By Tyler Petersen, Guest Column

I am writing in response to a May 2 letter entitled: &8220;Transition to new band instructor was difficult,&8221; written by junior band student Ashley Wieland. In her letter she made claims that a first-year concert band member and more importantly, a student, shouldn&8217;t be making about the band program or the teacher in charge of it.

As a senior and veteran of our school&8217;s top band for three years, a section leader and a drum major, I feel some of Ms. Wieland&8217;s comments were a complete exaggeration of the truth, and the rest were absolute fallacy.

Wieland believed that our band wasn&8217;t going to sound &8220;halfway decent&8221; at the Big 9 Music Festival. This was false. Our band correctly executed the music, and I personally heard positive comments from parents, former and current District 241 music teachers and, surprisingly, students from other schools. The bottom line is we sounded good. I&8217;m not saying we were the best band of the day &8212; because we weren&8217;t &8212; but we were certainly not the worst.

Wieland also claimed that because our new director didn&8217;t give us fall concert music until after a month into school; it was why we didn&8217;t sound &8220;halfway decent&8221; at Big 9. That makes no sense at all. The fall concert is in October, Big 9 is in MAY. In the past, concert band didn&8217;t even start looking at Big 9 music until February. This year we were given impressive and appropriately challenging music when we came back from break in January. Basically we started preparing for Big 9 a month early.

There was a problem, however. In the past when we were given challenging music to prepare for Big 9 the students who needed to practice outside of class in order to master the music did so. This year they didn&8217;t.

Being faced with this our director, Mr. Jared Eastvold, made the right decision and gave us less challenging, but still quality music that we could learn in school so that we could sound decent at Big 9, and we did.

We cannot go blaming the director for our band&8217;s performance when he gave us the music early on, and a select few refused to practice.

Wieland also blamed low enrollment in the band program to the resignation of our former director. She felt that because of that students thought the band &8220;wouldn&8217;t be good anymore.&8221; It is true that Scott and Geneva Fitzsimonds built a strong band program that was the envy of most other Big 9 schools. Blaming their resignation on our low numbers is false. The real reason is the new seven-period day at the high school that forced students to choose between being in band, or taking a free college-credit class such as advanced-placement calculus or advanced-placement biology. I&8217;m afraid that too many chose the latter.

Finally, Wieland blamed the dwindling marching band numbers on students having too much to do. Here&8217;s the deal: There is no excuse for not doing summer marching band. It takes up the first four weeks of summer and after week one there is very little practice and the only time commitment is on weekends for parades. I, along with countless other marching veterans, have easily been able to take on multiple jobs and activities as well as commit to marching band, because we must remember that years ago, summer marching was mandatory for band students. Basically these scheduling excuses are fabricated because some students don&8217;t want to admit that they don&8217;t want to do marching band because it is easier to pass the buck on your schedule than to admit &8220;I don&8217;t want to do it.&8221;

A director is largely a reflection of his or her students. If students, like Ms. Wieland, want a stronger band program they need to put in the work, too. A director or teacher can only do so much. It is the students who make or break the program because they have to take the initiative as well. If this doesn&8217;t happen nothing will &8220;improve,&8221; no matter who the director is.

Tyler Petersen is a senior at Albert Lea High School.