Band’s gym exemption is necessary for graduation

Sarah Bell, Sophomore

The feedback you’ve gotten from the band has probably been to say the least, aggressive. I can guarantee you that most of us, if not all of us, including myself, agree that marching band is not in the same category as a traditional sport such as football or soccer. The part that made us so incredibly upset is the misinterpretation of what band is about, the most apparent being the gym exemption.

I’m not familiar with how sports work with gym exemptions and I wholeheartedly agree that if the band gets exemption, all sports should also get exemption. But to clarify as to why we get the exemption is because we need it. Marching band is simply a branch off of band, which is an academic class that fills the space of what would be an elective slot, the general path of a band student would be to of course have band, and then a language, in most cases for 4 years, which is what I am personally doing.

That leaves no room for social studies and orientation to business. In short, we need it to graduate. The only other option would be to take summer school and don’t get me wrong, nobody wants to have to take summer school. Despite not wanting to, I had to take us history over the summer and I found that nearly all the students in my particular class were involved in music, whether it be band or choir. Given that choir also has the same elective issue as band, why wouldn’t choir get the exemption as well?

The answer leads to my next point: in band we work hard and we’re all incredibly passionate about what we do. I acknowledge that you do have lots of respect for the band and you are well aware of our accomplishments, but you misinterpreted the whole competitive side of it. Some bands are simply “halftime bands” they learn a routine to support the sports and that’s it. At north, we are competitive, we have a total of 6 competitions this season and they are every Saturday. This last weekend we were at NIU and the day allotted to that competition alone was 20 hours.

Unfortunately, people tend to overlook what the band does but by what you said in your column, you have some knowledge in regards to it, some of the information you displayed is incorrect but as you said it’s an opinion. I can’t speak for my fellow band members but I can speak for myself when I say that the thing that hurt the most was the tone taken away from the article, which is now open for the entire student body to read and comment on and most likely agree with. Band is already mocked, made fun of an insulted on a daily basis and the fact that this article even exists genuinely hurts because it makes us feel as though our own school can’t just support us, but instead we have to call each other out.

So in conclusion, the opinion stated was the problem, the information used and the tone perceived throughout the article was the problem. Thank you for your willingness and openness to feedback and I hope that my fellow band mates don’t say anything they’d regret later on.