Band Director Tased Over a Postgame Performance — There Are Lots of Layers to This One
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the incident where a band director was tased by police after a postgame performance, and what it reveals about how schools prioritize sports over other programs.
Key Takeaways
- Sports consistently get priority over music - The incident reflects a systemic pattern where athletic programs take precedence
- The use of force was disproportionate - Tasing an educator over a scheduling dispute represents a serious overreaction
- Schools need clearer policies - Better communication and shared expectations between athletic and music programs could prevent these conflicts
Transcript
It's really unfortunate to see this high school band director get tased over a performance after a football game.
And there are, of course, a lot of layers to this, a lot of issues for us to grapple with as a society, and I'm sure other people will analyze those much better than I could.
But two that I wanted to comment on are, first, can you imagine this scenario occurring, this situation happening to a white band director?
Like, I personally could not imagine this kind of thing happening.
Like, when you heard this story you kind of knew in advance that the band director was going to be black, right?
That this is the kind of thing that could only happen in America to a person of color.
And I think that's obviously the main thing that we have to grapple with here.
The other thing I think we have to grapple with is Can you imagine the roles being reversed between band and football?
As a band parent, my kids are not old enough to be in marching band yet, but it seems to me like I've seen halftime show performances get cut short because the football game had to resume because time was up.
And that was kind of the situation here that there had been an agreement that they would play after the game, you know, finish their performance or whatever.
And yet they were told they didn't have enough time to do that.
They had one more song and that was what the band director was saying.
was advocating for.
And I just can't imagine a halftime show running long and then the football game not having time to finish and the players and coaches being told, sorry, you have to go home before the game's over.
You can't finish your game because we're out of time because the band took too long.
If we reverse the roles here between the musicians and the athletes, I can't really see that happening.
And I think if we want to have a society where stuff like this doesn't happen, we've got to grapple, of course, with the race issue.
The fact that this kind of stuff keeps happening to people of color is just not acceptable.
We have to have change.
The second thing, I think, is we have to not look at our...
band students.
And this may be kind of a narrow issue, but I think this wouldn't have happened if we saw our band students as every bit of worthy of the time to perform as we see our athletes as worthy of.
So let me know what you think.
Lots to do this one.
A difficult and an unfortunate situation, but let me know what you think.