Good for them

Behind the impasse that led USC's 2016 MFA students to withdraw in protest

The [entire] graduate class of 2016 at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design withdrew in protest Friday from the visual arts program over administration and curriculum changes. The master of fine arts students publicly posted a letter on the website Art & Education. "We are a group of seven artists who made the decision to attend USC Roski School of Art & Design's MFA program based on faculty, curriculum, program structure and funding packages," they wrote. "We are a group of seven artists who have been forced by the school's dismantling of each of these elements, to dissolve our MFA candidacies." The conflict stems from changes made to the program after students had already arrived on campus, as well as resignations by prominent faculty members.

Technical design may get more funding, but studio art has more passion and beauty. This was one programme that seemed to understand that in a field where art and the humanities is often minimised in favour of more lucrative scientific patents, etc. Now, even in the art field, technical design seems to be where the money is, from the university's point of view, at least. The school assures the public that it is not marginalising studio and fine art in favour of other forms, but the faculty who have left seem to be supporting the students in this. If the programme has substantially changed from the one that brought them from places like Australia and France, then they certainly have every right to withdraw. The fact that all seven of a graduating class chose to do so, setting their studies back at least a year if not more, means that there is something that needs to be reconsidered if the prestgious art programme is to continue.

From their open letter at Art & Education:

The dean of the Roski School of Art and Design was appointed by the university in May 2013, despite having no experience in the visual arts field. She, along with Roski’s various vice and assistant deans, made it clear to our class that they did not value the program’s faculty structure, pedagogy, or standing in the arts community, the very same elements that had attracted us as potential students. The effects of the administration’s denigration of our program arrived almost immediately. In December 2014, Roski’s MFA program director stepped down from her position, and was not replaced with another director; shortly thereafter that month, the program lost a prominent artist, mentor, and tenured Roski professor, her pedagogical energies and input devalued by the administration. By the end of the Fall 2014 semester, we quickly came to understand that the MFA program we believed we would be attending was being pulled out from under our feet. In January 2015, we felt it necessary to go to the source of these issues, the dean of the Roski School.

In a slew of unproductive, confounding, and contradictory meetings with the dean and other assorted members of the Roski administration in early 2015, we were told that we would now have to apply for, and compete with a larger pool of students for, the same TAships promised to us during recruitment. We were presented with a different curriculum, one in which entire semesters would occur without studio visits, a bizarre choice for a studio art MFA. Shocked by these bewildering and last-minute changes, we reached out to the university’s upper administration. We were then told by the vice provost for Graduate Programs that the communication we received during recruitment clearly stating our funding packages was an “unfortunate mistake,” and that if the program wasn’t right for us, we “should leave.” Throughout this grueling process of attempting to reason with the institution, the Roski School and university administration used manipulative tactics of delaying decisions, blaming others, contradicting each other’s stated policies, and attempting to force a wedge of silence between faculty and students. At every single turn, the dean and every other administrator we interacted with tried to delegitimize and belittle our real concerns, repeatedly framing us as “demanding” simply for advocating for those things the school had already promised us.