survivors” and telling Japanese members that they will get plenty of rice on tour.
- Highly discouraged whistle-blowing of poor conditions within the corps — actively calling whistle-blowers “snitches”, and stating “If your dad is beating you, you wouldn't go tell people, would you?”
See Tricia L. Nadolny’s report for more details on Pioneer.
Following their suspension, Pioneer has replaced their board, and removed Blenski as CEO of Pioneer Drum and Bugle Corps. However, Pioneer recently reported that Pioneer had not cut ties with Blenski, and will continue to have him as an active member of the Pioneer organization.
On May 15th, 2018 Tricia L. Nadolny posted another report of a sexual predator on a Drum Corps staff. Joel Moody, a former Florida high school band director, was stripped of his teaching licence in 2010 after sending lude texts to a member of his band. Despite this, Moody was hired to the staff of the Crossmen in 2012, rising to the position of assistant corps director in a matter of years. Days after the report was released, Moody was quietly released from the corps, and Crossmen director Fred Morrison stepped down as chairman of the Drum Corps International board.
In the early fall of 2018, the entire educational staff of the Oregon Crusaders resigned. Beyond this, many former members reported that all but one vet would not be returning for the 2019 season of the Crusaders. According to these member reports, many high level staff at Oregon Crusaders ignored member injuries, created poor living conditions, and ignored the unwanted sexual advances on several corps members. While Oregon Crusaders vaguely mentioned a plan to create a “human resources committee” in a late September Facebook post, many remain unsatisfied the actions taken by the Crusaders organization to combat the issues raised throughout the 2018 season.
To analyze each of these issues, let’s split them into 3 parts — sexual assault, medical ignorance, and lack of communication.
The level of communication in both Pioneer and the Oregon Crusaders was each of their greatest downfalls. Your members are your greatest asset, and refusing to listen to their concerns does not only allow major issues to slide, it also creates a strong sense of resentment from the corps to the staff. Beyond this, when the corps actively suppresses member complaints, that corps is diving into a realm of member negligence that will result in disciplinary action, as seen in the case of Pioneer. Progress is being made for member-staff communication throughout the drum corps community — more channels of communication are being built everyday — this does not make up for those who either lack or ignore each of these modes. Corps need to take responsibility for maintaining safe environment for their members, and listening to member concerns.
Medical negligence is an outright danger to every member, and should even further creates an unsafe member environment. While many injuries on tour can be treated wit ibuprofen, stretching, and rest, I’ve heard one to many stories involving severe member injuries to not be concerned about a lack of medical staff. A corps medical staff is the first line of defense for keeping a corps in top-top shape — managing medicines, helping with the occasional sprained ankle or migraine, and making sure every performer is as healthy as can be. Beyond this, the medical staff are the first responders when and if a member has a severe medical emergency on tour. From broken bones, dangerous falls, dehydration, and heat exhaustion, medical staff assists in those critical moments right after injury. For a corps not to have medical staff means that they place financials over their member safety, a trade that should never even be an option.
As a blanket fact, any sexual predator should not be allowed in any position on a drum corps staff. Over the past couple of months, we’ve seen this in two forms — people hired with prior knowledge of their past, and those who committed assault while in the staff. When a staff member commits sexual assault while on the staff, as seen in the case of George Hopkins, the corps may not actually know about the member’s actions. When a corps hires a member to staff knowing their past, there is an issue with the corps. No organization should hire members to an educational staff who have a record of sexual assault. Rather than being a “bad apple”, this shows the organization has placed the value of the new staff over the safety of the corps, the trade that should never be made.
What can we take away from this? More than any individual thing a corps may have done, the environment in that corps is what matters the most. “It’s why so many of our members leave”, states Brett Luce, a former Pioneer staff member said of the environment of Pioneer, “they go to other corps, where they’re safe and have high-quality experiences”. The problem lies in how a corps values their members, rather than a single event. If a corp can remove a bad apple, improve their program, and come back, the organization has not only taken care of an issue, but made their program stronger as a whole. However, when an organization allows members to go under the line, it would take a lot more than a change of face to show me that the corps really has corrected course.
With this in mind, should you join Drum Corps?
If you want to join a drum corps, one thing is most important — you have to want to do it. I know that seems stupid, but you REALLY have to want to do it. The financial, time, and effort commitment you put into corps is what will define whether you should or should not do Drum Corps. If you think corps, is cool, and you just want to try it out, you will not survive the summer.
However, if you really want to do Drum Corps, and you are mentally and physically up to the challenge, I do not think that these previous scandals should keep you from marching corps. As a rule of thumb, always look into the corps before you just audition. Not only will this keep you safe, it will also help you find out whether that corps fits the experience that you want to have. Drum corps is a community, and are always looking to help new members find a home. Sites like Reddit and Twitter have prolific communities that are always there to answer questions one may have about corps or the community as a whole. Talking to vets in specific audition groups can also help gauge whether you’ll fit in that corps.
I personally think Drum Corps is worth the experience, even with the scandals and the extremely high physical and mental cost. However, I know this position is unique — I’m a white male, in college, in a financial position where paying for corps is non-issue. I know that for most people, something listed above is an issue, and that will keep them from participating. Beyond this, many are uncomfortable joining the activity as many things have come to life over the past few months. And for those reasons, this is not an easy choice. Look at the factors, talk with your parents, and make a decision that works best for you and those around you. Drum corps is an experience like no other. Just make sure you know it’s for you.