Budget shows ULV’s true priorities

The University of La Verne’s thriving art, music and theater programs may soon follow the lead of the AAIC, becoming simply a part of the University’s history.

Some University officials have proposed to phase out the performance scholarships that are awarded to students involved in the music, art, theater and debate programs, in order to cope with an already stretched budget.

It seems the performance scholarships may have far exceeded their budget for years. But this proposal, which seems to resemble a feeble attempt at saving the University, in reality, may be a step toward a much more sinister goal that the University has been inching towards for a while now.

The threat of losing these scholarships and thus many of the students receiving them could decimate the arts on campus. But that doesn’t seem to be of any concern to some of those administrators involved in making such decisions.

In fact, it seems as if this is exactly what some University administrators seem to want. It coincides directly with the priorities the University has held as of late.

For years now, it appears that the University has been eager to minimize many of the more liberal-arts centered programs and has been inching towards creating a sort of three-tiered system, favoring the business, law and education majors, something like Devry or the University of Phoenix.

Not that there is anything wrong with those schools, it’s just that many of us applied to and attend ULV for its strong liberal arts programs, that and the fact that Devry had nothing to offer us other than the promise of becoming “Devridiots.”

The University is slowly but surely moving towards this more focused structure, centralizing programs to only focus on these three majors. But can we really blame them? After all these are the areas that will produce the richest alumni, and we all know that’s what really counts when making decisions such as this one.

The speech communications, theatre, and music majors aren’t going to be the graduates who return with million dollar donations years from now. So why not cater to the other areas that will produce the future moneybags of America? Maybe that’s why they are throwing so much of the University’s funding into an unaccredited law school.

Maybe that’s why the law school dean receives the highest salary out of all of the other deans. They need to put the central campus in financial crisis and support the law school because – fingers crossed – maybe one day it will get accredited.

With goals of consolidating the campus to three centralized areas of study, University officials are truly showing where their priorities are.

Ridding the University of these performance scholarships may guarantee a serious drop in the number of performance and arts students enrolled in this school.

For so long now, these scholarships have lured talented, creative students here. Many count on these hefty performance-based scholarships to cover their tuition expenses and without them many will be forced to find other ways to pay the ever-increasing bill, that is, if they even choose to continue their education at the University.

There hasn’t been much public discussion about possible scholarship cuts as of yet. Negotiations are going on and although they are hush-hush, it isn’t too early to for concerned students to speak up about the matter.

Faculty members are rallying for the students, but that doesn’t guarantee that they will be successful. It’s time for the students to voice their opinions: Tell administrators how you feel. It’s a lot harder to tell a student she’s going to lose the scholarship she was depending on than it is to break the news to a faculty member.

On the other hand we could get rid of the art programs. Who needs music, anyway? Debate, schmebate. And as for theater? Well, why don’t we just save ourselves some time and do away with Dailey Theatre while we are reconstructing the student center? After all, who needs culture? There’s no money in that. When did we ever claim to be a liberal arts school, anyhow?

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