To the Office of the Arts and Emerson College:
The Paramount Center is absolutely an exciting addition to Emerson College’s arsenal of theaters and facilities. Right now, many things in the Performing Arts department are in the midst of change, and from one side of any given room on campus to the other you can find multiple accounts of what is going on. However, the only source of information that seems oddly silent is the Office of the Arts and the College itself. If you want to know what is going on as a student, the only people who aren’t providing information are the ones making the decisions.
First and foremost, the Office of the Arts and the College need to be open and honest with students when it comes to direction and decisions. The only way to dispel rumors is with transparency. Be so honest with students about where things are going that there is no room for rumors to take hold. If students feel that they are being made aware of what is happening, the trust formed between student and institution will cause rumors to lose their weight.
The issue of trust also extends to the making of the decisions themselves. Emerson is an institution meant to serve the best interests of its student body. When decisions fly out as mandates without the slightest inquiry into what students might actually want, it is difficult for students to trust that those decisions are being made with themselves in mind. If students were asked what they would like to see happen or how they felt about a certain issue and those comments were taken seriously, students would be able to see their interests being met in the decisions that followed.
Interestingly, I was recently asked what I thought about an aspect of a new lighting package being considered for the Cutler Majestic Theater. When I mentioned that I wasn’t sure the lighting package was a good idea from a students perspective because of the learning opportunities it takes away, I was told that argument had been blocking the lighting package for a while, but that essentially they had gotten past that. I’m saddened to hear that student interests are something you can “get past” at this school.
On the most basic level, students want and deserve to know what is going on at their institution in an honest and transparent way. $30,000 per year in tuition alone should buy them that right. Further, students want to be heard. They don’t want decisions being handed down from on high with no visible thought or process given to ensuring their best interests. These are decisions which directly affect student’s lives, their learning, and their careers. They should have a say in them.
“This is what we are thinking and planning….”
“What do you think?”
Are those two avenues of communication so difficult?
This morning during the Into the Woods post-production meeting, social media was praised as a big factor in how well the show sold. I agree. I am sure that an innovative school like Emerson can come up with some way, between blogs and twitter and a host of other methods, to both inform and involve students. I really hope that they can and do for the sake of students who have pinned their career aspirations on Emerson College.
There’s much worse than just this lighting package that Office of the Arts is doing without regard to student (or staff!) wishes or input. This is an issue that needs ot be dealt with.
