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LOS ANGELES — It’s been a year since the entire incoming MFA class at USC’s Roski School of Art decided to drop out en masse, leaving the program with only one student this year, HaeAhn Kwon. In an…

Last night (2/23), the Roski Undergrad Collective posted two very large posters (44x64") on bulletin boards across from the Lindhurst Gallery. The first poster was our list of proposals for the...

As #USCRoski undergrads organize, creepy censorship continues at USC Roski School of Art and Design.

#usc #uscroski

Last month, an unofficial blog set up by graduate students at USC’s Roski School of Art was quietly taken down.

#uscmfa #uscroski #uscroskifail

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Free Cooper Union expresses solidarity with the USC Roski community and joins the call for Dean Erica Muhl’s resignation

MFA programs across America are compromised by their high cost of attendance. There is an implicit expectation that students can simultaneously take on massive debts, hold down jobs, learn, advance their practices, and reemerge intact. USC Roski is known for holding out against this paradoxical mentality, foregrounding the intrinsic value of education. The program’s focus on time, space, and proximity exists in opposition to a surplus of diplomamill style programs that churn out credentialed art professionals into a saturated market. We see the Roski community as having taken on the work of standing against a broad financialization of culture and dispelling the notion that the model of education we share is anachronistic.

Under the auspices of cost reduction, USC’s administration initiated a reinvention of the Roski program, drastically eroding its unique character. Crucial information was withheld from the community as the administration drove stakes for austerity and expansion. Students were treated as collateral in a baitandswitch, privileging a corporate restructuring over the sacrifices of students and faculty to be there.

When an entire Roski MFA class withdrew in May of 2015, Dean Erica Muhl undermined the potency of their action by recasting it to the media as a “voluntary leave” that she had granted. The students’ absence may be minimized by damage control consultants, but their actions inspire and speak louder than the businessasusual mentality of MFA programs that pretend they’re not founded on the precarity of those they ostensibly serve.

Any institution, program, or community in resistance to financialization will be cannibalized to maintain the dominance of market forces. In this, we’re together: the Cooper community continues to fight for the reinstatement and perpetual improvement of a culture that advances free education. Education without barriers is grounded in an intersectional understanding of the imperative to learn. It’s not just Cooper. It’s not just undergraduate. It’s not just higher education. We must continually evaluate how all institutions shape society and work to recenter them. Deep connections between our communities will be the foundation of this effort.

To quote the Roski 2016 class, “Our collective and interdependent force is energizing as we progress toward supportive and malleable spaces conducive to criticality and encouragement. These sites are more important than ever in the current state of economic precaritythat reaches far beyond the fates of seven art students. We invite everyone to reach out to us with proposals, invitations and strategies of their own, dreams not of creating a ‘better’ institution, but devising new spaces for collective weirdness and joy.”

You can read more from the Roski community at mfanomfa

usc-mfa

Free Cooper Union expresses solidarity with the USC Roski community and joins the call for Dean Erica Muhl’s resignation

Petition Delivery from USC Roski MFA Class of 2015

Dear President Nikias, Provost Quick and Mr. Edward P. Roski Jr., Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Southern California:

In light of the grievous administrative damages that have incurred widespread disrepute to the Roski School of Art and Design, we, the Master of Fine Arts class of 2015, hereby present the attached public petition for the removal of Dean Erica Muhl. This petition has been signed in solidarity by over 760 concerned and invested voices from the international art and academic communities. Together, we continue the call for USC leadership’s accountability in acknowledging an administrator’s destructive actions and blatant disregard of the feedback and experience of its faculty and students in support of the future of fine arts higher education at USC.

Our legitimate concerns for the restitution of the MFA program’s quality and relevant contribution to the cultural community continue to be ignored. Erica Muhl has placed the school in a litigious position through the unethical manner with which she handled the withdrawn class of 2016’s funding and curricular offers, as we know intimately, having also been coerced by the administration to accept undesired curricular changes that were not endorsed by our core faculty. Provost Michael Quick’s reply to our initial letter made it clear to us and the public at large that USC leadership continues to delegitimize our experience as graduate students and irresponsibly minimize the public representation of our colleagues’ withdrawal.

