aggiejim70 said:
Idle curiosity on my part. When did the FTAB unit designations change from White and Maroon Bands to Artillery and Infantry, and what was the reason for the change. I suppose I could look this up in copies of the Aggieland at Aggie Park, but I'm just to lazy to do so.
Back in 1893, it was just "The Band." At some point when ROTC began (I'm guessing late teens to 1920s) and cadets had to pick a branch, it became INF and ART Bands, probably because it was too big to administer under one unit.
I believe it was when AFROTC was split off in the 1950s, the branch designations also went away. So the names were changed to Maroon and White (ART and INF, respectively) Our guidons still used variations of the crossed rifles and crossed cannon, and we considered ourselves INF or ART.
By the time I was a BQ, the band was at over 300 (male) cadets, at a time when many CT units were 30 cadets or so it was hurting the Band for things like General Moore Award, because for the size of the Band, we had very few commanders, and very few high cadet ranks, thus very few RVs or other positions that counted for awards.
Not to mention, having only 2-4 RVs per class meant that lots of qualified people were not getting RV, when they would have if they were CO or XO of a 30 man CT unit.
Finally, it was just hard to administer that big of a unit, and lots of good people were not getting positions. Splitting into smaller units changed that. It also allowed us to have battalion level commanders. Basically, the Combined Band CO went from 2 diamonds to 3, added the 2 Batt level commanders with 2 diamonds, and now there were four 1 diamond unit commanders where there used to be two.
The change was made at Final Review 1976, for the 1976-77 school year. We went to four units, A and B Company Infantry Band, and A and B Battery Artillery Band. All the personnel were jumbled, so that the folks who were in either Maroon or White were now split evenly among the four units. There was quite a bit of Maroon vs. White rivalry, so it has hoped that fruit basket turnover would lessen rivalries.
