LYNNWOOD — It was a full house during the Nov. 10 Edmonds Community College Board of Trustees meeting, where more than 50 drama students, alumni and supporters asked officials to spare the drama department from being axed.
EdCC’s board members are mulling college officials’ recommendation to declare a state of financial emergency for the 2011-13 biennium to keep the college’s doors open.
It follows a state of financial emergency declared by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. In the past three years, the state’s two-year college system has lost 21 percent of its state funding.
If approved, layoffs could come more quickly under a streamlined process that involves a 60-day window to notify faculty and conclude dismissal review hearings. Many faculty already have received Reduction in Force notices. Drama department Chairwoman Joanna Goff is among those who could lose their jobs; her contract expires at the end of the school year.
Melina Boivin, college alumna and contractual costumer for the college, handed board members a petition with 300 signatures in support of the program. Theater supporters sported signs showing how much money they have spent on tuition, theater tickets or donated to the drama department.
“The signs show the financial loss if the program is cut,” Boivin said. “The school will lose revenue from those (drama) courses and students who came here just for the program.”
Current and former students told board members the college’s drama department taught them empathy, how to work under pressure and meet rigid deadlines and feel self-confident, skills they didn’t learn in their math and English classes.
Student Barbara Powers said drama classes have encouraged her to live her life more authentically.
“They’re not just whimsical, elective classes,” Powers said. “They are life experience.”
Gordon Coffey, a guest artist and director at the college with roots in the Seattle Repertory Theater, said the education-model for the college’s Black Box Theater has been changed to a business-model. That decision, made by Joan Penney, dean of Humanities and Social Science, has meant community organizations paying to use the theater have taken priority above students and faculty.
Coffey said if college officials cultivated the drama department, more students would enroll and bring in revenue to other departments.
“The dean never gave the department a chance to succeed,” Coffey said. “Edmonds has the highest teacher to student ratio in the state.”
Larissa Clark said she enrolled at Edmonds purely for the theater department. Her first experience with drama was feeling accepted by her peers — a feeling not typical in other classes.
“They loved me for me, the geeky, talkative girl,” she said. “In drama it’s all about unitizing people for one thing. That seems pretty vital to me.”
Robert Quick, a student, said theater helped him overcome having a disability.
“It has helped me feel like I belong,” Quick said. “I’ve always struggled and felt out of place. Drama gave me a sense of self worth I had lacked.”
Student Ian Wight said theater brings everyone together.
“It forces everyone to be equal in a way that isn’t available everywhere in life,” Wight said.
Historically, the board hasn’t designated a public comments component during their meetings, board member Emily Yim said, but made an exception for the drama department supporters.
“We’re here to listen, absorb and make the best policy decisions possible,” Yim said.
Facing years of red ink — with only more to come — the college’s president has proposed axing the program, which sees fewer students, as part of mid-year budget cuts required by the state. Already, the college’s winter course catalog does not list theater classes.
Since 2008, the college has lost $6.4 million in state funding. On top of that, officials have been told to brace for a $2.6 million shortfall in 2011.
EdCC President Jack Oharah included the drama program in a list of proposed budget cuts. Low enrollment in drama classes — at less than 75 percent capacity — is behind the decision.
Board members will decide on cuts before winter quarter begins Jan. 3.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
