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If they can't keep time, they shouldn't be drum major. Plain and simple.

Ugh. That bugs me...

That's the most basic thing a Drum Major must do!! They're defiling the name... Gah.

If I couldn't keep time, I'd want my band to tell me/hit me because the Drum Majors are supposed make the band better... not to suck it up.

~ Me

It's not so much that ours can't keep time....more like we can't see his second beat, so we make him do push ups or run laps. Fair's fair, he makes us run laps all the time. We love our drum major though.

If they can't keep time tell the band director, and the drum major, do it politely though.
We had two new drum majors this year, not me, and i still hate my band director for it because one is a freaking stuck up wench (for kinder words XD) whose let the fact that she's drum major go to her head (like i knew she would.) and the other one missed pretty much her entire sophomore year due to a brain tumor (which isn't her fault). Anyways we had two new drum majors and the stuck up wench was always like half a beat behind the one who had the tumor (i'd use names but they have the same name (which i thought was a really bad choice on our band directors part). and i don't want to use their last names) So i told our band director about it, he said he'd talk to her about it, a week later she hadn't fixed it, so i told her, she freaked out at me for telling her that, apparently since i didn't make DM i know nothing about conducting. (i told you she was a stuck up wench) so i told the band director again and that i had mentioned it to her and how she had freaked out at me. He said he'd talk to her. Two weeks later, she STILL was half a beat behind. i told our band director AGAIN, he said that they were going to have a conducting session after school. She never did fix the problem. I even told her what her problem was, she wasn't anticipating the beats, it takes about a second for your brain to process the information and send it into your hands. and a second is half a beat at the rate we were moving at.

anyways. so what i'm saying is, if your drum major has a problem with it mention it to the drum major unless you don't get along with him/her, in that case tell your band director about it. And just keep nagging them. say it throws everyone else off when they're wrong. Threaten a bad festival score. it worked for our band, for festival, after that she went back to her old ways.

Kaiserhuff, as a drum major, I can tell you sometimes the DM must follow the band members. As much as we enjoy going our own tempo, there are times (especially in my band) which you have to go the band's tempo (or rather the drumline's or the trumpet's) or risk losing control of the band completely. Especially in performances, you need to be able to follow the tempo set by the marchers or you lose them. For example, when the band turns around (especially if you don't have a drum major backfield), you need to watch the percussionists' feet so when they turn back, they are with you (and theoretically, the rest of the band is too). However, in certain performances and even occasional practices, if the band decides to go it's own tempo, the DM usually should follow them. As for following the percussionists the whole time...well, I suppose it depends on the band. We've supposedly had drum majors do that because the percussionists didn't watch the drum majors. Normally, though, I'd say that's a little lazy - really, the job of drum major is fairly easy, so knowing the tempos and the other pieces of the music is really the least a drum major can do.

Our battery has excellent marching fundamentals and does an excellent job at keeping tempo, they only speed up when the band director (or the arranger) tells them to. They have a serious music major as their instructor. The battery has practice all throughout summer. Our arranger doesn't actually write the percussion part for the battery, he lets the battery instructor do that. He (the instructor) actually came in to perform the recital for his masters (two months ago) today. It was a nice way to spend a class period.

but yes what WickedSong said was completely true, unfortunately our one drum major doesn't seem to know that well