It's official: The Golden Band from Tigerland to Seattle!!

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Mr. XXXXX,



Thank you for writing. The LSU Athletic Department greatly values the band and its contributions to LSU. In fact, the Athletic Department provides more financial support to its band than any other school in the Southeastern Conference, spending over $900,000 annually in travel, salaries and equipment for the Tiger Band. And the Athletic Department has also committed $4.5 million to the construction of a new band hall, making LSU Athletics the single largest contributor to that project.



So there is no doubting our continued commitment to the LSU band. However, these are trying financial times and there are cost-cutting measures being taken all over the LSU campus. The travel for the band just happens to be one of the more high profile cost-saving areas. Difficult decisions have to be made in difficult times, and LSU is indeed going through some very difficult financial times right now. As state budget cuts have slashed higher education budgets all over Louisiana, the athletic department has been called upon to provide more financial assistance to our University this year than ever before. So we have had to take a hard look at every dollar we spend.



The Tiger Band will continue to be a very big part of LSU Football, but during the 2009 season a pep band will not travel to our game at the University of Washington and the full band will not travel to any regular season road game, resulting in a savings of $125,000 to $150,000 this year.



Thank you for your support of the Tigers,



Herb Vincent

Sr. Associate Athletic Director

LSU

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RE: No Band for Washington/ One Road SEC Game?þ
From:
Sent: Mon 7/20/09 10:36 AM
To: vincent@lsu.edu; football@lsu.edu; vausbe1@lsu.edu; athletics@lsu.edu; alleva@lsu.edu; mvm@lsu.edu
Cc: moorhous@lsu.edu; wickes@lsu.edu; rking3@lsu.edu; lem042@lsu.edu

Mr. Vincent,

Reasonable enough, although I highly object to this particular budget cut when in November 2008 you just spent over $7 million on LED video boards for many of our venues, including the natatorium and tennis courts. That said, it is what it is and I see both sides of the issue, but now we have to fix the problem. Thus ...

How do we - as fans - go about paying to get a pep band to Seattle and the full band to either Tuscaloosa or Oxford or Starkville? We are certianly willing to create a website accepting donations, and from our calculations it is estimated that it would cost about $50,000 to send a 50-member pep band to Seattle, and certainly much less than that to bus the full band to Alabama, Ole Miss, or Mississippi State and back to Baton Rouge immediately following the game.

If you guys won't budget this in as many fans including myself believe you should have done initially when you scheduled this game in Washington, we as fans will do everything within our power to pay for this. We may or may not be successful, but at least we will give it our best shot.

One thing that I think you guys could do to help is to send out an email to all LSU fans that have bought tickets through LSU for the Washington game. I don't know how you want to word it, but simply let them know about the situation and that we are trying to get donations for a pep band to Washington. I think this is a very logical solution. If we get 10,000 fans giving $5 each, that should just about cover the expenses to send a pep band to Washington. Many fans I have interacted with are willing to donate more than that, up to $100. If we had only 500 people giving $100, that would cover it as well.

Let's say we bring a 50-person pep band:

Flight $500 x 50 = $25,000
15 Hotel Rooms for 2 nights ... $240 (120/nt) x 15 = $3600
Bus transportation for the weekend = $5000
Food ($15/meal for 9 meals for 50) = $6750
Contingency: $5000
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TOTAL: $45,350



Thanks for all your help in this matter. Hopefully we can find a way - working together - to get the pep band to Washington and the full band to one SEC road game in 2009. And although this issue does upset me as an LSU fan, I truly do appreciate you taking the time to respond to my email. I understand your job is not an easy one and that all of you work very hard for LSU.



Thanks,

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