If you hear the unmistakable sound of drumming on campus for long periods of time, it’s because the drum line has arrived an hour or two early for class just to practice on its own.
The drum line has been noticeably absent from a handful of campus events. That’s because before last fall, they mostly functioned as part of the Pep Band and only until recently began to operate on its own.
The change came by suggestion of ASCC, who asked the group if it could start attending more campus events to help rally up school spirit.
It was recently approved to be mobilized, which means equipment has been ordered that will allow the musicians to play while standing and walking, which in turn will make it easier for them to play more events.
David Betancourt, who teaches the drum line class, said, “We haven’t had a drum line here before […] so we couldn’t really go from zero to 100 in just a month.
“We didn’t realize we’d be able to put this together, and then we did, so we’ve got probably eight or 10 performances this year, which is quite a lot considering we didn’t hire any extra faculty […] we don’t have any funding for that, most of it we just do on our own.”
The lack of funding is also responsible for the group having no uniforms, which cost about $1,000 a piece, which most drum lines do. They handled this by coordinating jackets instead.
Fernando Hernandez, a nursing major, said, “We’re still trying to build the team up, so now we’re going to be on campus more.”
Hernandez has been on the drum line for two semesters now and helps coordinate the first-timers of the group.
He said, “We’re going to be performing a lot here in the quad, hopefully we can perform out here, just to kind of draw people’s attention […] that’s our goal, to perform every week.”
While Betancourt teaches the group, it is mostly self-run and self-motivated. Betancourt helps organize events for them to play at and oversees them while they practice, but gives them plenty of room to teach itself.
“[The band] is really teaching [itself] and to me that’s pretty awesome. I love my job as a teacher but to me, if students learn how to teach themselves, if I can help them with that that’s awesome.”
Jesus Cisneros, a biology major, said, “We’re just trying to incorporate more school spirit because it’s pretty much dead, no one’s really into it. You don’t see people wearing their Cerritos clothes or really into the school activities. We don’t have much to work with but we just use whatever we have to kind of get ourselves incorporated in school activities, be more active.”
This is Cisneros’ first semester with the drum line.
As for showing up early for practice, Cisneros cited excitement for becoming more involved with school activities as one of the reasons everyone is so motivated. The other?
“We just love to play. It’s not every day you get permission to just bang the drums at five in the morning, you know?”
This will also be the first year that the drum line will be active during the summer semester at Cerritos.
“This year it just blew up,” Betancourt said.
“I mean class starts at seven, those guys are out there practicing at five, which is really cool. I mean for which other class does your student show up two hours early every week? [The students are] just pumped about it.”
