Zane's World
It's the culture, stupid
By: Zane Fischer 01/20/2009
Now that the New Mexico Highlands University Board of Regents has approved going forward with the acquisition of the College of Santa Fe, we can rest easy, right?
Highlands President James Fries’ enthusiasm is only bested by CSF President Stuart Kirk’s. Every missive from these administrators is a heartbeat of hope. A few legislative hurdles, a $35 million bailout (modest by today’s standards) and oak trees and ivory towers will be sprouting off of St. Michael’s Drive faster than you spell incompetence.
It’s too bad that one oafish move after the next makes it increasingly difficult to actually care.
Even though the community has been asked—belatedly—to wake up and cherish the noble and storied College of Santa Fe, we’ve never been told how the financial trouble started. It’s not like the private school has said, “Hey, we’ve got nothing to hide—take a look at our finances!” That coy silence, of course, breeds suspicion. We’ve all seen CSI: We know how to spot the guilty. But we’ve also watched the news; there are ways out of financial trouble, especially for the guilty.
It’s the failure of vision, it’s the pervasive soul sickness more than the money that has bred concern regarding CSF during the past year. Now, with each passing episode of minor disaster, the thing is snowballing into an epic-enough wreck to spur apathy about it. Like I said, we’ve seen the news and we know how to tune out the world’s worst. Things are too screwed in Gaza for us to care. This is America: When the going gets tough, our eyes glaze over.
Of course, our best attribute as Americans is that we’re likely to actually rise up and offer assistance when it’s openly requested. Hurricanes, Tsunamis, you-name-it: When governments fail to provide, the American people are at the top of the donor list. This is doubly true for soft, emotional Santa Fe. Call us woo-woo if you like; we can’t help but roll up our sleeves or peel open the check book when asked.
Problem is, CSF has never asked. Oh, I’m sure they’ve asked their board of trustees and an extended circle of people who are sick of being pestered, but Santa Fe, in general, has never been asked; I’ve never been asked. The school has remained tight-lipped and obsessively, pointlessly secretive while sinking into a nasty quagmire.
Now, The Screen at CSF is slated to be closed. Its director, Santa Fe’s most respected film junkie, Brent Kliewer, offered to work the spring semester without salary. No dice. He offered to raise ticket prices, to reduce screenings, anything to break even. Sorry, pal.
Respected actress, Academy Award winner, Santa Fean and devotee to the city’s art-house cinema scene—especially The Screen—Ali MacGraw didn’t know about the impending closure until she read about it in the
newspaper.
“It’s so shockingly shortsighted,” MacGraw tells SFR, “I don’t understand what’s happening. For anyone to fail to understand the cultural vibrancy and how critical that theater is to both the students and the community is just incomprehensible to me.”
Rumors broke out last week that MacGraw—or MacGraw and a select group of donors—were going to step in and save The Screen. That’s not the case, MacGraw says. “When I heard about the closure, I called [CSF Moving Image Arts Chairman] Jonathan Wacks right away and asked what I could do. But I’m still waiting to hear. In the meantime, I just want to say that I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived in New York, and no place has independent film curating like Santa Fe does, and much of the credit goes to Brent Kliewer and the The Screen. It is fair to say that I’ll do whatever I can to help, and I know I speak for a lot of Santa Feans when I say that.”
There’s evidence—Web sites, recruitment material, slick little ’zines, students hard at work—that supports the notion that CSF is an art school, but the empirical truth of it is absent in terms of administrative action. We—as in We the Community, We the Citizens of New Mexico, We the Voters and We the Taxpayers—are meant to believe in the value of CSF as a center for education and culture, as a crucible and a propagator of ideas and to assume liability for its care and maintenance.
A school, unlike a generic company, is not made attractive to buyers solely because of its lean, tight budget. If a school isn’t a living center of knowledge and culture, it’s just wasted real estate.
There’s talk of opening The Screen again next fall. But anyone who knows Kliewer’s history knows he might just take his program elsewhere before then. Hello community college?
Obviously money is tight, but no one wants to rescue a cultural void. The administration needs to step up and match the soul that its students express if it wants CSF to be valued in this community. Or the administration needs to get out of the way.
Comments (4)
College of Santa Fe is a great school that is doomed to fail.
The administration continually lacks forsight and good judgement.
The people with money at the top really don't understand what the school is at all and have no interaction with students
And the students, while eccentricly interesting and evocativly creative, are quite apathetic. Only a few of them are doing really amazing work and the rest of them just think they're artists because they go to an art school.
I'm proud to have graduated from CSF, it was a great place of wonder and friendship. Some of the best days of my life occured on that campus (which is slowly being parceled off to banks and the state) and it's dissapointing to see it fail and watch all the people associated with that institution lose their livelihoods with it.
from wikipedia: "In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest (the coupon) and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity."
...a bond isn't magic fairy dust that whisks debt away. It just puts it off... with interest. And since highlands is a state school, any money not made up through enrollment, fees, endowments, etc comes from the citizens pockets.
Do I think it's worth the "bailout"? Yes, absolutely. Although knowing what I know of the administration of CSF, including Highland's Fries who started the whole debt as Pres of CSF in the first place, I kind of feel CSF will lose it's relevance anyways.
...although I'm hoping and praying for ivory towers and oak trees.
Readers should be aware that CSF's $30 million debt will not be paid from taxpayers' pockets. Highlands will refinance the debt through bonds that they have the ability to issue.
In reading this column, this item is utterly unclear, and is important to understand.
As a senior at the college who has spent all of my four years here, I can say that there is no place like the College of Santa Fe anywhere else in the world, and there will be devastating financial, cultural and demographic blows to the community should the Highlands acquisition not go through.
I am one of a group of students who is working on a grassroots advocacy effort on behalf of this acquisition. If the administration has failed to show the community what is of value in this institution, we on no uncertain terms will succeed in showing every member of this community and the legislature each minute way in which this college is tied to the community and the state's fiscal and cultural health.
There is an excess of remarkable talent and innovation that occurs at the College of Santa Fe, and it is true that most of you are unaware of it. I promise you that you will be made aware of the myriad of our artistic achievements within the coming days.
There are many events to keep your eyes on in the coming days. One exciting event will be a showcase of musical ensembles from CSF's Contemporary Music Program at the Lensic at the end of April. And there will certainly be others.
But the true test will be how you all respond. I can only hope that you will be as supportive and engaged as Zane suggests you will be.
Alysha Layla Shaw '09
You know that Brent just had a death in his immediate family right? He's needed there more than at the college. Yes the college is in a bad financial mess, and you're not the only one who doesn't know how it got into this mess. About the only ones who really know how it got 35 million in debt are the big wigs, and the chances of them admitting what went wrong is slim to none. If they won't even admit to the reason why it's in this mess, do you actually think they're going to ask the community for help? It's like a little kid who killed his goldfish by feeding it too much, sure he's sad, but when his mother asks him how it happened and if he did it, he denies it outright.
I will say that as a student at csf, I love it here, and I'm doing all I can to save it, because it's one of the only places I've ever fit in. I'll miss the screen, sure, but I'd like to see the college get back on it's feet before I start to try to work on saving a section of it.