Art students get little credit, even less respect

SHAWN CHENG/YH

Kristi and Linda are roommates. Every other morning Kristi wakes up for her 8:30 a.m. photo section. Almost every night Kristi comes home after 2 a.m. covered in paint. One evening while she was gathering up her supplies she muttered something about sleep deprivation breaking down her brain. From under a copy of John Gaddis's We Now Know, Linda muttered, "Well, at least it's just art." Linda was found the next day creatively duct-taped to the Davenport gnome.

The above dramatization isn't meant to say that all we art majors are duct tape-wielding eccentrics all the time. Nor is it to say that we aren't completely psyched about the new building on Chapel Street set to open next fall. But sometimes we know we're getting the shaft. The worst example of this is with getting credit.

A generic Yale class meets twice a week for 50 minutes and has a 50 minute section—150 minutes total. Language classes meet for 250 minutes a week and receive one-and-a-half credits. What most non-art majors probably don't know is that painting classes meet for a total of 330 minutes per week, yet still only receive one credit. Last semester, a painting professor decided to look into this discrepancy. He came back to us and said, "maybe next year." It's funny to picture men in suits sitting around a big round table meeting to decide credit allotment. "What about painting?" one of them asks. His question is received by silence, until another answers with the obvious, "But they're just painting!" The group nods in agreement and chuckles as they move on to the next class. I'm not saying that language and lab students don't deserve the extra half credit. I'm just saying that art kids do too.

Perhaps if the men in suits had any idea about the amount of hours students spend in the studios and darkroom (that 20 hours-a-week photo mantra is no lie) they would reconsider. And I know that the Kristi/Linda example is a bit harsh, but the consensus seems to be that "at least art is fun." And to a large degree it is. I personally would change universities before I'd change majors. But it can be a lot more frustrating than fun. If I had a dollar for every time one of my professors proclaimed, "Art isn't about fun," perhaps I'd have enough money to pay for this semester's painting supplies.

Marie D'Errico is a sophomore in Pierson.

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