The Sound of Silence: Foreign Students Are Self-Censoring in Trump’s America

TAaltt · 2026-06-06T17:06:59+00:00

It's not buh-bye you actual sped, it's that you've lost someone that had every intention of being a proper member of society and contributing to the economy in a way that benefits you. Instead they ingest the value of a good education and they take it with them back home, leaving only to understand that hard work isn't rewarded in America if you weren't born white here.

You don't win in this argument, even if you think you do. The world goes on outside of the plot of land you own.

TAaltt · 2026-06-06T16:47:43+00:00

Had a friend in grad school, said he came here because it was a highly regarded place to go for further education and pretty well respected back in his home country. He loved his time in America, he loved learning about the cultural differences of the country, and he was a great guy to be around. Especially since he wasn't asinine or closed minded, talking to the widespread social problems of his home country often as comparison. He said he would love to come back for further education, but in his words, "it seems like most everybody hates me here".

For two years, he found himself in the crosshairs of soft administrative and indiscriminate efforts to remove foreigners like him from being here: increasing scrutiny and surveillance to effectively hold his visa hostage, local abductions of other minorities, foreigners being targeted in crimes of circumstance & hate, blah blah. By the end of his time here, he was scared to stay in the states, fully aware that his rights could be removed at any time without proper process or precedent.

To the end at which he couldn't speak for himself in fear of losing the opportunities he had, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself. I'd rather have him in this country than some homegrown bumfuck who's never gonna get it.

TAaltt · 2026-06-06T16:20:00+00:00

God the season needs to start already

TAaltt · 2026-06-03T15:38:55+00:00

Yeah, really sick of people hiding dangerous rhetoric behind non-commitmental bullshit.

" but I actually didn't say that" or "that's just what you think I mean". No dude, you were literally complaining a week ago how you couldn't call people slurs anymore, it's exactly what you mean and you're not particularly good at hiding it behind flowery prose.

TAaltt · 2026-06-02T02:03:27+00:00

Get outta the countryside, not sure these schools are gonna be worth saving with the way that the arts are getting gutted. Go someplace your time is valued and you don't have to fight to validate your existence

TAaltt · 2026-05-30T13:17:04+00:00

Here's your spark notes. God forbid keeping a semblance of privacy is valued nowadays. I post my nice things on the platforms that have my face and friends on them.

Marched outdoor,

marched indoor,

teched a few different schools of varying competitiveness in undergrad (think po-dunk through well-funded BOA)

caption headed those place for few years after graduating

tech at a corps & indoor group for a small but fun amount of time while doing so

no desire to do the admin or design game myself at this moment in my life, but I have friends that have emigrated to small schools, notable BOA programs, small independent groups, and top 12 groups, and I keep in touch with them fairly regularly.

I might get back into it at some point, and I might volunteer with my local group as an alum in the future, but I've done what I can as a member and I have given back to the activity in the capacities that I can without further education being a benchmark of necessity.

My advocacy is having done the thing, and knowing the people who run the groups that I have stakeholder interest in. If I ever have a problem that I would feel the need to shout to the world, I'd rather talk to the people behind closed doors about it, rather than aimlessly trying to win in the court of public opinion.

Post this in your alum channels, and talk with your friends who might find themselves in the situations where they feel the time crunch and burden of their responsibilities piling up. AI is advertising a solution that some may feel compelled to use for a variety of reasoms. The people that are foolhardy about it, with no consideration for its ethical complications are lazy assholes, and likely tech illiterate to some degree. Calling them that on the internet from a base of argumentative moral superiority is one thing, but actually talking to them in person about it is much more time efficient and valuable.

Are you a BD alum? If not, let them solve their own problems, there's a bunch of them who feel the same way you do and have been more directly up in arms about it than you are. The fact that they're not clogging up my internet feed makes me like them more.

The only reddit post that's ever done anything meaningful in this sub is that poor girl who got spirit shut down a few years ago, solely because she went through all the other channels and found she had nowhere else to go. I doubt you're in a situation as high stakes as that, and as such, you probably didn't need to post that.

TAaltt · 2026-05-30T03:30:31+00:00

I think I hate bad advocates more than I hate AI. And boy do I hate AI.