Among the many distinguished signees of our petition, some resonating comments of support include:

John S. Gordon, Director of the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe: “As a former Dean of the USC School of Fine Arts (1981-1987), I am deeply embarrassed by Dean Muhl's and USC's shameful treatment of the 7 MFA candidates whose resignations have brought national disgrace upon the once distinguished reputation of the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.”

Martha Rosler, preeminent artist, activist and educator: “The agreement under which students enter school is a contract, not subject to the whims of administrators. The conditions at SC were good for the top administrators, not for the art students.”

Catherine Opie, renowned photographer and educator: “As a professor at UCLA in art, I believe that the dean does not clearly understand how this has not only affected the students that the university is there to serve, but the ripple that has resulted in disbelief in the greater Los Angeles community.”

Judith Rodenbeck, recognized scholar: “‘Disruption’ of contractual obligations is unacceptable. And the casualization of the academic labor force--as well as, evidently, the infantilization of graduate students--is bound to dismantle what was a really interesting program. As a management strategy this is appalling, and the inverse of groveling for celebrity money in the name of innovation.”

Furthermore, it has been frustrating to witness USC leadership ignore the fact Erica Muhl was admittedly unable to recruit students to fundraise her new studio-based MFA program. She offered no dedicated graduate faculty, unlike previous years, or clear funding offers to prospective students during the Spring admissions process, yet expected the withdrawn class of 2016 to invest in this dubious program for their second year. Along with the level of public embarrassment her failure as dean has brought to the University, why does USC continue to support an unfit administrator?

This community’s call to action is an accurate, responsible and legitimate response to the Roski administration’s irresponsibility. Erica Muhl’s removal will be the start of USC’s effort to abide by their own educational mission and best practices to resolve the Roski School’s glaring crises. As it stands, the disinterest shown by USC to this very real problem will otherwise continue to be seen as an example of resounding negligence in higher education.

Sincerely,

The USC Roski MFA class of 2015

#USC #uscroski #uscmfa #mfanomfa

To our Supporters

To our supporters,

At over 730 signatures and counting, your response has overwhelmed us. We are extremely grateful to you for joining us in making USC leadership accountable and demanding Erica Muhl’s resignation. We have also been fortunate to join Free Cooper Union in solidarity to the call for greater transparency and equitability in the increasingly corporatized system of higher education.

In the days since the petition went live, the university responded to our letter. The email, which we will reproduce in full in upcoming communications, made disturbingly clear to what degree of irresponsibility the administration is willing to support Dean Muhl’s egregious mishandling of the Roski School of Art and Design graduate programs since the beginning of her tenure in 2013. This complete lack of accountability by USC leadership also made it clear how quickly and injuriously a program of such renown can fall into disgrace when such top-down restructuring is implemented, while the critical value of faculty and students’ input and voices are ignored.

Our legitimate concerns for the restitution of the MFA program’s quality and relevant contribution to the cultural community have fallen on strategically deaf ears. Provost Michael Quick, writing on behalf of President Max Nikias, continues to delegitimize our experience by minimizing the public representation of our colleagues’ withdrawal. Provost Quick first conceals the severity of the withdrawn class of 2016’s contract breach:

Those students’ situation has been portrayed inaccurately. Dean Muhl did not break curricular and funding promises to them. She has explained that the 2014 offer letters sent to them by the school were honored in every respect, without exception. She also made the commitment that, even if the students refused to follow university policy about teaching assistantships, the school would make sure they would feel no financial impact.

Furthermore, it is baffling that this administration ignores the fact Erica Muhl has failed to recruit students to her new studio arts MFA program. We ask: how many times must an experience be recounted before it is acknowledged by those responsible for its destructive repercussions? What kind of educational institution would continuously belittle its students in favor of their own appointed administrator?

This community’s call to action is an accurate, responsible and legitimate response to the Roski administration’s corruption and irresponsibility. Erica Muhl’s removal will be the start of USC’s effort to abide by their own educational mission and best practices to resolve the Roski school’s glaring crises. The Roski School of Art and Design will only continue to function as a respected institution of arts higher education with Erica Muhl’s resignation as its dean.

