Hello, and merry Christmas! One of the big things I have been trying to work on over furlough is a regulations manual update. Every semester we review the regulations manual and make minor edits, but since this is my first time tackling it as Battalion Commanding Officer, I decided to do a deeper dive into the manual and make more major updates.
One of those updates is one that was already in process several months before I took over as CO, and it pertains to ALERT's music standards. Where music is concerned, ALERT has always taken a more conservative approach to what would be approved, in part out of deference to some of our students (and their families) who have strong convictions on music. To some degree, I support this perspective, especially music that ALERT "forces" students to listen to. Prayer time songs or music played in Basic Training, for example, are times where the men do not have a choice in what is played, and could not practically speak up if they disagreed with the music being played.
However, as relates to the music that students can listen to on their own time, the officers and I had concerns with the standards and how they were applied. I am deeply uncomfortable with elevating a community standard to the level of a moral or spiritual standard, which our old approach to music could tend towards, depending on how it was explained or enforced. I am also uncomfortable making a standard to avoid a potential issue instead of dealing with the individual cases as they come up. And finally, the way the music standards were applied was causing a lot of confusion in the Battalion. Songs that we would sing in prayer time or at Campus Fellowship were not approved because of the musical style of the accompaniment, but completely secular songs were approved.
In light of all of the above, we are attempting a major rewrite of the Battalion music standards, and would like your input before we roll out the change. Below is the first draft of our proposal. | 