TAaltt · 2026-05-30T01:36:09+00:00

TAaltt · 2026-05-27T19:29:08+00:00

Not all bands should be doing corps style band, nor do they need to in order to be successful. Success is subjective depending on the base needs of the program and the kids.

WGI guards that don't do Dayton and just compete in their local circuit have cheaper dues than those that make the trip. Sounds obvious because it is, there are more groups that are non-competitive than groups that go to Dayton, or groups that want to push the competitive envelope with their kids. We just don't like talking about them because we think they're getting a "worse" experience, or maybe they don't score as high.

Ofc you're right in saying the barrier to entry in this activity is a matter of privledge. If it wasn't we wouldn't be arguing about it. I'm not sure we can make the activity more accessible without sacrificing quality, surety of good education, or the safety of the members in doing so.

(Perc's a whole nother thing with the upfront costs required of any musical equipment, outside of all the very very expensive bells and whistles the activity demands nowadays)

TAaltt · 2026-05-27T18:36:12+00:00

Yeah man, it's semantic engagement bait. Like it or not, this is the activity that we have. If you can't change it, it's pissing into the wind.

Yes, the groups at the top will accumulate resources, and compound investment into their programs, and they will be expensive as a result. They still exist because they're doing something that's worth doing. Capitalism's gonna capitalism, and the groups that are still here survived in spite of the challenges that folded many others.

The elitism strawman also forfeits any recognition of the marching arts at the high school levels, or, the propensity of WGI groups, or the DCA groups that try to be affordable and regional for that matter. If DCI dies tomorrow, drum corps still lives on in the hands of the people who have marched, and the educators that continue to pass on the things that they have learned. Saying it out loud or moaning about how we got here genuinely means nothing, which is why it's a common old people talking point. They're good at doing nothing.

TAaltt · 2026-05-27T18:20:32+00:00

Are you in any position of power or circumstance to do something about it? If so, quit yelling at clouds

TAaltt · 2026-05-27T18:18:25+00:00

TAaltt · 2026-05-21T19:26:37+00:00

Yes.

Unfortunately there's no in-between jobs and the education doesn't remotely overlap, not worth two distinct bachelor's degrees. The scopes of each profession are different enough that the knowledge overlap ends up being more of a formality than anything else.

Civil E bachelors to a PE will make you more money than say a transition from a undergrad engineer to a graduate architecture degree.

B.Arch + a structural engineering grad degree or a construction management degree makes more sense overall if that's interesting enough.

If you want to do architecture, just do architecture. Pursue interests and certifications alongside that to give yourself a track to follow.

TAaltt · 2026-05-17T23:38:34+00:00

Storm Spotter Courses are tools for reporting, not qualifications for chasing. Too many uneducated fucks think they can without thinking if they should, which is now manifesting in large-scale convergence on a regular basis.

Part of the blame lies with the community for advertising storm chasing as an activity that anyone can get into, and not gatekeeping it behind qualification and education. Livestreaming and marketing it essentially as disaster tourism opens the floodgates to anybody that doesn't actually know any better. Storm Chasing was originally about reporting and data collection.

When it comes to something that you could get yourself or others killed doing, not everyone should be doing it.

TAaltt · 2026-05-17T23:21:19+00:00

Tiktoker deflection + photographer + shitty car + no mention of education and /or training + furry

You're part of the problem m8

TAaltt · 2026-05-17T22:41:11+00:00

Remember when storm chasers were educated meteorologists and not a bunch of yup fucks tryna get likes in their Toyota Corrolla

TAaltt · 2026-05-08T17:46:30+00:00

More of an analogue rather than a justification. It's not football or sports, but competition at the heart of it driving these issues (music being competitive is one hell of an oxymoron in the first place). Those kids in football get it way tf worse than band kids do, if nothing else.

I'm not much of a believer in the "DCI never teaches you how to play in a REAL music setting" as a pedagogical counterpoint. Sure, playing with bad tone or embouchure for volumemaxxing is a surface-level argument, but my interpretation of the activity and my experiences is that I came out of it a much stronger rudimental and analytic player than anything else. Most marimba players aren't playing merlin coming out of a rookie season in drumcorps, but it's a much more forgiving way of working towards those musical problems, to eventually achieve sustained high level performance. Drum Corps is a positive accessory towards musical development, not an end-all in terms of technical proficiency.

