Stanford Marching Band Banned From the 2016 Sun Bowl

Earlier this year, the Leland Stanford Junior Marching Band, or LSJUMB, learned that they would not be allowed to travel 45 minutes to U.C. Berkeley to play in Big Game. Later, they learned that they could not travel to a science museum in San Francisco, just 30 minutes up the road -- even though the band has been trying to plan more social events that aren't centered around alcohol. "Stay on campus and binge drink!" the administration seemed to be saying. 

And today, they announced that, although the football team will be playing in the Sun Bowl this year... the Stanford Band will not. 

​The LSJUMB has been criticised and disciplined several times in the past for their actions, including:

• In the 1970s, one halftime show lampooned Cal student Patty Hearst's kidnapping with a formation called the "Hearst Burger": two buns and no patty.
• In 1990, Stanford suspended the band for a single game after their halftime show at the University of Oregon criticized the logging of the spotted owl's habitats. The band used formations in the shape of a chainsaw and in the shape of the word OWL changing to AWOL. Governor Neil Goldschmidt (D-OR) issued a decree that the band not return to Oregon for several years; the band did not return until 2001.

• In 1991, Notre Dame banned the LSJUMB from its campus after a halftime show at Stanford in which the drum major dressed as a nun and conducted the band using a wooden cross as a baton. (During the pregame show and first half of the game, the drum major had been dressed as an Orthodox Jew, where the wooden cross was part of a menorah-like baton.)
• In 1994, the Band was disciplined after playing outside the Los Angeles County Courthouse during jury selection for the O.J. Simpson trial. The band's song selection included an arrangement of The Zombies' "She's Not There." Later that year, during the halftime show of the football game against USC (where Simpson had played football), band members drove a white Ford Bronco with bloody handprints around the Stanford Stadium track, an allusion to the low-speed chase in which police followed a white Bronco carrying Simpson around the Los Angeles area.
• And, of course, The Play (John Elway was Stanford's quarterback in that game, BTW):

(Also, fun fact: Why was the band on the field? Because several weeks prior, a photographer had loaded his film backwards, triggering a whole unfortunate series of events that culminated in this.)

​But this was nothing like those past incidents.

Instead, what happened is that the band was found to be in violation of certain conduct codes. (The details are fuzzy.) Band management scrambled to meet the requirements and expectations imposed by Title IX and Organizational Conduct Board (OCB) representatives, and submitted documentation of these changes in an email early last week. They wanted to discuss lifting the travel ban to attend the Sun Bowl.

They received a reply that acknowledged the considerable time and effort management had put in... but added, 

As you know, we must decide no later than December 5 whether to grant such an exception.  Even if we were able to find time to meet with you between now and December 5, we will not have had time to carefully analyze any materials you plan to send us later today in order to provide any substantive feedback.  

Which sounds like a huge cop-out. "We don't have time to meet you, and even if we did, we still don't have time."

​Though I haven't been very active in Band the last few years (I played in the 2013 and 2014 Rose Bowl, and have remained friends with several current band members), it's clear that they've made enormous changes to their culture -- often to the rage and dismay of alumni.

And the administration has yet to acknowledge, appreciate, or even award those efforts. "We won't even talk with you because we don't have time" is a huge slap in the face to their efforts. ​

Between canceling one of Stanford's most memorable traditions, Full Moon on the Quad, during which students meet on the quad during the first full moon of the school year and make out, introduction of new alcohol rules, and this... it's becoming increasingly clear that Stanford neither cares about nor respects its students.