Some students want to march to the same ol’ tune
To keep Utah State University’s marching band drumming on for years to come, band members offered pleas for student support from Academic Senate to take to next week’s Staters Council.
“There’s so much that this band does,” Emily Nalder, a senior majoring in music education, said. “There’s a lot I’ve gotten out of the band – like my husband.”
For the last decade, the USU marching band has seen budget cuts and no longer can afford to continue the program unless other sources of funding become available. More than 25 students came to the Academic Senate meeting in matching Aggie blue shirts in a show of support.
In a unanimous vote, with one abstention, the Academic Senate voted to support the marching band’s request for student support.
Those students who voiced their opinions during the meeting were in agreement on several reasons why the marching band should be apart of the university’s future. Providing leadership skills, discipline, friendship, memories, stress release and passion are only a few of the reasons students gave in support of this program.
“If the students realized what we could do and what we could become, it would be really great to have that power,” Tyler Whittaker, a senior majoring in music, said of needing student support.
Other items on the agenda were whether or not the Academic Senate was in support of instituting a fall break. Currently, USU does not offer a fall break to students, although every other public institution of higher education in the state does. The Board of Regents require the academic school semester to be at least 75 days long and USU’s fall semester is 76, leaving one day to be taken as a fall break without extending the semester, Stacy Brown, Education senator, said.
In a unanimous vote, with one abstention, the senate voted in support of presenting the idea of a fall break at the Staters Council.
“As October rolls around, I’ve always struggled and wished we had days off,” Brown said, adding that a fall break would rejuvenate students.
Concerns about whether or not this would negatively affect faculty’s class schedules or labs was raised during the discussion, as well as if a one-day break was worth it.
“If you’re going to have a break, you might as well have a break rather than a day off,” Andrew Shaw, Natural Resources senator, said in opposition to a one-day break. “I wish we had a little more time to research this.”
Brown admitted faculty members have not been approached by this idea and the impact it would have on them is unknown at this time.
“I don’t see a lot of cons in this,” Felicia Horsley, HASS senator, said. “If it’s really an issue, the administration can go with it or not. We don’t have the power to enact this.”
-kcashton@cc.usu.edu