ISU press conference about band situation

HFCS

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What happens when two marching bands try to cross eachother's paths?

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LAClone

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Is this a serious question?

No where, and certainly not through other humans or by using your instruments as prods and intimidation. You know, stop moving and wait your turn like most of us that have ever existed a stadium are familiar with.


You understand that the vast majority of the band members aren't pushing forward, right? That they're just keeping as close as they can to the person in front of them?

Y'all are trying way too hard to blame 260+ people for the actions of a handful of bad leaders.
 

Gunnerclone

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Jul 16, 2010
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You understand that the vast majority of the band members aren't pushing forward, right? That they're just keeping as close as they can to the person in front of them?

Y'all are trying way too hard to blame 260+ people for the actions of a handful of bad leaders.

We’ve learned that a band is singular military style unit. If one person fails they all fail.
 

BCClone

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Not exactly sure.
You know, watching that video, I was thinking, why would someone shove into them since they would just end up hitting the building. It has to be when they got to the bus, someone had to cross over to get to their car in G7, haunted forest or whatever.

I have a feeling that bands don’t keep playing while getting on the bus and do break rank cause buses aren’t that wide. Probably a good time to allow people alleys to get thru will standing there waiting to load. Have a feeling that this is when the cut throughs happened.
 
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Clonefan32

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Again, you are misunderstanding what we are saying. Let me address each of the problems you are talking about:

1) Marching the band into a crowded area - This was wrong. It is the fault of the band's leadership as already discussed. This is not the fault of the individual members. It is not inherently dangerous to anyone to do this as long as everything else goes right, but it is a stupid idea that is going to clog up traffic. This was not a fatal error, the band could have simply just walked together as one unit without playing and moved with the crowd as it slowly filtered out and there would have been no real problems.
2) Unyielding band - There are two aspects to this. One, that the band kept marching forward and shoving people out of their way. This was wrong and again it was the fault of the leadership up front. This is what caused the real problems. The responsibility of the band leadership was to slow the band down or turn them around after seeing the crowd ahead. Two, keeping people out of their ranks. This was the correct behavior for everyone involved because it keeps the band together, keeps people from getting mixed in and possibly knocked over, gets the band out of there faster and eliminates the potential for conflict faster, etc as already discussed.
3)Swinging their Instruments - This was wrong by the individual members of the band. Band members practice these horn moves while playing certain songs to the point where it is muscle memory so I could understand them starting the movement by instinct, but with the tight space they should not have done it or stopped immediately if they accidentally started by reflex.
4)Playing of the Fight Song - This was primarily wrong by the Iowa band leadership. They are the ones who called up the song and the ones who had the ability to call a stop to it. They failed to do that and are in the wrong. This was also partly wrong by the individual band members. Again, the band practices following these commands to the point that they are muscle memory so I can understand if they instinctively started to play on the command, then stopped or toned it back. If they were obnoxiously playing in someone's ear, they should have quieted down or stopped playing. If it were me in that position, I probably would not have played because it's just a stupid idea to call up the song then.

Another point to bring up is that most of these things, taken by themselves, are really not egregious. Walking into a crowded area - fine. Playing music - fine. Walking as a tight group and not allowing people through - fine. Doing standard horn moves - fine. Put them all together and they create a problem. The Iowa band leadership should have known this, the individual members should have also realized this and done their part to minimize the "damage", but I am not going to blame the individual members as a whole unless they individually did something wrong (hit someone on purpose, didn't apologize if they hit someone by mistake, etc).

We don't live in a society where you can escape individual culpability by saying "someone told me to do it". It doesn't work that way.
 
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RedDog

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If I get wacked on the back of the head by a tuba I know what my muscle memory would want to do.
 

HFCS

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We’ve learned that a band is singular military style unit. If one person fails they all fail.
Ross with the awful take that this press conference was a bad idea. What the **** can we do when Iowa just lobbed a bunch of grenades. We have to defend our school and it would be negligent if they didn’t do this.

It's never a 'bad idea' to be public when a video shows a group that was supposedly 'attacked' ramming its way through a thick crowd of thousands while playing loud music in their face.

The articles running on national outlets immediately changed their perspective to reflect the reality of video evidence.

Was it a bad idea to hold a press conference when the locker room thief was proven to be an Iowa student who got access from the inside? Nope, and neither is this.
 
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clonedude

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OMG!! What a complete tool.

That little impromptu question and answer with reporters was embarrassing. Only made him look worse. A lot worse.

He basically admits they have nothing to stand on whatsoever.... but they stand by the students. Okay buddy.... that's fine...... but if you have nothing to report.... then the story is over.... move on. You've already embarrassed yourself and your university enough already.
 
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Die4Cy

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Video appears to show that while originally lining up to head for the proper exit, they changed direction and entered a crowded area.

We now need to know exactly why and how that transpired. Who made that call?

I don't really care about the rest of what members of a band are supposed to do, or whatever the last 15 pages of this thread was about.
 

HFCS

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You know, watching that video, I was thinking, why would someone shove into them since they would just end up hitting the building. It has to be when they got to the bus, someone had to cross over to get to their car in G7, haunted forest or whatever.

I have a feeling that bands don’t keep playing while getting on the bus and do break rank cause buses aren’t that wide. Probably a good time to allow people alleys to get thru will standing there waiting to load. Have a feeling that this is when the cut throughs happened.

Excellent point that you'd illustrated. A band can never enter a bus. They must just stand there until they die of old age.
 

agrabes

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We don't live in a society where you can escape individual culpability by saying "someone told me to do it". It doesn't work that way.

I feel like you either didn't read or didn't have the context to understand anything I wrote. That's fine, you and others have made up your minds.

I want to be clear that I am absolutely not saying that anyone who did anything wrong is excused by saying someone told me to do it. To hearken back to "A Few Good Men" in my own moral judgement I hold people to the same standards as the military does. You have a moral obligation to disobey someone's instructions if you have a good reason to believe that what they told you to do is going to hurt someone or break the law. This hits the people in the front of the band and the other band leadership who fully knew what was happening and had the ability to make changes to correct it - they are at fault for the major issues that happened in this incident. If you are told to do something that based on the knowledge you have is not going to hurt someone or break the law and then it turns out that what you did had consequences you could not have known about, then you are not at fault. The person who told you to do it is at fault, if they knew the result it would have. This is the situation for the people at the back of the band (95% of their band) - they did not know most of what was going on and they did not do anything wrong or out of the ordinary for a normal, reasonable person in that situation aside from a few possible minor offenses of just being general jackwagons.

How about we leave it with this - dozens of people in the Hawkeye Marching Band did things that are wrong and worthy of condemnation.
 
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ArgentCy

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You understand that the vast majority of the band members aren't pushing forward, right? That they're just keeping as close as they can to the person in front of them?

Y'all are trying way too hard to blame 260+ people for the actions of a handful of bad leaders.

Can we just say everyone has to take some responsibility and blame? Yes the band leaders should take more than others because they are supposed to be a leader. But that doesn't mean any members of the band couldn't say no or not play and slink out quietly. And if there was a person who pushed back then they take some as well. All the band members take some blame as I imagine they reveled in the win with their pride and took that right into an opposing crowd. Accept some responsibility for your weak bruise and move on. It's not like someone cold cocked you in a dark alley.
 
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