So this OSU dude got fired because the shitty band brats he directed were hazing eachother.
Apparently, these post high school nerds were inducting freshman to the group by ritualistically passing on the baton of grab-assery. And director Jon Waters got left with the shitty end of the drum stick. Why? Because the “simulated sex acts” and “members responding to demeaning nicknames of other members” and “groping” they did all happened while he was around. And because he (just doing what his momma probably taught him) didn’t snitch, he got shizcanned from the band.
This would be depressing if it weren’t so dumb.
Sad because he’d been with them a long time and stupid because he’s not to blame.
It’s like firing every president who inherits a national debt (of a number so big it won’t fit on the counter board) and can’t mitigate it much during his brief incumbency. This hazing “culture” in the marching band, as Waters put it, had been going on long before he ever came on the scene. And I get it. They’re sex-starved band geeks who’ve finally left the cruel corridors of high school for co-ed dorms. And they’ve got that whole mentality going on that serial killers have right before they start wanking outside their neighbors’ windows at night and dressing up corspes that live in the woods – being teased their whole lives and being undateable – to suddenly having the bit of power that goes with the seniority of stomping around and blowing brass instruments for a a few years. They need to release that pent up sexual frustration. And for freshman coming in, they just like the camaraderie of same-interest people, so they comply.
As for Waters intervening, need I remind you – this is college? Not KinderCare?
How’s he supposed to know these little shits are marching into the stadium in their skivvies after dark to flick eachother in the penises or whatever it is they did? It’s college. Kids are going to act ridiculous. I don’t get the haze-ism, either. Why would a bonded marching band act any less ridiculous than the trust fund tri phi’s down the street? I watched many a timelessly classic tradition be carried out during my university years (*adjusts cane, fondly staring into mid distance with glistening nostalgic eyes*)
They got creative, too. There was everything from carrying rotten cabbages around campus or filling up trash bags with liquor puke to getting pledges drunk on Bourbon street and making them go home with a stranger of upperclassmen’s choosing – less mild, considering the girl who got roofied first and AIDS after (and though that sounds like my usual brand of hyperbolic storytelling, sadly – not in this case). After learning these horrid tales, walking past their no-longer-recognized-as-a-sorority-but-still-operating-underground house was reminiscent of passing haunted homes when we were kids.
Comparatively, most of the stuff OSU did sounds too lame and uninspired to even mention much less pink slip their conductor dude. Putting a condom on banana with your mouth? Finding a dildo on a bus? Rubbing tits together? Sitting on laps of other dorks and feigning sexual climax? What are we – twelve? No wonder he didn’t report anything. These are the kind of games that high school pariahs think the popular kids are playing, so they start doing it once they get enough fellow trekkies around.
He probably was just proud they survived high school instead of ending it at a noose’s end.
Can hazing get out of hand? Yeah. But so can alcohol. In fact, there was that one kid I heard about who rolled off his top bunk while blacked out and got dead on impact. You know what we did? We said: “drink responsibly”. And true to Darwin’s rules, those who did – kept living good lives. Or had good livers. If a death happened and my campus didn’t fire firewater, they shouldn’t fire Waters from OSU. Unless he was partaking in games of crotch-banana variety with the undergrads, it’s not his problem and he shouldn’t be booted. That’s like buying a new house because yours got dirty. Why not do the more obvious thing and hire cheap labor from in front of Home Depot to tidy up clean it up yourself?
So don’t punish the dude who needs to earn a living and probably has a family to support.
Expel or suspend these horny horn players instead to example-set for hazers.