Be Like The BandFall 2024

The end of summer in Corvallis brings a familiar sound — the rat-a-tat-tat of OSU’s drumline as band camp begins. If I press my face against the window, I can see them lined up in the shadow of Reser Stadium, their elbows all sharp angles, sticks flying over the faces of their drums.

Anyone in earshot knows how hard they work, laboring hour after hour on a single beat. (So much so that coworkers joke about whether we can expense ear plugs and ibuprofen.)

Thinking about them brings me back to this Stater, dubbed “The Optimism Issue.” We settled on this focus as a partial antidote to what could be some pretty rough months ahead. From a contentious election season, to wars abroad, to (closer to home) our first year in the Pac-2, I can feel myself steeling for the worst.

So we turned to our community for advice. In our cover story, “How to Keep Hope Alive” (see page 32), writer Cathleen Hockman-Wert asked Beavers immersed in finding solutions to some of the most intractable issues of our times what keeps them going.

I talked with President Murthy about the role optimism plays in leadership. She surprised me by pointing out something I hadn’t considered before: Optimism is, in part, a conviction that you have some control over your future. “All problem solvers,” she said, “have to be optimists.”

The exclamation point to that idea came with this issue’s Perspectives column (see page 13) when I asked four people how they stay hopeful that they can make a difference with climate change. In a first for the column, they all said the same thing: They do something. Or as Professor Bill Ripple put it: “The antidote to despair is action.”

The key, I realized, is seeing the value in what one person can do, because despair begins when we disparage that as too little.

Which brings us to the campus group that epitomizes optimism. Whether they’re drenched in rain or sweat, whether the Beavs are killing it or taking a drubbing, the nearly 300 members of the marching band keep the steady drumbeat of OSU spirit. We spent a day with them to learn how the magic happens (see page 40). And don’t miss our first companion video story — a chat with Associate Director of Bands Olin Hannum, MAT ’12.

Because when it’s all said and done, the students practicing outside my window can’t control the football game, college conferences or the weather, but they can do everything in their power to be prepared to play their part.

At optimism’s heart is this simple belief: You can do something, and it does matter. The sound of one drum carries.