Initiative plans cuts to campus art programs

Tickets to The Tempest will still be $31, but you might not get your internship at the Guggenheim, underwritten by CUArts next year.

Gregory Mosher, director of the Columbia Arts Initiative, will send a scaled back budget proposal to the Office of the President at the end of this week, detailing how he and his staff hope to execute the 30 percent budget cut that was requested by President Bollinger last month.

Costly programs that served the fewest number of people, such CUArts Experience and global initiatives, will not be funded, while programs with many patrons like the Ticket and Information Center and alumni programming, will be trimmed slightly, if the proposal is approved.

“Even if it’s an incredible program serving 15 people, I’d rather sustain the program that serves 15,000 people,” Mosher said in an interview on Friday.

In the proposal that Mosher has been working on with officials from the Graduate School of the Arts, which houses CUArts, the Arts Initiative will withdraw its half of the funding for the CAE internship program they launched in partnership with the Center for Career Education in the 2007-2008 school year.

Mosher said he hopes CCE or the SoA will be able to make up their $8,500 half of the funding to fund the program's total $17,000 budget.

“I think that’s going to be the big bruise for the Columbia student body,” said Rosie DuPont, BC ’10 and an ArtsLink student advocate.

The Arts Initiative will hold funding on their global initiatives starting July 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year, when the cuts go into place.

Last year, the global initiatives funded a trip to Beijing for several musicians from the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program, who had the opportunity to perform with local musicians.

“That global program was really important for our students, it gave them the experience of a lifetime. From my perspective it’s a shame that it got cut,” said Chris Washburne, Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program director, who added that he recognized it was a necessity in tough financial times.

“We had talked about bringing the musicians [from Beijing] back here to Columbia to perform, but without the Arts Initiative funding that’ll of course be impossible,” he said.

Mosher said he and his staff are eager to hear from students about where they think cuts should be made.

In November, hundreds of students formed an “Advocates for the Arts Initiative” group on Facebook, after the program was moved by the President’s Office to the SoA. But students have been mostly silent on the 30 percent budget cut request.

“I think students felt like there was more of a misunderstanding of the mission of the CU Arts Initiative rather than a monetary inevitability,” DuPont said of the reaction to the November move, which some students worried was an attempt to phase out the entire program.

Samantha Carlin, BC ’09 and a former president of student theater group NOMADS, said she was relieved to hear that the Gatsby Charitable Foundation Grants for student theater productions would not be affected.

The Arts Initiative gave her the resources and confidence to pursue a career in the arts, she said, adding that she was alarmed that any cuts were being made at all.

“I get upset thinking about it not being there,” she said. “I don’t know who I would’ve been without the Arts Initiative.”

Mosher remained optimistic about the cuts, and said he looked forward to making the Arts Initiative a more efficient operation.

“I think this is an opportunity. It’s a classic ‘make lemonade out of lemons’ situation,” he said.

leah.greenbaum@columbiaspectator.com

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the Arts Initiative pays $25,000 for the CAE of the total program budget of $50,000. It actually pays $8,500, half of the $17,000 program. Spectator regrets the error