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| 2/17/2010 10:45:00 AM Email this article • Print this article | |
Responding to Lepage
Professor Bruce Levitt
Cornell Univ., Dept of Theatre, Film & Dance
It is important to respond to the editorial from Dean Lepage, published in these pages on Wednesday, February 10th. The Dean has suggested that references portraying the cuts demanded of Theatre, Film & Dance are inaccurate when they mention that those cuts amount to as much as one-third of the Colleges budget cuts. When asked in our meeting of February 1st what the College's cut for next year might be, the Dean gave an estimate of six million dollars. Hence, a cut of up to two million from our Department is indeed up to one-third of the cuts the Dean anticipates for the next academic year and up to 50 percent of the College's annual allocation of four million dollars.
Dean Lepage further muddies the waters by citing the amount of budget cuts the College was hit with last year - $9 million, or approximately 7 percent across the board - omitting history - that our Department's allocation was reduced by 8 percent plus a senior tenure track line due to retirement. And Dean Lepage insists that the Department has until next year to come up with a plan to create a new and "vigorous model," completely obscuring the fact that he has asked us to give him $400,000 in cuts by this May and to deliver a plan for the future "model" of the Department at the same time. Since Lecturers must be given a year's notice before they can be terminated, our new structure - with cuts totaling up to an additional 1.6 million dollars - must be presented to and approved by the Dean by the end of this semester. While the execution will take 18 months, all of the plans and cuts must be completed in the next three months.
Cornell has gone about its budget-reimaging process, led by Provost Fuchs, in an exemplary way, unlike the cost reduction discussions at other schools. Why is the approach to Theatre, Film & Dance so different, so heavy-handed? Why the uncharacteristic tin ear in this case? Is there a hidden agenda - perhaps to have the Department revert exclusively to theater and film studies? No matter that Theatre, Film & Dance and its productions has attracted so many remarkable students and led to so many successful graduates? Has the budget crisis provided a means to force this agenda without more substantive discussion? Is the Schwartz Center, a facility with five performance spaces, to be emptied of performances while students are deprived of the very real experiential learning that takes place? Has Plato won the age-old argument with Aristotle-that artists and participation in the arts are of little or no value to society?
The Dean has asserted that there are less expensive ways to teach theatre. Is this now the new model for all of Cornell-to teach to the lowest budgetary common dominator - or is this only the agenda for Theatre, Film & Dance? What did Dean Lepage really mean when he said to the assembled faculty and staff of the Department: "Ithaca High School does theatre productions for a lot less than you cost." Such comments certainly seem to have a target - productions, a purpose - to exacerbate any possible divisions between scholars and artists; and a directive to make the cuts in production, just in case there were any doubts.
Our non-tenured staff and lecturers are easy targets for this "exercise," but is their disappearance good for the students? And let's be clear: the only way the department can make any budget cuts is through firings and terminations of teaching staff and lecturers. The sometimes-used example by the Deans, that our sets and costumes can cost a lot less, is a shibboleth. Our entire physical production budget - sets, lights, costumes, royalties, etc, - is a grand total of $96,000 annually - all of which is income earned from box office receipts and has nothing to do with the allocation from the College.
Dean Lepage has said publically that he is determined to protect the educational experience of Cornell students by focusing cuts in areas that do not jeopardize teacher-student interaction. The lecturers and staff in the Department are teachers of great skill and dedication-many of whom would be tenured at other universities-and, as student letters to The Sun demonstrate, loss of these teachers must be a decision of last resort taken only after all administrative and systematic cuts have been exhausted.
Dean Lepage also said that he was very concerned that students not feel acutely the reductions. Did he miss the fact that theater students learn and work closely with their instructors and lecturers? The testimony of alumni and current students seems to indicate that these people are very important as educators, mentors, and advisors. Cornell might even learn something about impactful advising and teaching from the very people who appear to be targeted in the dismissal plan.
What does the Dean mean by saying that there can be other ways of getting the same things done? Does he have something in mind, something without instructors? If so, has Dean Lepage required searches for alternative means of education throughout the college - or only/mostly in Theater? Is this a symmetrical inquiry? What impels a leader to task publicly one unique department with planning for up to 33 percent of his total mandated reductions? Hasn't the perception of even-handedness been important throughout the whole re-imagining process? The mandated cuts - even at the $1 million minimum - are so massive as to render meaningless a form of instruction for the hundreds of students who now participate in Theatre, Dance and Film production.
What good will come of this? Cornell has gained respect through the Fuchs Process. Moreover, some have hoped that from current challenges, new opportunities would arise and that the University would emerge stronger. Might this indicate otherwise? Might this heavy-handed (based on its reception) exception to the said Fuchs Process prove to be viral? Could it exacerbate anxiety and mistrust about other reimagining decisions? Dean Lepage reports that budget and personnel reductions from budget cuts allow him to recruit for positions that had been frozen. So, he is not just asking the Department to take its share of the budget hit. He is also asking the Department to go up to half-way out of existence so that he can re-claim funds from Theatre, Film & Dance and spend them elsewhere.
Given the cuts we are required to make and given other feedback we have received from the Dean's office, - that the quality of our productions and the size of our audiences no longer matter - there is no vigorous program that can result. As the "experts" tasked by Dean Lepage to reimagine the Department-without the visibility and scope of our production program-a program that involves the participation of nearly 800 students annually and audiences numbering around 14,000-we can already say that few students will want to apply to Cornell who want to major in or participate in Theatre, Film & Dance, irrespective of their major. There is no way we will maintain nearly 1200 students in our classes each year.
Our small graduate program, too, may suffer since many of our applicants come to Cornell, drawn not only by the rigorous intellectual content of our Ph.D. field, but also by the opportunity to intersect with a nationally known theatre production program. Many of our graduate students act, direct, serve as dramaturges and fulfill other roles in our production process that not only enriches their education but makes them more employable on the job market.
Clearly these mandates imposed on us are the product of an agenda different from the budget cutting process-an agenda that does not consider hands on, experiential production immersion as a rich and legitimate form of education. We believe that the stature of the College and of Cornell will be weakened as a result, that fewer students will choose to attend Cornell, and that thousands of audience members will no longer enter the Center. As one student put it in a letter to The Sun - the Schwartz Center will become a "soulless place."
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Suicide has recently come to Ithaca in a very public, and at times controversial, way. This past academic year, after three years with no suicides, Cornell experienced what is known in the scientific community as a "suicide cluster." OK, so maybe you're like me and you thought this whole JetBlue flight attendant story was good for maybe one news cycle.  |
