Same song, different key

Several times during my first year at Marietta, I wondered whether I'd accidentally wandered into a madhouse. I loved teaching classes and appreciated having a real office, but the College was in a transitional state that sometimes erupted into craziness.

I entered at the same time as a brand-new President and Provost and a new General Education Curriculum, which caused some friction across campus. Further, my department at that time was dysfunctional, with various cliques constantly at war and department meetings devolving into shouting and tears.

And don't even get me started about the kiddie-porn fiasco. At the end of my first semester here, when the head of IT was arrested for operating a secret server that distributed tens of thousands of images of child pornography, I took comfort in the fact that this was the sort of catastrophe we were unlikely to encounter ever again.

The other big controversy during my first year here, though, keeps swinging around for a return visit. The College's Strategic Planning Committee proposed cutting costs by eliminating a list of majors and programs. Music was on the chopping block alongside Philosophy, Geology, Physics, and some others I've forgotten. Arguments about the value of these programs tore through campus and across the alumni network, and eventually a few programs were rescued by being merged with other programs or downgraded from a major to a minor. 

Physics, though, was a special case: an alumnus donated enough millions to endow professorships, provide scholarships, and build a new science facility equipped with spiffy labs, classrooms, and a pendulum, because who doesn't love a pendulum. This donation proved that even a small major can survive if someone pours enough money into the mix.

I don't remember how the Music major was saved, but I know it didn't involve any twenty-million-dollar donations. And now here we are again, for the fourth time since I've worked here, looking at a list of proposed program cuts and wondering who will rescue the programs we love.

Some of the cuts are reasonable enough while others confound me. Shelving the English as a Second Language program seems particularly short-sighted. Enrollment of international students is pretty low right now, but are we giving up on enrolling more in the future? 

The cut that hits me hardest on an emotional level, though, is Music. The current proposal calls for eliminating majors in Music Therapy, Music Education, and Vocal Performance, leaving only a basic B.A. in Music. I know the numbers people have looked closely at costs and outcomes, but I think about all the creative music students I've taught over the years and the fabulous performances they've provided and I wonder how the shrinkage of the Music department will affect their ability to serve the community through performance. We need music! Music feeds our souls! But if it doesn't also feed our pocketbooks, it's in danger of  eventually disappearing.

What we need is another alumnus with a boatload of money to rescue the threatened programs, but the problem is that alumni in the fine arts tend to not earn the kind of money that will allow multi-million-dollar donations. Some interpret this fact as further evidence that the arts don't equip people for the World of Work, but our Music Education and Music Therapy graduates have been very successful in finding meaningful jobs in their fields. Music educators enrich all our lives, but unfortunately they don't earn the kinds of rewards available to tech entrepreneurs.

So much has improved in my 23 years here--I no longer worry about kiddie-porn catastrophes or departmental dysfunction, and I even have a more comfortable office. But after all these years it feels sad but somehow familiar to be back in the same old quandary, singing the same old song, trying to save the budget by cutting programs that enrich us in ways that can't be quantified.