When you pay as much as you do per year to go to this school, you expect to get a quality education. As a theater major with a minor in dance, I feel as if we get the short end of the stick here. Not only is our department the complete opposite of the business school, with mismatched desks, limited classrooms (and the fact that it is in a dorm building), but now the dance department doesn’t even HAVE a building! It’s like the arts departments at this school are the red-headed stepchildren! I am earning my dance minor and, yeah, the old dance building was not the most picturesque edifice on campus, but at least we had a real dance floor, mirrors and, well, a building. Over winter break they tore down our only building leaving us homeless. They once promised us the old alumni building but took that away from us and now what are they building on our old site? A NEW alumni building. Now we are located in the Wellness Center and although it is very nice of them to let us use their facilities, we do not have a sprung floor, necessary for safe dancing, we do not have mirrors and we are taking up room that patrons of the Wellness Center could be using. Not to mention in my current dance class we are using a half-wall as a barre. It is unfortunate that I will have graduated before I get to see a new location for the dance department (if we even ever get one) but I hope that we get one soon for the sake of the younger dancers. We really have some amazing dance staff but do not have the chance to show everyone else how amazing they and our classes are. I hope to soon see a change; otherwise people are really going to start looking down on the arts at this school.
– Dana Burck
Senior