Why should you care about the loss of these dance classes? For one, any student at this college should be adverse to any administrative decision regarding students that was made without consultation and seemingly only to the detriment of those students. For two, it makes the PE requirement so much harder. We have to take four terms of PE, and the changes to the schedule and cutting of classes makes it that much harder for anybody to find a PE class that fits their schedule or their interest. Social Dance, especially in the winter, is one of the better-attended PE classes such that we offer it in multiple sections, and even an accelerated version for those wanting to learn it for Midwinter Ball. For three, many here will encounter social dance at some point. Taking your date or friend or whoever for a waltz at Midwinter Ball, or taking your blind date to a social dance class to make things less awkward at Date Knight are all pretty common experiences on this campus. We as the social dance community are asked to do a lot to support larger administration-run events, and we love to share our dancing with whomever is interested.
The problem with cutting all student-led social dance classes is that knowing how to dance and teaching dance are two entirely different skills. When you don’t have students shadowing more experienced student-teachers, and then teaching themselves, there is a lack of experience and a huge difficulty curve when later on dancers are asked to take on the quite difficult task of teaching the basics of dance to dozens of people at a big event. It makes for worse teaching, worse dancers and a worse experience for the people trying to learn dance for a good night out. The administration is not giving the students the chance to even learn how to teach by cutting these classes. How do you expect people who have never taught five people dance to suddenly teach a room of 50 how to dance in less than an hour?
This is egregious because dance, and especially ballroom, passes down from upper to lowerclassmen. All the tips, tricks and easy explanations of moves that make for effective teaching are already being lost, and will be entirely gone by the next academic year if Physical Education, Athletics, and Recreation (PEAR) does not move to reinstate these classes. Everybody on this campus has had a brush with social dance in one form or the other, and so if for nothing other than being able to have a less awkward, better-run time at the biggest events of the year, you should care that the social dance community is dying at the hands of the administration’s poorly thought out decision making. As PEAR has told us, there will be no social dance or any student-led PE classes even in the Winter. That’s two whole terms where nobody is actively practicing how to teach dance, and come spring and beyond we lose all of our graduating seniors (of which there are more than there are juniors), so much of the damage done is already irreparable. We are asking that they reconsider and reverse course before it gets even worse, but they have refused to do anything despite countless emails and meetings with their staff.
If none of that matters to you, the way that the administration has handled this should matter to you as a student of this institution. Note that student-teachers also earn money from their employment. PEAR decided to cancel social dance classes in July after allowing students to register for dance classes, and further decided to communicate this cancellation only to the students of the social dance class, and not the teachers. It was only when a student emailed one of the teachers that they even found out that they were no longer teaching. Student employment is a guaranteed part of financial aid at Carleton, and for a department to wantonly decide to cut employment with no warning to students is not only highly unprofessional but a worrying overreach of the position of power that the administration holds over the finances of students. Despite repeated pleas in private to just communicate, PEAR refused to give a reason behind their decision or why they continue to not hear student demands to continue a very important part of Carleton culture. This article is a testament to a total failure in communication between administration and student, where acts in good faith are met with silence or deception on behalf of the administration. An administration that makes unilateral decisions with no student involvement or input, in an opaque and unclear way, and seemingly only to make things worse for everyone involved, is not the kind of administration that we as Carleton students should be okay with having.
This is further worrying because of the knock-on effects this has on the wider social dance community itself. These social dance classes are often the first time many of us learn about dance and how fun and interesting it can be. Many people in the dance community stayed because having social dance as a PE class is an easy way to justify doing something cool but now having a reason to actually spend time on by getting credit for doing it. The removal of social dance as a PE class raises the bar to entry for dance, and in the long term is very likely to result in a decreased interest in dance overall.
Carleton, even among its peer institutions, has an especially heavy commitment to the freedom of a liberal arts education. For that same institution to espouse how free its education is and then stifle dance by making it tangibly more difficult to participate in is at best ignorant and at worst hypocritical. And need I point out that dance, while something we all do from time to time, as an academic discipline is thought of very poorly and as a waste of time compared to more “serious” subjects of study like Biology? The decision to further undervalue the study of dance by limiting options, as students push for more variety in Folk Dance and Lindy Hop classes, is not only a tone-deaf response to increased student involvement in dance but a betrayal of the ideal of a truly free liberal arts education where students are encouraged, not punished, for pursuing interests outside their intended paths.
Despite how it may come off at times, the point of this article is not to spread vitriol against the administration and is instead a request for answers. The writing here is a product of months of frustration, a lack of communication and honestly a lack of respect for the students here who put in so much time and effort out of their stacked schedules in order to bring the joy of dancing to everyone who may be interested in it. We, as students and as a social dance community, deserve better than being systemically cut out of our spaces. We deserve better.
