Most former members of high school marching bands agree that marching band was an awesome time in their lives. So it makes sense that, once high school seniors face graduation, one of their questions for the college is: Where is the marching band? And, for a long time, the simple answer was always that there wasn't one. In addition, as upperclassmen began to miss all those crazy antics and musical proficiency that was a big part of their lives just years before, a question came up. Why don't we have a fun musical group without all the competiveness of the Con groups? With that, two students had a stroke of genius and started the plans for B-W's first pep band in years!

THE SWARM was created in 1998 by Erik Gottfried and Francesca Drew. After a summer of their careful planning, a group of spirited students moved onto campus, got acquainted by doing a few ice breakers, and built a band from scratch. There were no band directors, just a bunch of students with a desire to make something happen. Weeks later, they had their debut performance: a pep rally on the North Quad. They were well received and they knew that good things were definitely in the future.

Now, over four years later, the group is still going strong. We've survived losing our original Fearless Leaders to graduation and are well on our way to spreading our pep and enthusiam to a campus that has sort of lacked it in the past. It may be a few years (probably more) to reach our ultimate goal of becoming a marching band, but for now, we will continue to build up the group and have a damn good time doing it.