From today’s Crain’s Cleveland Business:

Musicians at Hiram marching to new beat

By SHANNON MORTLAND

8:26 am, August 28, 2006

Hiram College has formed its first marching band.

About 40 Hiram students have established and will run the Terrier Sound Marching Band under James Bane, a music faculty member who will be the band’s adviser.

The band’s first performance will be Sept. 2, when Hiram opens the football season at home against Carnegie Mellon University.

When I was in college, the marching band was everything. If you weren’t in a fraternity, you were in the marching band. (At the time at Drake University, my alma mater, the marching band was still all-male…) But since then I’ve had the impression that except for some big schools like Ohio State, and certainly the historically black colleges of the South, the institution of marching band was in decline. So it’s interesting to see a new band being organized, and by the members themselves. (I was actually a member of the Drake marching band my first year of college. It was a less obnoxious way to deal with the physical education requirement, although in fact, marching band was a whole lot more work. But I was not about to take Running 101 or whatever might have been offered in P.E. Those were in the pre-enlightened P.E. days that we have now, where kids can take tennis or tango lessons or whatever.