An Ohio university scraps music
NewsThe music faculty of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, have been informed that the department is to be eliminated at the end of the current academic year. Five full-time faculty and 17 part-time adjuncts will lose their jobs. There will be no freelance teaching. The department of World Languages and Cultures has also been scrapped.
Wittenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and has been a nationally recognized school of music. Among prominent Lutheran musicians who attended Wittenberg are Susan Palo Cherwien, Wayne Wold, and Robert Hobby.
Get used to seeing more and more small, private liberal arts colleges making these kind of cuts…
(…five years before going belly-up anyway…)
Hamlet would not have attended this Wittenberg.
Not surprising. See the President’s bio:
“Frandsen earned his Ph.D. in management, with an emphasis on strategic management, from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation examined how stock prices respond to announcements about new chief executives. He also holds an M.B.A. and B.S. in finance, both from The Pennsylvania State University.”
Cue the commentary on woke this and DEI that despite the facts.
I do think the root cause is the 65% decline in classical music attendance over the period 1982 to 2022
https://www.cultureforhire.com/blog/sppa
An interesting article, but it also says attendance in “Sports” declined by over 70%. Overall the percent of public who attended classical music events dropped from 13 to 7.8, and sports attendance went from 48 to 13. The article’s conclusion is not that classical music has cratered as other culture has taken interest, but that culture attendance overall has cratered with the rise of the internet and the effects of the pandemic.
Ah yes, the early 1980’s – the Reagan years – when the Republicans took music education out of the public schools. So within 10 years, the pop-music scene had devolved into Techno, Hip-hop, Heavy-metal, and other such non-melodious trash.
So I am assuming you believe African drumming traditions to be trash because it’s not very melodious!
The Republicans did no such thing. It was urban public school districts, the eliminated the arts in response to severe budget problems. The suburban districts maintained arts programs, while the big urban districts, particularly in rust belt cities run by democrats, eviscerated arts and sports programs.
Disgraceful.
As a member of the music faculty at OHIO UNIVERSITY, may I respectfully request you change your potentially misleading headline?
Yes. I was deeply offended after reading the article. MANY kids frothomm my town go there to join the Marching 110. I took music classes while in medical school. It should say University in Ohio.
The headline should be “An Ohio University…”, not “Ohio University…”. They mean two very different things.
In the meantime, the people of Springfield, OH, where Wittenberg University is located, may have worries of their own. The small town has had thousands of new ‘residents’ since 2023, coming straight from Haiti.
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1832773191976014217
I’m sorry immigrants scare you. Your life is no doubt less rich for it.
Or maybe get your head out of the sand bag and see the reality, for some enrichment.
“Immigrants” don’t eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. And that unfortunately is happening when Springfield gets 10,000+ migrants from places where it is normal.
Oh, you mean that story that local journos proved never happened?
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/springfield-police-say-no-reports-of-pets-stolen-after-viral-social-media-post/3WSIZQNHQVE4NP4TS5BVHBB2PY/
Could you ever, ever, ever criticize without lying? That sure would be nice.
This is wonderful, and if you still think there’s no problem to address, perhaps you could read another article on this same matter this week, by the same ‘local journo” (journalist), Jessica Orozco, in the same newspaper:
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/ohio-ag-rips-springfield-immigration-eyes-lawsuit-local-leaders-talk-solutions/BBUFTOOMSVGOFGCAD4KE4JOWMQ/
Here’s the Ohio AG statement she has quoted in the article:
https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/September-2024/Yost-Orders-Deep-Dive-Into-Challenges-of-Surging-M
You arms get tired from carrying those goalposts?
P.S. I grew up there, so please don’t try to lecture me about my hometown, okay? Especially when I know you’re exaggerating to make some kind of conservative talking point.
Quoting our bat-guano insane AG isn’t helping your case, either. He is still desperately trying everything to put his thumb on the scale of elections statewide, and tried to remove the ability of the citizens to vote on constitutional amendments… during a special election his own office has made illegal.
I’d recommend that you re-read my original comment. Still arguing against that statement? Here, for your reference:
“In the meantime, the people of Springfield, OH, where Wittenberg University is located, may have worries of their own. The small town has had thousands of new ‘residents’ since 2023, coming straight from Haiti.”
Have a good day.
