Tom Y. Tseng asked:
 
>According to this Brown alumnus, he used to play in the band and the band used
>to skate for their shows, like a half-time show at a football game.  He said
>Brown Univ. would only allow the band to do that at home games, not at away
>games.  He thought it was mainly because of the insurance issue.  Can any Brown
>alum verify this?  Do they still skate and perform on ice?  The guy (Eric) said
>that he had to learn how to skate in order to join the band.
 
Yes, I skated in the band at Brown and I was a band officer too.
 
When I was involved, the University had no problem with our skating
away.  While insurance may have been a problem in more recent years, it
was not an issue when I was trying to see if we could skate at other
rinks a decade ago.  The problem is that the home team must grant ice
time to the band to do the show.  How many schools would want to have
the opposing team's band skate during intermission?  Also, if the home
team has its own band that doesn't skate, do you think they'd be
interested in letting the opposing band skate?
 
It's been a long time, but I do remember almost getting to skate
somewhere once.  (Yale, maybe?)  The closest I remember is being able
to set up a band vs. band mini hockey game at Yale after one of the
varsity games.  When I was there, we would try to skate in three to
five home games during the season.  Three or four was the norm.  I
can't tell you what they do now.
 
I think Tom may have misunderstood Eric.  I, too, learned to skate to
be in the skating band (and to start playing hockey!).  The skating
band was just a subset of the normal hockey pep band, however, and you
did not have to skate to be in the pep band.
 
	- Stevie
 
Steve "Sluggo" Shinn
Brown '82    GO BRUINS!!!
GE Aerospace, SCSD
Daytona Beach, Fla.