by McKayla Holson & Ashley Watts, Editors
With growth comes growing pains.
The choirs and bands had an increase in membership this year.
“We had a modest recruiting year for majors and minors,” said Karsten Longhurst, NWOSU choir director. “We’ve had a lot of interest from incoming freshmen who are not majoring or minoring in music to sing in the choirs.”
The choirs are able to make adjustments to help lessen the impact of their reduced budgets.
“The university has always made a big priority to make the Fine Arts a focus, and we’ve always been well-funded, even over the past few years when unprecedented cuts had been made to the universities funding,” Longhurst said. “Regardless, we’ve been fortunate to be able to not feel a lot of those hits until this year.”
Longhurst said the budgetary portion the department usually gets from the school was less than last year, but the administration has always done a great job of protecting the budget for the students.
“It [the budget cut] impacts us when we look at taking students places, purchasing more music, and purchasing materials we need to operate,” Longhurst said. “We’re fortunate that we have lots of support through endowment funds that are set up for specific purposes like choir or professional development for faculty or professional opportunities for students and faculty.”
Because of budget cuts, measures were taken to ensure the bands and choirs are able to continue their activities.
For the choirs, Longhurst is using music that is already in the choir library instead of purchasing newer music. He also said he will have to “dip into” the choir’s foundation funds to take the members on tour. The tours are recruitment opportunities for the choir.
Longhurst said that the members will do an international tour within a couple of years. He said money from the university and endowment funds reduces the cost of the tour by almost 50 percent for students. This support allows students to be able to take part in the experiences the choirs have to offer.
As a part of travel, the members also get to attend conferences. There are two conferences the choir attends and one conference band attends.
“I find that the ability to go to those conferences just enlarges their vision of what we do here,” Longhurst said.
“The students get to see a community that supports their profession. Our endowment funds, some of our student travel money, and some of our foundation money, helps pay for that,” Longhurst said.
The choirs and band also fundraise to add a little extra money to their accounts. The choir’s fundraisers help take members outside of the region and for other needs they have. The band is currently fundraising for a new trailer.
“The biggest problem with our trailer [now] is storage,” said Seth Cudd, NWOSU band director. “There’s no storage, there’s no shelving, there’s no place to hang clothes.”
The band budget for the year was actually increased, and this has helped with what Cudd called growing pains.
“I feel like administration really supports the band, they want the band to grow and they put money there to make it happen,” Cudd said.
Because of the increase, the band will need to purchase at least 20 to 30 uniforms to be ready for next year. Uniforms for marching band are not cheap and take a long time to make, this is why they will be ordered sometime in the new future for next years marching season.
The pit will also not be wearing uniforms this year because of the lack of supplies. Also, colorguard does not wear the same uniforms like the rest of the band, but their poles and flags need to be purchased as well as their unique uniforms. The colorguard has doubled in size since last year.
With the increase in membership, the band has also had to purchase instruments for students. To help lower the cost, the instruments were bought used.
“I feel like we’ve been given quite a bit of money to work with, so it’s just a matter of me figuring that out,” Cudd said. “That’s why I bought some used tubas and things like that to try to save us some money so we can spend it in other places because I feel like we need it and it’s all going to work out. But it’s part of being a person who manages a budget, it’s my job to try to figure out how to make it all work,” Cudd said.
Cudd said he thinks the administration’s support is part of why the band program, and the Fine Arts department in general, is growing.
“We [the band and its members] are really appreciative of the administration’s support,” Cudd said. “I want to be clear and I want them to know that we appreciate them and what they do.”
“I think Northwestern has a really strong corner, or niche, that we fulfill and the Northwestern experience is unique and I love what we offer students, I love how we support them and I love seeing students who studied here and the great things they’re doing now,” Longhurst said.