Aussie Offer Doesn’t Impress Dejected Students and Parents

Hoping to defuse a diplomatic debacle, an Australian Olympic organizer on Wednesday night offered Orange County band students a consolation prize to compensate for the cancellation of their appearance at the Sydney 2000 opening ceremonies.

Several hundred parents and students crammed the amphitheater at El Dorado High in Placentia to hear from John Moore, a staffer from the Sydney Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games. He volunteered to give the students embroidered band jackets, an NBC television profile, a formal letter of apology and a certificate of participation in the Olympics.

But the parents and students weren’t buying the offer and described it as leftovers and trinkets.

By the end of the meeting, the parents had not come to an agreement about whether their children should travel to Sydney and take the consolation offers.

To facilitate planning, Olympic organizers have asked for an answer soon.

“Whilst we cannot, perhaps, offer you a performance in the opening ceremonies, we wish to fulfill the dreams of recognition and performance,” Moore said. “We have to move forward. We can’t go back. And I’m sorry for that--very sorry.”

Kennedy High student Anthony Morfa was skeptical. “I have to raise the money myself to go to Australia,” he said. “How is this event going to be beneficial to my life? Unless I run the torch . . . I don’t see how it’s as special as the opening ceremonies.”

Moore said the students from Irvine and El Dorado highs and Kennedy High in La Palma might have the opportunity to play at a torch-lighting ceremony at one of six or seven lesser venues, including the world-famous Sydney Opera House.

Originally invited by Olympic organizers three years ago to play in the opening ceremonies, local students had been planning the $3,500 trips to Sydney for the last year. They had sold doughnuts and newspaper subscriptions to earn money. Some switched instruments to meet the needs of band organizers. Others changed their college plans for the chance to play before a massive international audience.

The kids were booted from the ceremony a few weeks ago, prompted by Australian outrage that the supposedly “international” band of 2,000 young musicians featured mostly American and Japanese kids and fewer Aussies.

The American band directors just returned from Sydney, where they participated in intense meetings trying to craft a compromise.

Despite Moore’s assurances, parents of the dis-invited weren’t soothed Wednesday night.

“You go back [to Australia] and tell them we are not going to accept anything less than the opening,” said parent Andy Hernandez.

Our kids are heartbroken, they told Moore. It’s up to you to make things right.

“I personally believe the trip will not go, because parents will not agree to lesser venues,” parent Diane Patterson said before the meeting. “There is also a fear now among American parents that nationalist wackos would try to take their anger out on the kids” if they went to Sydney.