Students launch petition to save Art History minor

By Zoe Strozewski | Published by January 29, 2020

Just days before Christmas, the students in Kean University’s Art History department found out that many of their courses were getting cut and their program was in danger of dissolution. Now, they are fighting a fight that they thought most students weren’t even aware exists.

The students, all members of the Art Over All club, an organization that aims to provide a safe and unified space for art lovers to come together and create, launched a petition to save the program on change.org. The petition has received over 3500 signatures as of Jan. 29.

Brandon Bravo, co-president of Art Over All, said it has been an emotional experience and a relief to see the many signatures and support they have received so soon.

“It shows that art is necessary within our world,” Bravo said.  “Almost everything you see is something an artist has made: your clothes, your iPhone, what you stare at the doctor’s office as you’re waiting there for 45 minutes. It shows that whatever happens, we’ll stand strong together because that’s all that matters.”

The idea to respond to the art history program cuts by petition came from Cheyenne Thompson, an art history minor who founded Art Over All a few years ago. 

“We want Kean to open its eyes, and not just Kean, but any doubter out there who thinks art is unneeded,” Thompson said. “We want to show Kean that programs like these are needed and they can’t push us around because they think that all we do is paint and draw.

Bravo and Eric Miele, vice president of Art Over All, spoke at this semester’s first University Senate meeting on Jan. 21 to garner support for their cause. Both are art history minors and said that they were shocked and angry about the cuts.  

The art history faculty were informed Dec. 18 that several sections of their lower-level art history courses (AH 1700 and AH 1701) would be cancelled and the remaining sections would have their course caps raised up to 50 students, according to an email sent to all faculty and staff by the University Senate,. Two days later, the tenured art history faculty were informed that they are being retrenched, or laid off, at the end of the Spring 2020 semester, a move that caused the Senate to speculate that the art history program was on track to be dissolved completely.

According to the University Senate, the administration did not get these decisions approved or documented by the Senate, which is required by curricular procedures at Kean. Additionally, the art history students reported that only the art history faculty informed them of the program changes, and not the school itself. 

While the majority of Art Over All members are Studio Art majors, many are art history minors at least in part because their program already requires four art history classes. Majors in graphic design, architecture, art education and engineering, also require completion of art history coursework. 

Bravo said that he is worried that if the program is eventually dissolved and Kean no longer offers the art history courses that he needs to graduate, he may have to move to another school where his existing credits may not transfer well and he could graduate later than planned as a result.

“I have three more semesters, and I have to take two more art history classes that are required within my major. So what am I going to do next? Will I have to go somewhere else or switch my major?” Bravo said.

The only communication the art history students have received thus far came from Suzanne Bousquet, the vice president for academic affairs, who sent an email first to the art history students and then all of Kean’s faculty, staff and students Jan. 31. Because the email went out after nearly two weeks of the semester had already passed, Miele and other Art Over All members had taken up the responsibility of spreading the news of the program cuts to curtail the university’s lack of communication.

“We’ve been announcing it in all our classes, and the moment everybody finds out, they’re very shocked. Automatically the class gets very serious, and it just gets real,” Miele said. “It changes things because people are questioning why they’re even trying in a class that may not even count for them.”

In the email, Bousquet stated that the art history minor will continue to be offered at Kean and all students who wanted to take an art history course this semester were able to enroll. She also pointed out that while Kean is a “longstanding supporter of the arts and arts-related degree programs,” art history students aren’t numerous enough for the school to allocate financial resources to the program as it has in the past.

“While we understand that is frustrating to its faculty, we need to spend our limited resources wisely to support programs that are in high demand from our students,” Bousquet said in the email. “The University remains committed to offering an Art History minor as well as Art History courses to students in other majors to help facilitate a well-rounded education.”

These decreases in the scope of Kean’s art history sector aren’t the first that the program has experienced. Two years ago, the art history major was reduced to a minor, and hand in hand with that, the students said, came to an increasingly deteriorated facility for art students in Vaughn Eames Hall.

According to Bravo and Miele, the art wing of Vaughn Eames has various faulty fixtures and cases of water damage that have been ignored by the school despite work orders that have been submitted for long periods of time. These faulty fixtures include broken and flooding sinks that can’t produce hot water, which forces photography students to rely on a coffee machine to get the hot water they need to properly develop film.  

Studios in the wing have also had ceiling leaks that were patched up with pieces of cardboard, and classes have been disbanded early because of the smell of fumes, according to Miele. Bravo said that there are certain appliances that have been out of commission for so long that art students often attempt to fix things themselves.

“We have talent here, but it’s hard sometimes for us to express ourselves because the state of our studios is so bad,” Miele said.

For these reasons, the call to action created by Art Over All has also come to encompass the larger problems art students have been experiencing long before the cuts to the art history program.

“We just felt that enough was enough. We’re just like every other student. We’re equal to everybody, and we’re tired of being second class students,” Bravo said.

Despite their gaining attention with the petition and attendance of the University Senate meeting, Miele and the other Art Over All students plan on continuing their fight to protect their minor because of their belief in the importance that art and art history holds as an outlet in the world.

“Art is something that just stirs people regardless of who you are and how involved you are with it. You can’t get art unless artists are able, to tell the truth, and express ourselves,” Miele said. “We all want to succeed and create these pieces that stir people’s emotions, and we can’t do that if we’re not being taught and we keep being stripped of everything that we work for.”

 

This current version is updated from the original posted on Jan. 29, 2020. 

 

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