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This is a suggestion I've wanted to do for my own band for ages, but it could never be implemented fully because of time and logistics. Anyway, here's what you could suggest to your director:

Have maybe a week where several people from each section switches to another completely different section. For example, you could trade six flutes, four clarinets, three alto saxes, etc etc; for three trumpets, two trombones, a sousaphone, euphonium, mellophone, whatever. You could also mix in people from the drumline, pit, and guard. So. What would basically happen is that people would get to experience what it's like to be in a completely different section. Have people ragging on you about how all pit people do is stand there and whack their instruments? All right. Give them a chance to see what it's like to STAND in rehearsal for three+ hours. Give them a chance to see there's a lot more to keyboard instruments than just hitting them. The sweet spot? Yeah, they have to hit there or the tone quality will suck. Cymbals? Yeah, you can't just hit them repeatedly and hope the roll will come out smoothly.

For guard, give the instrumentalists a chance to see what it's like to be in guard. Yeah, it's a lot harder to spin than you think. People mocking flutes? Ok. Let them see what it's like to hold an instrument horizontally while using the most air out of any other instrument than the sousaphone. Not that easy.

Another thing that you could try doing (which worked really well for our frosh band camp) is create "Unity" groups. Break the band into sections that aren't related to instruments. Mix up the upperclassmen with the lowerclassmen. Have each instrument represented in each unity group, and the section leaders will head each group. We have a pretty large band, so there's about two section leaders for each section (we have 13 people in pit, 12 in drumline razz ), and it ended up working pretty nicely. The only problem that MIGHT not work is there are almost always a LOT of flutes and clarinets. I don't know how things are in your band. But.. what you could do instead then is have each day have only ONE class away from practice. So it'll be something like this:

Monday: Freshmen split into unity groups with section leaders
Tuesday: Sophs
Wed: Juniors/Seniors

I don't know if you'll be able to use either of those ideas, but if you do, hey, maybe it'll help smile

Another thing is.. try to get the seniors to lead the band. They have the most experience. They should lead the band with the section leaders and other staff. They should remember that if they rag on other members of the band, the lowerclassmen will do that, too. Does anyone really WANT to create a bad atmosphere in their band? No, since that'll make creating an awesome show so much harder. I'm sure seniors want their last year to be the best year possible. They need to realize that the band director isn't in charge of the band's morale. So he doesn't care? So what? Make him care!

Glad you have a new instructor though. Hoping things will change around!

..and.. hoping I explained well enough ^^;;

My name's Jessie, but my band name(every one in my band has one) is Shooky Monster or just Shooky for short. Its an old band name given to me in 8th grade by my old band director. Near the end of the year people asked him if they could come visit him since we going to be in high school next year. He said sure( the high school is like 20 feet from the middle school). Anyways... I told him I'd be moving for high school years to a different school. It was a goodbye preasent. xd xd He told me to use it as my band name.

ANYWAYS!!!(forgiveme)
Our band supports the pit. In a way. But when we play their told every day not to listen to the pit. Bosco pur band director say the samething every practice.
Bosco:"Do not....?"
They reply: "Listen to the pit."
says that like 5 times and they reply that. Its not that they don't support us though. They do have pit/percussion jokes though but only to mess with us. I plaied marimba in winterline last year, I didn't sign up for marching band in time. But this year I'm in Marching Band and now I play Vibraphone. I can't wait for Winterline because I'm going back to marimba. Personally, i kinda hate vibes. Sure the four mallet grip "Burton" is easier to play with than the marimba four mallet grip "stevens", but with Burton we play with mallet 2 and 4 when we only use two of them. I can't do that, too hard. My pit instructor has tried to help me, even our section leader this year, who played vibes last year. (she wasn't section leader then, but now that she is she plays marimba.) Aw well.