2024 Week 4: Utah Tech (0-3) @ UC Davis (2-1) I was the student manager in 2019 during the suspension, so technically I was the last manager of the "old" band and first one of the "new" band. As far as I'm concerned, the "new" band is substantially the same as the old one, just with new branding. Even the full dress uniforms they have now were planned before the suspension, so they'd be worn now regardless of whether it happened.
The band might be quieter now, but from everything I heard from those who graduated after me, this had to do with losing a lot of collective knowledge from a year and a half of little activity during covid while older students still graduated, plus having some individual student leaders who aren't that into sports.
I haven't heard anything whatsoever about limiting time the students spend together, but when I was part of the student leadership when we were coming back from the suspension, a big focus was on making a clearer separation between "band time" and "non band time." Of course they didn't say this, but the purpose was to limit the school's liability for anything that happened at parties, bondings, etc. that they knew would still end up happening.