With the appointment of a new Chancellor, Syracuse University has signaled a new direction. This summer has brought a series of new policies and directives designed to modernize Syracuse University as well as make it more efficient. Great. I'm all for it.
Unfortunately, the Chancellor just published his Fast Forward Syracuse campaign. Its aims are worthy, yet I've noticed that none of the committees that he has appointed include a single member of the CVPA hierarchy. There is one emeritus professor from CAS, but this can point to only one thing: stagnation in the arts (at best). Perhaps the Chancellor believes his choral background is enough. I watch a lot of crime/legal programs on television. Would he want me to represent him in court? I doubt it.
I have mentioned this before, but schools of music are the most difficult to fund. The necessary small class sizes and one-to-one teaching are a huge drain on resources, not to mention facilities, instruments, and purpose-built (sound-deadening) infrastructure. Yet, after athletics, the department is one of the most important representatives/evangelists of the university in the community and nationwide. We provide a marching band for football games, a pep band for basketball games, choirs for ceremonial events, incidental ensembles, and our regular series of public concerts and recitals. We also bring in professional artists from outside the university to enhance the educational and artistic experience.
We need vision to provide a creative plan to make the School of Music work cost-effectively, but where is that going to come from? A bunch of lawyers, trustees, accountants, or an architect? Again, I doubt it.
I hate internal markets, but maybe the football team should pay to use the marching band, provide their uniforms, pay the necessary staff to train them, etc. Same for our Top-20-ranked basketball team, and our administration who just expects to use the fruits of our labor without cost. In these days where college athletes are unionizing to receive benefits and possibly even wages, our musicians work just as hard with just as significant personal cost (if not more), yet they are taken for granted, provided ancient unsuitable facilities, and an under-staffed and under-funded department. Unfortunately, all but possibly one or two of them project to earn less in a year than some our athletes will earn for a single game. Hence, they won't be in a position to donate money back into the institution after they graduate and pay off their loans.
The infrastructure committee must address the facilities, but without a School of Music representative, how will they know what we need? It is clear that they plan to do nothing about it.
The poor relative of the marching band, the orchestra is one of the big draws to any music school. We need to recruit for it the best possible students and provide them with worthwhile public display. We have a huge stadium to promote our 125th-ranked football team, and they bring in money. If we did the same for our musicians, we could do the same - charge for concerts, produce and sell recordings, tour - all to promote the university. We have an excellent music industry program - couldn't the students earn valuable experience producing these recordings? Our composition faculty is first rate (I'm not including myself in this!), why not promote them as well as their students with studio-produced recordings of their work, played by a combination of faculty and student performers. Put their music out there, promote them and the university at the same time. We have a large choral program - commission works from our composers to showcase our choirs.
I could go on, but without a voice in the steering committees, it is pointless. I'm just wasting my time, which I should be devoting to fulfilling a commission from outside the university, typesetting music for publishers (outside the university), and practicing my trombone for gigs outside the university, to supplement my part-time salary for full-time work at the university to earn a living wage.
The worst thing about it is that I'm not alone in this.
