With all due respect, I don't think that's a fair characterization of what's happening with the band. I recently graduated and still know a lot of people in it. Because of covid, the freshmen and sophomores have never performed with the band, and the junior class was already pretty small and only had two quarters of band before covid hit. Only the seniors have ever experienced a Picnic Day. It will take some time to rebuild from covid, but they will.

I didn't care for some of the recent changes (though the "new band" thing is more of a rebranding attempt than anything since it's the same music, students, instruments, etc.), but the vast majority of the changes were for the best. It wasn't visible from an outsider's perspective, but there was a lot of dysfunction in the band's officer council that often really hurt the band as a whole. The structural changes specifically addressed those problems.

As for the staff, while the assistant director is originally from the midwest, the director is originally from around here and went to UC Davis and University of the Pacific before temporarily living out there. I've had nothing but positive experiences with both of them, and they genuinely care about the students.

Or the band in full dress.

I happened to pass through right where it happened earlier that day. I remember seeing one of the firefighters wiping off one of the firetrucks. Apparently the shooter shot at a firefighter but only hit his boot. It's so weird to think that happened only a few hours later.

On behalf of the band, I'd like to thank you all for your support. I had one of the best weekends of my life, and it wouldn't have been possible without the passion that everyone put in to getting us there. Go Ags!

I'm here in the band and am super excited for this game! Go Ags!

As a current bandsmen, thank you so much for your support! We are really excited for this and it means a lot to us that so many people are willing to support us. I know our director and student officers have been working really hard since we beat UNI to make this a reality. We all appreciate everything everyone is doing for the band. Go Ags!

I'm a huge advocate of going but it depends on whether or not we can get the funds to go. I'm hoping we can make it feasible. I was on the March Madness trip in 2017 and that was amazing. It would be great to be able to do something like that again.

I'd love for us to go, but it entirely depends on if it is feasible.

I have seen a lot about the game, but I'm also in Band-uh! so I hear about the games all the time and I might be more likely to notice football stuff than the average student. They had a table inside the coho where students could pick up tickets, right inside the west entrance where there's a lot of foot traffic. That struck me as a great place to have something like that. I've been seeing a lot of stuff on Facebook, but I like a lot of pages that put that stuff out so I'm not sure how much the average student sees.

I plan on it. I'm at every home football game and just about every men's and women's basketball game. A couple years ago I had no interest in sports, and reading these posts actually helped me get really into it.

I'm also a regular reader of this website but I never post anything. I'm a current student and am pretty thrilled about this game. I am trying to get a lot of my friends to go, but most of them are in the Band-uh! so they'll already be there. Hopefully at least a few other of my friends will go. If they don't, they'll miss out.