So, I’m an officer of my college marching band, and we just had our fall retreat. One new freshman appears to be unable to attend any gigs with us in the future, only rehearsals. Why? She’s vegan, and our full dress uniforms and informal uniform hats are made of wool.
I’m trying to be patient here, but I can’t find a single vegan-acceptable hat that will work and fit with everyone else’s. If we could fix the hat problem, it would be ok, since she would still get to do the majority or stuff with the band, even though full-dress can’t feasibly be altered for her.
The only vegan hats I see are like beanies. Our hats are covered in pins and personal knick-knacks and need to be quite a bit stronger than that. The ones we use are really thick felt, brimmed hats. Anyone know where to find something similar for our vegan recruit? I feel bad that she can’t participate because her beliefs are a pain in the Uniform Manager’s butt.
No idea where you could buy one, but maybe someone could make a hat out of polar fleece with cardboard backing to make it stand up?
Zoggie, that’s not entirely true. Shearing doesn’t hurt, but wool-bearing sheep may still have to undergo mulesing. This is done without anesthesia or painkillers, for instance. (IANAVegan, but I am a vegetarian who uses wool.)
Except for the fact that they’re pretty expensive, I’d say go for a outdoor sun/rain hat.
Something like this.
You might be able to find one at REI (though solid black is tough). With enough buttons on it, it should fit in well enough and satisfy the Uniform Manager.
(hawksgirl may be the only one who understands this post, so don’t worry if you’re confused).
Guess that rules out Seeing Eye dogs.
I have to do this: :rolleyes:
good luck with that search. Or maybe you could make her stand out in another way? Or take the hats off all the women? Or off everyone? Or do it without her?
I suggested a rain hat since it’s sure to be synthetic. Some sort of canvas hat (like a fishing hat) would probably be strong enough as well.
I think a bucket style is probably what will work the best. (If it’s still the case that there’s a day or so with the hats in pristine condition, you could tell her it’s ‘on order’ and then give it to her later on.)
Its too bad she’s a flute. We already did the hat thing and she couldn’t play, because we only found out the day before when they were handed out. We didn’t have time to deal with it during retreat.
I kind of think eleanorigby is trying to get me killed. Get rid of the hats?! There would be REAL fights and riots over that! :eek:
I say let the girl suffer. She has chosen a path that will separate her from the mainstream, so she will have to deal with separating from this, too. She can’t have her cake and eat it too…especially if it contains eggs. She can be part of the group if she chooses to wear the uniform. If she won’t, and if SHE can’t find an acceptable substitute (not the Uniform manager’s job) then she will just have to choose what is more important to her.
Yeah, that would be my take on it, too. With a, what, 60 member band, you can’t expect to cater to individual costume preferences, mainly because the whole point of a uniform is that it’s “uniform”. And any hat you get her isn’t going to be an exact match to what everyone else is wearing, so she’s going to stick out, inevitably, and mess up the whole band’s presentation. And if your band participates in marching band competitions, they’re judged on presentation, and if someone’s costume obviously doesn’t match, they’ll lose points.
Frankly I’m surprised that the band director would countenance this. Or have you not talked to him yet? If not, then before you make yourself crazy trying to find a hat for this girl, I’d talk to him. It’s entirely possible that he’ll snort with laughter and then say, definitively, “No. Everyone who wants to be in the UC Marching Band wears the UC Marching Band’s costume.” Because that’s the way it generally works.
And I’m also surprised that this is YOUR problem. If you’re not the Uniform Manager, nor the Band Director, then I don’t see why it concerns you, other than you’re feeling a vague sense of helpfulness as a band officer, which is very sweet of you , but really, this girl is going to have to learn that the world isn’t going to change for her all the time.
My daughter is a budding vegetarian, too, and she’s going through the same thing. She’s learning that the world is not a vegetarian place, and that you can’t always expect people to make concessions to you.
But the main consideration here is that if you’re going to be in the band, you have to conform to the band’s expectations, which is going to include wool uniforms.
Our hats aren’t uniform. Here’s mine. We don’t compete, and we’re student run, so our director lets us handle our own stuff. I’m involved because the UM is dealing with her own issues right now (rain tomorrow, and we have no ponchos?) and we help each other, so I’m researching a little for her. One of our principles is that we try to include everyone, so its tough to tell her to suck it up or leave. Even with the hat she can’t march full-dress shows, so she still misses out on that, but at least she can participate in most things, just not the biggest ones.
Okay, I see that. But I would still let her find her own hat. It’ll be a learning experienc e for her, and I’m not comfortable with you just handing this to her on a plate. Let her do some of the running here. That’s part of leaving home and going to college, too–Mommy isn’t going to automatically fix things for you anymore.
hawksgirl, do you have a shot of an undecorated hat? There’s so much stuff on yours I can’t tell what the shape is. If you do that, I could put together a tutorial to show Vegan Girl how to make one out of craft felt (synthetic, not wool) and wire. If you don’t want to do that, then try looking for organic cotton hats, which should be vegan-friendly.
Of course, if Vegan Girl has problems with the industrial processes that go into making synthetic felt, then I think you might be out of luck. On one of the knittings lists I read, there’s a lot people who are vegans but also super-duper green, so they’re always looking for substitutions for animals fibers and man-made fibers. That leaves them with cotton and linen, basically.
, but really, this girl is going to have to learn that the world isn’t going to change for her all the time.