You’ve helped us to show USC that the international art community is watching. We encourage you to share the petition with your network and loved ones once more before we deliver it to USC’s leadership later this week.

Respectfully yours,

The USC Roski MFA graduating class of 2015

Jacinto Astiazarán Lena Daly Orr Herz Veli-Matti Hoikka Sofía Londoño Alli Miller Alana Riley Fleurette West

Media Coverage:

ArtForum: Graduating Class of USC’s Art School Pens Letter Demanding Dean’s Exit

Art Fag City: USC MFA Class of 2015 Calls for Resignation of Fine Arts Dean

Hyperallergic: MFA Class of USC’s Roski School Demand Dean’s Removal

ARTinfo: Former USC MFA Students Call for Dean’s Ouster

artnet: After Dramatic Withdrawal, USC Roski Students Call for Dean Erica Muhl's Resignation

ArtNews: GRADUATING USC ROSKI MFA CLASS CALLS FOR TERMINATION OF CURRENT DEAN

AQNB: usc mfa class of 2015 launch petition

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Sign the petition now!

https://www.change.org/p/dean-erica-muhl-of-usc-roski-school-of-art-and-design-must-resign-now

mfanomfa

Letter to USC from the Roski MFA Class of 2015

16 July 2015

Dear President Nikias, Provost Quick and Mr. Edward P. Roski Jr., Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Southern California:

We, the 2015 graduating Master of Fine Arts class of the Roski School of Art and Design, are writing to express our feelings of loss and alarm over the May 15th, 2015 withdrawal of our esteemed classmates and the events that have unfolded since that time. We echo our fellow alumni’s recent letter expressing disbelief in the systematic downward trajectory that Dean Erica Muhl’s tenure has steered the world-renowned Roski MFA Program.

Our experience negotiating Dean Muhl’s unwillingness to reasonably communicate curricular changes significantly encumbered our degree progress at USC. Over the past year, we felt increasingly ostracized from our own program. After many meetings with Dean Muhl and her staff, it became clear that our investment was not one the Roski administration wished to understand or support. The administration’s consistent lack of transparency, evasive communication and persistent belittling of its students resulted in the significant loss of respected faculty members and staff during the 2014-15 school year. We struggled through the noise of a program in crisis that reached breaking point with the withdrawal of the class of 2016, which was unprecedented but not unexpected. During our final Summer 2015 semester, our studio facilities lay nearly empty, bled of a once robust community with ties to a broader cultural discourse and its accompanying support systems.

Dean Muhl has alienated students, faculty and alumni and offered convoluted and untruthful information to the public in an attempt to obfuscate the devastating impact of her actions and the failure of her administration. USC is sheltering a highly paid administrator who has operated unethically by breaking funding and curricular promises to its students. In continuing to allow Dean Muhl to maintain her position, USC is demonstrating that it does not honor its commitments to its students.

These disruptive tactics have made it clear to us, as well as the public at large, that Dean Muhl disregards and fundamentally misunderstands the needs of a graduate-level studio art program, despite the valuable advice of our committed faculty. In light of the stated losses, we are requesting that the University remove Erica Muhl as Dean of the Roski School of Art and Design, as she has proven herself unfit to uphold the charge of leadership in the field of fine arts higher education.

We celebrate the bonds we have formed with our peers and faculty, whom we thank for strengthening and engaging us beyond the limits of the institution. These relationships have proven unshakable in the face of the strategic dismantlement of a formerly renowned studio arts program. Following such a quick downfall, our sincere hope through this effort is for a reevaluation of the future of the program to which we enthusiastically dedicated ourselves the past two years.

Sincerely,

The USC Roski MFA graduating class of 2015

Jacinto Astiazarán Lena Daly

Orr Herz Veli-Matti Hoikka

Sofía Londoño Alli Miller

Alana Riley Fleurette West

https://www.change.org/p/dean-erica-muhl-of-usc-roski-school-of-art-and-design-must-resign-now

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Demand USC’s accountability for its administrators’ actions. Sign the class of 2015′s petition now.