DePaul Discussion

[fishbowlfreshman]

<p>Again out of fairness, here are quotes from a DePaul student and an actual faculty member to offset the views of people who have never been there and yet insist that the environment could not be collaborative and congenial …

The 12 people in my section (the section with the least amount of people cut) have been my backbone through this year. We came together in the begining and formed a bond. We were section 102,and called ourselves 102-love with a cute hand signals. I love them almost as much as a family, they were my family for the past year. We NEVER were competitive and NEVER stabbed people in the back, because that is just plain stupid. You ca’t learn like that, and teachers want people who can learn. We encouraged eachother and loved eachother, shared are darkest fears and all our hopes, cried and laughed together. I feel sorry for people that even think that they should go into a program to show off or anything like that, and they are going to have a hard time out there, cause that takes its toll.

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/223433-depaul-university.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/223433-depaul-university.html&lt;/a&gt;

To also do double duty and address the concerns in the other thread (above), while it may seem counterintuitive to someone outside of the program, ckp is very much correct that the first year experience for the majority of the class is not a cut-throat competitive environment. The first year curriculum (in fact all four years) is ensemble-based and the students’ commitment and responsiveness to that ensemble is part of their evaluation (the collaboration element above). Anecdotally, I can say that students who are uber-competitive or “cut-throat” do not fair very well in the evaluation. What we see happen is that “family” effect that ckp mentions where student become VERY supportive of each other.

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/225346-welcome-new-college-rep-thetheatreschool-depaul.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/225346-welcome-new-college-rep-thetheatreschool-depaul.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>DISCLAIMER: My own position is that a numbers-based cut is unethical and could be nothing other than a means to accumulate money from the lower classes to fund the upperclass work. Doctorjohn, who once taught in a numbers-based cut program, wrote an excellent exposition on this type of policy as he sees it. [Here</a> is the link](<a href=“Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos”>Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos) I have yet to see a reasonble argument offered anywhere to dispute his conclusions. </p>

<p>I do believe, however, that a professional training program should reserve the right to cut students not only for slacking, tardiness, bad attitude, and “flunking out,” but for simply showing an inability to keep up with the rest of the class. This work is both cumulative and collaborative and it would not be fair to the rest of the class to keep students whose lack of progress holds everyone else back no matter how hard they try. Unfortunately, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to catch up once one falls behind. Moreover, there simply isn’t room in the smaller programs to hold the students back into a lower class until they “get it” unless the problem comes as the result of medical reasons or some major personal trauma such as the death of a familty member, etc. It wouldn’t be fair to the next class of auditionees to reserve a spot in an already highly competitive admissions pool for someone who has already shown he cannot keep up in his present class. It’s a sad thing when it happens, but there are situations where I believe it might be necessary.</p>

<p>In past cut discussions, I have also seen a complaint that some students who have been cut were maintaining passing grades and even 'A’s in their classwork. I believe it has been explained that that is for the written work with the failure coming in actually putting that work into practice in which case it becomes pass/fail. I personally believe this is preferable to flunking the student for all his work because 'D’s and 'F’s on the student’s transcript could completely wreck his ability to get into another good academic school and futhermore ruin his chances to get into a good graduate school. I don’t think it would be a good thing to ruin a bright person’s chances to move onto other things because he has shown an inability to grow beyond a certain point as an actor.</p>

<p>I guess this makes me the equivalent of a political “centrist” on this issue. I tick off both wings! LOL</p>