Save The Arts!

Todays blip was found in the main square on Lancaster Universities Campus. Below is a bit of a rant. Proceed with caution

A couple of weeks ago a post popped up on Facebook from a guy I met a couple of years ago at uni. I've not seen him much recently and I wouldn't say we were good friends, more acquaintances with slightly overlapping social circles. He does music and if any of you are into Deep House then you should definitely check out his stuff. He goes by the name of Siôn and just got signed to MTA.

Siôn is a music student at Lancaster and had posted that the music department was being shut down. So severe has this shutdown been that he might not graduate, and there will no longer be a music degree offered at Lancaster, even though people are currently applying for it through UCAS and there are people in up to 4 years of study at Lancaster currently.

Now I understand that Universities are now businesses but I am getting sick and rather bloody tired with this University's insistance at eroding everything I love about it. The College System, a key factor in mine and a number of my peers decision to attend here, is being undermined at every stage. Sport Centre access in our brand new sports centre is difficult and expensive. But the biggest erosion is this destruction of courses. In my own department Italian has already gone under and as Language courses across the UK continue to tumble what is to stop the rest of the department from going too?

Yes, struggling departments might be better closing down to make way for the freeing up of funding for other departments, but here is the crux. There is only one department in the University which seems to receive funding; The Management School. Lancaster has a brilliant Marketing and Business School but it seems that all of our funds go straight into it. It has the biggest building on campus, the best lecturers and spaces in which to teach, the latest innovations such as windows 8 touchscreen computers (whilst the Language department still has old, slow computers). The Management school even have their own University Hoodies on sale in the Uni Shop so as to distinguish themselves slightly more from the rest.

This may sound like sour grapes from a non-management student who doesnt receive the full benefit of that area of the school. However my biggest gripe is the feeling that I am an equal paying yet second class student in the eyes of a university which is cutting arts funding at every turn, stifling departments to offer the bare minimum of courses which neither excite nor inspire their students. For a top 10 institution this just isn't good enough.

My apologies to anyone who has read this far. Its been one of those days!