What's long, tube-shaped and requires lubricant for optimal performance? Why, my slide trombone of course!

Yes, campus, I was a high school band geek. And I didn't just join the marching band — I was its president, a feat which I honestly plan to tattoo onto my body someday.

So I know the pain University of Wisconsin-Madison's band members must have felt at being suspended from performing at a home game versus The Ohio State University earlier this month due to allegations of hazing and misconduct by a fraction of its members.

UW-Madison Dean of Students Lori Berquam learned from interviews with 70 band members that underage drinking was common at band gatherings and a pattern of lewd, and sometimes sexualized, behavior exists, she said at a news conference. (Actually, that sounds like a typical weekend on a college campus.) Locking students in bus bathrooms and head shavings were two examples.

Yawn. That's kid stuff. When my band traveled, we made smaller freshmen sleep in the overhead compartments of the bus to leave sleeping space in the seats and aisles. We hosed the freshmen down at the end of band camp. And forget the bathroom, we locked one kid in a bass drum case.

My band director used to say, "Rank has its privileges," meaning upperclassmen received special treatment at the cost of increased responsibility and leadership. It was their job to make sure the younger members were up to task, musically and mentally.

Thinking about band on my Megabus ride home last week, I looked around and pictured my former comrades acting rowdy on a 20-hour drive — seniors at the back, where they couldn't be seen, and freshmen at the front where they tried not to be. One by one, freshmen were escorted to the back where upperclassmen would demonstrate authority to the scared newbies. Hazing was just an initiation rite.

Good marching bands are notorious for competitive spirits, even making mischief. In 1967, the Colombia University band was banned from game performances after forming the shape of a condom and playing, "I Hear You Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)." And while performing in Seattle, the UW-Madison band loudly asked, "Hey Seattle, is that the Space Needle or are you just happy to see us?"

Freshmen need to be toughened up, you know? Besides, they have to pay their dues like upperclassmen did. It's tradition.

Well, it's not a tradition here at Marquette.

"In my mind, there's no real need to 'initiate' freshmen," said band vice-president Chris Reding. "When upperclassmen, such as the ones we have, serve as positive role models and lead by example, it helps strengthen everyone and build the best band we can be."

But what about teaching new members to respect the authority of upperclassmen? That's what hazing is for, right?

"I don't think younger students need to be forced to respect experience," said Erik Janners, director of music and the symphonic and pep bands at Marquette. The tradition the band is concerned with is enhancing the environment at basketball games, he said. In fact, band members don't turn around like the student section when the opposing team's players are introduced because they decided themselves it was unsportsmanlike.

And to build community, they have dinner together regularly rather than force the newest members to degrade themselves for acceptance. Crazy, I know.

I believe giving freshmen a hard time gave them character and grit, and in a slightly twisted way, allowed old and new members to get to know one another. But once that involves physical or emotional pain, or if it's only done to satisfy sadistic urges, then it's not only inexcusably immoral — it's dangerous.

As my high school friend put it, "You don't want leading by example."

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