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Without pause, every other fall someone in this space writes with tremendous fervor about the unbelievable amount of apathy young adults have toward politics and the election process. I would like to address another facet of that apathy that affects the youth here at USD – lack of support for our peers’ academic and professional work.
The place this seems to be most evident is in the music department. Not a week goes by without a performer or two giving a recital. One day it is a pianist, then next a vocalist. However, what is common between these two performances is the lack of support these performers receive in terms of an audience. The majority of these recitals go unnoticed, except for the presence of the performer’s teacher.
How is it that these hardworking performers have no audience? Presumably, each student performer has dozens of friends, many of whom are also fellow music colleagues. Why are these colleagues not supporting their professional peers?
The recital schedules are posted throughout the Fine Arts building and listed online. The recitals are known and have to be given by every student performer, yet the seats remain empty.
It seems to me that a fundamental aspect of professional growth, especially for music performers, is support for your work, but more critical to the process, is feedback. For a performer, there is no better feedback than that of an audience member, but unfortunately that immediate response is mostly nonexistent for USD student performers.
This is not a situation unique to USD, however. Even at Julliard, where there are on average three student recitals a day, the recital hall is nearly empty, save for two or three homeless New Yorkers taking respite from the conditions of the street.
It is not as if USD students do not attend these types of events. In the last week, the Muenster University Center Pit Lounge saw an afternoon performance by USD’s Jazz Band and an evening of open mic poetry performances. For both of these performances, the Pit Lounge was full and there was an overflow of viewers standing around taking in the music and poetry.
In the last couple years, it seems that IdeaFest has seen an increase in attendance, however, many of the individual sessions where students present their papers and research are lightly attended, to say the least.
Again, I ask, where are the peers and colleagues who study side-by-side these students who are bold enough to step up and put their work on display?
Forums are also very poorly attended on this campus, of course this is no secret. But it gets worse when they are forums created by and paneled by students. Most of these forums, and most of the events at USD are attended by the same cast of uber-interested students.
Good for them for their interest, their curiosity and their
support for discussion and debate on this campus. But also bad for them because they are deprived of the full spectrum of diverse
opinions and perceptions to the ideas many of these forums
present.
There is also an incredible lack of participation in the classroom. From undergraduate on up through graduate programs, to get students to recite material and to comment on the assignments is like selling sand to an Iraqi; it’s just not going to happen. This is unfortunate for many reasons.
First, it simply makes class boring. That is not to say the professor is boring, but when it is just the professor barking information at you for 50 minutes, sometimes that can get old fast. Second, oftentimes the same two or three students participate. Again, this hardly fun for anyone involved because you sit there having to deal with the same guy thinking he is the smartest in the class, which is probably not likely.
Finally, limiting discussion of the subject matter short-shifts the entire educational process, for both students and the professors alike.
USD is an institution of higher learning, a place for education. Except for those who will make their lives a constant education, for the rest, there is no other time in our lives where we have the time to take in so many different experiences and to be engaged in each and every one of them. The educational and professional process includes engagement in the work of our colleagues, not only to increase our knowledge about a certain subject matter, but to help our colleagues be the best professionals they can be.
Reach columnist David Whitesock at David.Whitesock@usd.edu.
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