Georgia State’s marching band will be unable to participate in the Dragon*Con festival for another year.
The marching band was invited to perform in the 2013 annual Dragon*Con festival in Atlanta this year but decided not to participate due to scheduling conflicts.
Dragon*Con is a convention that takes place in Atlanta bringing fans of science fiction, comic books and fantasy series together, usually in costume, to attend demonstrations and the parade.
Associate Band Director, Dr. Chester Phillips, makes the decisions on which events the band accepts and denies.
Phillips said that many band members’ schedules will already be “full with [football] games and parades” during the weekend of the DragonCon festival, which also overlaps with Labor Day weekend.
“The students’ time is valuable to us and we will always view our band members as students first,” Phillips said.
Phillips said that band members are also expected to “have a lot of events around that time” and that he did not want for the students to be overwhelmed with such a booked schedule at the start of the semester.
In the orginal article, The Signal also erroneously reported that Georgia Tech’s marching band would take up the reins at the Dragon*Con parade. As of press time, Georgia Tech has not confirmed participation.
“Maybe we can do [DragonCon] in a later year, but we definitely can’t perform everywhere!” said Adriona Isom, color guard member.
The orginal version of this article ran in the Feb. 5 issue of The Signal. Further contact with the directors of the Georgia Tech marching band and other sources has led the author to correct the story online. The version you see above is the corrected version.
Updated 2-12-2013
Does the Signal do any REAL reporting? As confirmed my the Georgia Tech music department, the Georgia Tech Marching band will NOT be performing as you so indicate.
You should probably rewrite the story and then issue the correction noting the old, inaccurate version at the bottom. That’s how the NY Times handles corrections.