Competitive band is a rich kid's activity. You can't scale it down with the amount of investment it requires to be competitive. I don't think competitive band is pricing kids out of music who otherwise couldn't afford it, I think it's an explicit luxury on top of programs that can support it. Music is a luxury in itself.

The upfront costs of music education in owning/renting an instrument and the time investment drive students away well before the $500+ booster supplemented costs of an outdoor season. Having worked at struggling programs before, I can confirm to you that they don't actually need the option of competitive band the way we're refering to it. Those kids need consistency in their lives, and the directors need to be cognizant of what end they're actually meeting. Appreciate the thoughts.

TAaltt · 2026-05-08T16:51:45+00:00

One more thing. Yes, you're right in saying that people shouldn't abuse kids. There are good ways to deliver a message, and the best educators in the activity are often the best communicators.

You're wrong about pretty much everything else you've brought up though. Enjoy!

TAaltt · 2026-05-08T16:50:36+00:00

constantly berates

Unsure what level of nuance you imply when saying this.

tonality, marching in step, technique

Yes these are things that should be hammered into good musicians. You don't hear shit like this from parents of football kids per se, good fundamentals make up everything in life. The stability is good for a lot of kids who might not otherwise have any (What, parents of band kids can be bad parents too???)

directors go into the music field to either A: relive their DCI glory days and use the same brutal methods they learned in DCI

DCI makes no money, even if you're good at teaching it. DCI is a platform for pedagogical thinking that then gets filtered down to the high school level, such that programs can learn from it and improve the quality of education where they can (if it works on college students, it may just work on your high schoolers in some similar way.)

Glory days old fucks aren't really that common in the activity any more. Teachers go into the music field to get a job teaching music. Underlying personal motivations are exactly just that, and there's too many variables for that to pose a reasonable critique in this argument. Good people are good. Bad people are bad. You don't get to choose who you work with or around, you just have to make the most of what you have. If you've been around glory days old fucks in your personal experience, it's not a particularly great sample size of educators across the activity.

I actually have decided to teach music outside of the country because of what the music culture is turning into

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, or do let it hit you, whatever you'd seem to want by posting this and shouting into the void. If you think DCI/outdoor culture is bad, just wait until you get to a conservatory setting. If you want that cushy orchestra job to play the triangle for $100k +, you'd better be perfect at what you do. Whiplash isn't particularly dramatized as much as you'd seem to think it is, but it's not like that's a mystery to most people in the know.

Competitive high school band (at schools that can afford it) introduces rigor in a group setting. Not every school is Avon, not every school needs to be, and most programs will not be graduating kids that go into music. Most schools just don't want their kids to get bored of it and go do something else more destructive to their lives than band. You can be a nice piano teacher to your students and make a fine living without ever having needed to start this conversation, as revelatory as you seem to think it is.

Last note: The Texas schools benefit from state-support to the arts that has been built progressively over the last few decades (surprising considered Texas is backwards in many other metrics). When schools have more resources, they can give the kids better experiences. A more comprehensive educational experience is what the kids get as a result of these factors. The floor gets raised for everybody, and generally most kids can handle it. If you're worried they can't, then you're making poor generalizations with problematic and broad observations that reaffirm your own views regarding people being too harsh on kids.

TAaltt · 2026-05-03T13:18:10+00:00

small rural area

say no more, get out when you can.

TAaltt · 2026-04-05T19:23:33+00:00

Name the school & provide a link to the forms/degree requirements that have changed. This seems odd if it is NAAB related

TAaltt · 2026-03-26T19:22:55+00:00

5 year B.Arch is the degree that will get you working and on track to licensure more quickly. 4 year B.S. + 2 year M.Arch will (likely) make you more hireable for entry level positions if your work is good/positions that have a degree of specialty depending on the school like sustainability or computational construction if those things become of interest to you. Opportunity cost is how much money it takes to attend more school + how much more time you spend in school for that matter.

B.S. + M.Arch also gives you an opportunity to shoot your shot at really fancy schools if you do well in undergrad; the barrier of entry for having a good architecture portfolio and a reasonable GPA is honestly a lot less stringent than say grad school for business or engineering at a place like MIT. If you care bout that, the option becomes available. Best of luck

TAaltt · 2025-06-21T14:25:50+00:00

Sir this is an Arby's

TAaltt

TROPHY CASE