1. All of those residents are there legally
2. There is no #2, because they’re allowed to be there and that’s that.
3. You’re not from here, stop talking about things you know nothing of. We’re not your right-wing martyr case.
Obvious troll is obvious.
‘The Springfield Police Department says it’s dealt with its fair share of rumors and misinformation. “I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” says Officer Jason Via, Deputy Director of Public Safety and Operations. “We get these reports ‘the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ‘the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store’. And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward,” Via says.’
“How Springfield, Ohio, took center stage in the election immigration debate,” NPR, 2024/08/12
No, not THEM!!!
There will be more of this as domestic enrollments decline, tuition increases, and there is more of a question as to the value of higher education.
No!!! Those are important fields of study!
The byline was misleading as is. Ohio University is located in Athens Ohio.
I thought your article pertained to my alma mater Ohio University. Please consider changing your title to Wittenberg scraps music to accurately reflect which university is eliminating its music program.
So very sad that music is considered dispensible. Athletics, which are not an academic discipline, could have been eliminated instead.
There were also cuts in sports, and more significantly in language and international programs. https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/wittenberg-says-employee-cuts-will-be-slightly-smaller-than-stated-earlier/HRGGX67UZZBSVNTMFNTWQI2F2U/
The financial situation of this university seems to be dire.
this is total madness!!!!! this is so sad ,and crazy!!!!!
What do you expect? These evangelicals lack reasoning. They teach that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, that Noah’s Ark was real, and that dinosaurs coexisted on it with the other animals.
That’s funny. When I took an astronomy class at Wittenberg my sophomore year we were taught that the universe was over 13 billion years old.
Enrollment back then was about 2100 and it’s down to less than 1400 now. That couldn’t possibly have something to do with the financial problems, could it?
Lutherans are not evangelicals. Wittenberg is affiliated with ELCA. Get your facts straight.
Bob Jones “University” and “Liberty” “University” this school ain’t. Most Ohio private liberal arts colleges have a nominal relationship with a mainline Protestant sect, which generally goes no farther than a campus chaplain and religious studies courses.
“Evangelical Lutheran Church in America” is the official name of the mainstream Protestant denomination that most people simply call “the Lutherans.”
They do not believe or teach that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
That’s not what the ELCA teaches. It’s actually one of the more liberal churches in America. The name “Evangelical” is misleading in this case.
According to my friends whose grandchildren had planned on attending Wittenburg, they changed their minds because of the negative culture your faculty created over the last 3-4 years. Specifically, openly promoting shame and blame lectures, assignments, and required readings that assumed an aprior guilt of all non-minority people for everything that is unjust. It would appear that your DEI initiative was exercised ad nauseum…
I thought people of your generation learnt Latin, but perhaps not! It’s “ad nauseam”
And it’s “learned”
A Nauseum is where one goes to view disgusting things!
Quick…. is the DEI in the room with us *right* *now*?
LOL
This is not a total surprise to me as someone who has worked in both public school music education and music teacher education in Ohio almost all of my life. I would not be surprised if there will be one or two others in the next year or so. There are many factors involved in this, and indeed the president often is one of them as I experienced several places where I taught. It’s often a goal to make the music department merely a “service” department with the band and choir and pep band; the rest, in terms of majoring, is usually gone. This all has to do. indeed, with statistics in terms of enrollment and generation of fees and so on. Another trigger to this type of situation is often retirement of longtime key faculty and the unwillingness to conduct a search and replace those people. A signal that this could happen in a music department is when you have many many adjuncts and a few full-timers. Ebd
Headline should read “An Ohio University…” Ohio University is not eliminating its music program.
While I appreciate reading the articles on this site and I consider it valuable to have up to date news on what is happening in the music world,……….
there have been times when the headlines are somewhat misleading, apparently to get people to read articles? One could even call it clickbate. However, this time, Ohio University in Athens is owed an apology. While it is truly sad to learn what is happening to the music department of Ohio’s Wittenberg University and thank you for informing readers about this very unfortunate development, the tactic on how you went about it with your headline could have certainly been different.
It’s a misnomer to call Wittenburg a “university”. It has 1300 students and until very recently was called Wittenburg College. They dumped 8 degree programs in 2021 earning a censure from a major academic organization. It’s not on anyones radar as a cutting edge institution.