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When junior mellophone player Molly Watters beat out 10 other drum major applicants last spring, she became the University’s first-ever female drum major. The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, native was a perfect fit for the job: She’d played a variety of instruments, she had experience as a high school athlete to prepare her for the position’s physical rigors, and she had the natural leadership skills that are crucial to managing hundreds of personalities. Minnesota asked Watters, a political science and sociology major, what it feels like to strike up the band.

Q: What are the most important qualities in a drum major?

A: You have to be able to do the physical part of the routine, but you also have to have the respect of your peers, the director, and people in the community. You have to have the leadership skills to help manage a 300-member organization.

Q: As the University’s first female drum major, you’ve had to become media-savvy too. You’ve been interviewed for the radio, TV, and newspapers, right?

A: It has been an adjustment—sometimes I have to do everything I do with a microphone and receiver attached to my back. Internally, the role as a drum major hasn’t changed, but externally, I feel like I have to step it up a notch. If I don’t do a good job, I don’t want it to reflect on my gender. I don’t want to be seen as the girl drum major, just the drum major.

Q: Those routines must give you as much exercise as the other athletes on the field.

A: Yeah, I work out five or six times a week—running, using the elliptical machine, biking, and stretching.

Q: Any injuries?

A: Well, it’s easy to get shin splints, and trying to do backbends with a 10-pound hat made of plastic and faux fur really gives your neck a workout. I was really sore [after the first game of the season].

Q: I hear that learning the whistle is no piece of cake either.

A: It’s hard to make enough noise. The band is spread across an entire football field, so if you’re in one corner, you have to make sure everyone can hear you. Getting the right inflections in tone was something I had to learn too.

Q. What’s the must-see movie for drum majors—The Music Man? Drumline?

A: Actually, I watch old tapes of football games. One of the drum major instructors has been really involved in archiving old videotapes and pictures of the band. Drumline isn’t necessarily an accurate representation of our band. Nobody gets a scholarship to be in marching band.

Q: Do you ever watch Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and find yourself looking for marchers that are out of step?

A: Not really, but sometimes when I hear a pop song that we play, I’ll start conducting it. I’m a band geek.

Q: So you embrace being a band geek?

A: I don’t fight it. But it’s actually pretty cool. People come up to us during games and tell us we’re doing a good job and they like what we do. We make fun of ourselves, but I don’t think people really make fun of us.

Q: What happens after you graduate—the masters’ marching band circuit?

A: I fade off into the sunset.

—Erin Peterson

Hope Lodge Offers a Respite

In any given year, several thousand people travel to the Twin Cities from surrounding areas for cancer treatments at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center and other facilities. Typically, they don’t make the trip just once; they do it repeatedly over a period of months or even years, necessitating costly overnight stays away from home. The financial, physical, and emotional toll can be tremendous.

Twin Cities Hope Lodge is designed to ease those burdens. The Hope Lodge, which will be built on the edge of campus later this year and open in 2007, will offer a home away from home for up to 40 adult cancer patients and their caregivers every night. It will be free of charge to guests receiving cancer treatment in the Twin Cities and will provide private guest rooms, kitchen and laundry facilities, a cancer resource library, media room, and a recreational room. Groundbreaking was held in September.

The Hope Lodge is a combined effort of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, the University Medical Center, Fairview, and the American Cancer Society. The University’s contribution to the project involved acquiring land a few blocks just east of the Cancer Center. Donors raised more than half of the $2 million price tag for the land, and $425,000 remains to be raised. Other private donations totaling $7.5 million will go toward construction of the facility.

The first American Cancer Society Hope Lodge opened in 1977 in Charleston, South Carolina. There are 21 Hope Lodges in the United States, usually near National Cancer Institute-designated facilities or research centers.

Web Hit: Access Abroad

Which of the following categories is not considered a disability?

a. Deafness
b. Blindness
c. Dyslexia
d. Cancer
e. Multiple Sclerosis
f. Broken leg

The Access Abroad Web site invites visitors to test their knowledge of disability by taking the Access Abroad Quiz (www.umabroad.umn.edu/access). The 10-question, multiple-choice quiz is a great way to gauge your knowledge of disability issues and get a glimpse of how students with disabilities gain access to international opportunities. The University of Minnesota is recognized nationally for the opportunities it offers students to study abroad—all students, including those with disabilities who may require special accommodations to live and study internationally.

Last year, more than 1,400 Twin Cities undergraduates, including 25 students with disability, chose from among 220 program options in 60 countries for their study abroad experience. The University’s goal is for the number of students going abroad to equal 50 percent of the graduating class each year.

Answer: f. A chronic disease such as cancer can be considered to be a disability. A broken leg is considered to be a temporary medical condition.

“I’m going to kiss the door frame until my lips freeze.”
—Gopher women’s rowing coach Wendy Davis on the team’s first boathouse, which is scheduled to be finished in November. The team’s rowing facility its first six years consisted of a tent, a construction trailer, and two portable toilets.

“At some point they are going to have sex, and why not be protected against something that’s potentially life-threatening. . . . I’m one who buys life insurance and travel insurance, so to me this [vaccine] is a kind of insurance.”
—Marilyn Joseph, medical director of Boynton Health Service and assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health, on vaccinating presexual girls against a virus that causes cervical cancer.