By Fiorella Comparini Donoso || Contributing Writer 

Due to the global pandemic, F&M has been scrounging for pennies recently. I knew things were going downhill when the upperclassmen told me pizza was no longer offered at common hours, due to budget cuts. In usual Dip fashion, while choosing how to remedy this financial predicament, the administration has made sure that the students are the top priority! One example of this is the school deciding to remove funding from the Music department and instead make students pay out of pocket for music lessons. 

The school’s decision has created some backlash, but I am severely confused. F&M is merely mitigating their microeconomy in a way that doesn’t harm anything they care about. I, for one, am happy to see this happen… maybe now the arts will finally perish. I mean I think that the title “liberal arts” is all the arts that we really need.

Even if cutting down the funding for the program doesn’t work for getting rid of the pest that is the arts, its lower standards (seeing that many students will no longer be able to afford music lessons) may mean that no one will take the program seriously; and the music program will cause its own demise. Furthermore, cancelling the program will hopefully wean out the less talented singers who are only into music for a hobby. I think it’s brilliant that only students who plan to major in music and have full financial aid are the ones that will get some lessons for free. Why do we want to make music accessible to everyone? It’s a stupid career anway. Rather than paving a new path for the arts, I say let us convert back to the traditional views that the arts are not for everyone. 

Seeing the administration let this happen to the music department is a sure sign people no longer care for the arts. I think it’s time we stray from this singing stuff and focus on what really matters: athletics. Because of this narrative that “everyone can be an artist,” sports have lost a chunk of its regular audience and participants. Since the arts have been so selfish as to take attention away from sports, it is only fair for the athletic department to get more funding as compensation. We really need to give these poor athletes the spotlight for once.

First-year Fiorella Comparini Donoso is a contributing writer. Her email is fcompari@fandm.edu

By TCR