Social Circle Marching Band

[Michele Firmasyah]

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1st question is probably: what do any of these three things have to do with one another? Well, as another fall semester and another football season begins, a third organization that no one thinks of (no seriously, literally no one thinks of this group) has come together for their first meeting. The Tiger Band Media Team. Yes. In this digital age a social media presence is important even for a college marching band. This is my third year being apart of the group and we're still working out the kinks, but we've come a long way.

The group, originally started by our assistant band director Mr. Timothy Hurlburt has grown into a (mostly) student run class with the sole purpose of creating content for Tiger Band. The goal being to garner more students with a digital recruiting effort, and to make a name for our marching band nationally. We have been lucky to pull inspiration and tactics from one of the best social media teams in the College-verse. Clemson Football and athletics have a huge social media following and a student work structure that we pull a lot of our structural organization from. The team is divided up into different groups (although everyone contributes when and where they can). The different groups are graphics, marketing, web, social media, and video. There are typically a large variety of projects going on at any given time, so now there is some more help from two graduate assistants.

Project wise there has been a lot accomplished over the last couple of years. The marketing team has developed strategies for recruiting efforts including a Tiger Band campus tour with hand picked ambassadors to give the tours and visit schools. The video team has filmed/edited projects for the band pregame run on, FAQ videos, and now a travel vlog. The graphics teams develops graphics for all the channels, social media tactics, and sometimes the Tiger Band Alumni Association. I do graphics work, and have some experience in video editing, but I primarily work with two others on the web development team. We just launched this spring the biggest project for the media team: the Tiger Band Website.

This project was a huge undertaking for us. The old website was built in 2003, was non-responsive, with code deprecating quickly over the years. It took a lot of planning, designing, and organization to settle on what we wanted and then we hard coded from scratch. It came out great, (seriously, check it out: clemson.edu/tigerband ) and we are now moving into phase two this semester.

Updates will include, simplifying code and unifying structure. Potentially looking at using SASS, and Gulp with GitHub to lower our ridiculous line count in CSS. We will also be rolling out additional pages for each instrument section to help with all of the music. We will also continue to add content to the CUTBA website and update articles and video/social media links.

Throughout this collaboration process I have been able to learn exponentially more about coding, especially on backend development with php, jquery, and javascript. I have also learned more about tools and programs like GitHub, Atom (with teletype), shared libraries in Adobe, Slack workspace, and now Trello for organizing and setting deadlines. Working as a team, and researching/learning new tools and software has been a great experience and I can't wait to see what projects we will continue this year.

Once more, the key factor was spending lots of time together doing shared activities, activities that reflected at least some sort of shared interest or value. People join marching band for lots of different reasons, for instance, but most of them are bound to share at least a couple of those reasons in common.

Thomas is fond of saying that college is a lot like a four year TED or SXSW conference. Nowhere is this clearer than in campus events. Here are just a few of the types of events that were common at my college:

Clubs have all the benefits of campus events with the added bonus that they meet regularly. This gives you a chance to have repeated interactions with the same people, which is an important ingredient in forming friendships.

For example, when I spent seven weeks living on campus as a summer research assistant, I had the chance to make several new friends. The campus was nearly empty, and that made it feel a lot more manageable. I lived in a dorm with maybe 200 other students, and I ran into a lot of the same people while cooking dinner or doing laundry.

Hanging out in a group is lots of fun, but it can be difficult to spend enough time talking with one person to really open up to each other and get beyond surface level conversation. The best way to go from acquaintance to friend is to spend quality time talking and/or doing an activity together.

If, however, you and your friends are scattered all across the country at different colleges, as it was for me, then you have to be more deliberate. My high school friends and I have always made a point of getting together during breaks to go to trivia, have parties, and even take summer road trips. And, of course, text, call, and FaceTime regularly.

While coming into the office every Thursday and Friday I was always greeted with kindness, respect and warmth. One quality DPSCD always possessed was being able to make alumni feel like family, beyond graduation well into adulthood. As I was presented with different assignments such as creating web content for different social media channels, public relations, event planning and on-site reporting, I was able to create stories based upon different events I attended and add these to my growing portfolio. The event that began my full circle moment was #RiseUpDay2019. The district-wide professional development day that teachers and staff attend to celebrate being educators led me to seeing some of my most influential teachers from high school. I attended Cass Technical High School from 2008-2012 where my curriculum was music, and I participated in Madrigals and Concert Choir.

As #RiseUpDay2019 began I saw Cass Tech march in and so many happy memories began to pop into my head. I saw my 10th grade music theory teacher Ms. Allen leading the All-City Marching Band, my 11th grade math teacher Mr. Hunter and one of the most impactful English teachers I ever experienced, Lauralyn Taylor. Seeing Ms. Taylor triggered me emotionally because I could vividly remember the impact she had on my entire life, and how we stayed in contact via social media beyond the years of my graduation. As we began to talk, I knew this moment needed to be dissected by me and could possibly lead to an even bigger full circle moment down the line.

For language help call (313) 576-0106 or visit the Interpretation and Translation Services page. DPSCD does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, religion, height, weight, citizenship, marital or family status, military status, ancestry, genetic information, or any other legally protected category, in its educational programs and activities, including employment and admissions Questions? Concerns? contact the Civil Rights Coordinator at (313) 240-4377 or dpscd.co...@detroitk12.org or 3011 West Grand Boulevard, 14th Floor, Detroit MI 48202.

The Marching Cardinals are directed by Prof. Nieves Villaseor, coordinator of Music Education/Director of Bands. Founded in 2009, the Marching Cardinals has established itself as one of the most visible, energetic spirit organizations at UIW. Comprised of students studying a wide variety of academic majors, the Marching Cardinals perform at every home football game, select away games, events off-campus, and in exhibitions at marching contests around San Antonio and Austin. The band typically plays three halftime shows and a traditional pre-game drill yearly as entertainment for the UIW football game day experience.

The Office also began an overall climate assessment for the band which included harassment education sessions and consent workshops throughout the semester. Attendance was mandatory, with the sessions aiming to comprehensively educate all members in the problematic areas brought up by the concerned party. The band also formed the Trojan Marching Band Equity and Inclusion Committee to oversee efforts to address toxicity within the group moving forward.

Bartner, who celebrated 50 years as director of the program in 2019, has been a USC mainstay and, according to his students, has one of the largest salaries of any University employee. His retirement is planned for January 2021.

The areas where groupthink and dated toxic traditions overlap is the boundary the band is currently trying to outline through its work with Title IX. Certain things which were previously cultural fixtures, such as the nicknames assigned to every member of the band, have been illuminated as commonplace sources for race-based harassment.

For the most part, the marching band members welcome the efforts regardless of the mandatory nature of the education sessions and workshops on topics like affirmative consent and bystander intervention. The workshops often involve role-playing and conversations about lived experiences in hopes of realigning the culture moving forward. The nicknames of the entire band were evaluated, and the potentially problematic ones were flagged for change.

The band has been in hot water before, notably in 2000 when members were accused of stealing $30,000 worth of equipment from the UCLA band equipment truck and writing a hate message on a saxophone case. No charges were brought, however. Other, more recent instances alleged include a student being allowed to wear a confederate flag at a Halloween event and an alleged anti-BLM post appearing on the Facebook page of Liz Jenkins, wife of assistant director Sean Jenkins, who works with the colorguard. Still, students like Bhumbla praise the staff for immediately taking action once the letter had been delivered.

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