<p>^^^^^^I completely agree.</p>
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58 year old me would be even less likely.</p>
<p>Totally agree Singersmom07. I am so flabbergasted that I can’t even think what to write so your post says it for me. I am further astonished that there are people who think these things are ok.</p>
<p>18-year-old me would have just quietly quit, but mature adult me would have made a big stink-- as the mature adult parent of one band member apparently did when they found out what their child was subjected to.</p>
<p>What really struck me first was that women weren’t allowed in the band until 1973! Really?? Then, of course, all of this stuff smacks of immature male humor. Girls go along with it to prove they are good sports. And in this band, they were still a definite minority. Not that girls can’t think of creative ways to torture each other, just not penis humor.</p>
<p>There’s a passage in the recent best-selling mystery Gone Girl about girls pretending not to mind such stuff…it’s brilliant.</p>
<p>just adding that it isn’t any more okay for guys to be subjected to this. It"s not okay to have their inclusion depend on going along with misogynist behavior they might find abhorrent. It’s not okay to sexually objectify them, either. Not every college man is a jerk.</p>
<p>for those who say it’s just underwear – I can’t imagine how threatened and vulnerable you would feel. When this is accepted, it’s a pretty short step to assault. Paired with the ESPN commentary on women not “provoking” domestic assault, it’s a smh day!</p>
<p>It’s a disgrace that the previous band directors got away with this- the administrators didn’t have the guts or power to get rid of them- they probably have nice pensions- this guy with no tenure gets left to take the fall. Apparently it’s been going on for years, at least since the late 1990s, when the current director was a member of the band. Disgusting all the way around.</p>
<p>You are correct, greenbutton. I didn’t mean to imply that it was okay for guys to be treated that way, either.</p>
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<p>Thank you, garland.</p>
<p>People fundamentally do not understand what hazing is. What people do is not so much the issue; it’s that they are forced to do it to maintain membership in their organization.</p>
<p>In this case, students have to weigh their love of music, kinship with other band members, and the schools spirit they feel participating in games against the denigrating activities they are forced to take part in.</p>
<p>@Cardinal Fang</p>
<p>I completely agree</p>
<p>I am just shocked that this has gone on so long.</p>
<p>This has probably been highlighted in the stories I’ve read just because it’s so offensive, but did anyone else recoil in horror at the female student having to simulate an orgasm on her brother’s lap? I mean, damn.</p>
<p>That was pretty much where I started to think, hmmm, I bet there was a lot that went on that none of them will ever admit to. I mean, who’s going to tell THAT to their mom?</p>
<p>Waters started in the band as an undergraduate, playing sousaphone all four years during college. He graduated in 2000 and became a graduate assistant with the band, its assistant director and then interim director under Jon Woods, who retired after 25 years. Waters told an OSU Alumni Club gathering in Chillicothe in March his was “the greatest job in America.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.daytondailynews.com/ap/ap/ohio/ohio-state-university-fires-marching-band-director/ngm3D/”>http://www.daytondailynews.com/ap/ap/ohio/ohio-state-university-fires-marching-band-director/ngm3D/</a></p>
<p>Waters had been involved with The Ohio State Marching Band since 1996. He knew exactly what was going on. No excuses. </p>
<p>I think what was going on in the band was wrong. But…I think this is a case of “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” Rather than telling the director that he needed to make sweeping changes, they just made him into the sacrificial goat, even though he’s only been in charge for a couple of years–and he did make some (inadequate) changes. He was present at the “Midnight Ramp” because in previous years with no adult supervision, they almost drank themselves to death. You think his direct boss didn’t know this kind of stuff was going on?</p>
<p>^^ Agreed.</p>
<p>The guy has been associated with the band for twenty years. He knew perfectly well that there was rampant sexual harassment.</p>
<p>He became the band director a couple of years ago. If he wanted, he could have stood up and said, “This pervasive sexualization stops NOW. No more Rookie exams, no more Midnight Ramp, no more simulated sex acts on the bus. If I or one of my assistants hear you using a sexual nickname, you’re suspended from the band for a week, and that goes for any other sexual harassment too. I mean it.” And then he could have kicked some ass and taken some names.</p>
<p>He could have done that, but he didn’t.</p>
<p>The previous director was there for 25 years. Nobody noticed any of this until after he had retired? That’s the only part of this that sticks in my craw. The new guy didn’t make big changes because his bosses didn’t tell him to do so, and the band was extremely successful and popular. Then somebody took it public and filed a complaint, and suddenly this guy’s head must roll (but nobody else’s).</p>
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<p>yes… the Michigan band just eats chocolate cake and plays kickball. give me a break.</p>
<p>Are you saying that the Michigan band forces new members to march around in their underwear, answer to degrading sexual nicknames and simulate sex acts for the amusement of veterans? What is your evidence for that? Where is your evidence that this degrading hazing and humiliation is the norm?</p>
<h1>50 Yes, that was really sickening.</h1>