Fingernails, Food Bowls, and Fries

CONSERVATORY

May 20, 2022 Established 1874 Volume 151, Number 22

EDITORIAL Fingernails, Food Bowls, and Fries: Students Trash the Robertson Practice Rooms

Walter Thomas-Patterson

Conservatory Editor

Picture this: toenails on piano keys, wads of gum underneath the piano keybed, rotten food festering in discarded food bowls, coffee stains on a piano lid, and greasy fries on the floor. While you might think this image comes out of a junior high school band room, it is in fact a description of some of the practice rooms in Robertson Hall, the building that houses practice rooms for Conservatory students.

Conservatory second-year and Classical Voice major Benhur Ghezehey has carefully documented the wide range of waste he has encountered, from leftover food bowls to discarded Amazon boxes.

“I find stuff and I just write: food and drink waste; coffee spills on the floor, on the piano; water everywhere,” he said.

Unfortunately, Ghezehey has also discovered some waste that is not just an eyesore, but is also nauseating.

“There are toenails and fingernails all over the place,” he said. “There are a lot of hairballs and smelly food bowls that have been there for some time, just on top of the piano. There is food grease on the piano keys and gum under the piano that sticks to your hand or sometimes your trousers.”

For Ghezehey and other students, the trashing of Robertson is the most visible scar of a much deeper wound — that some Conservatory students fail to recognize that the rooms and equipment they use are shared among their peers.

“It starts with the obvious problem that people are hoarding the space,” he said. “People will put their scores or their jackets inside a room [to signify it is theirs] and then be gone for two hours or an entire class time. When they reserve that space, they don’t give other people a chance to play.”

Ghezehey explained how the tendency of Conservatory students to reserve spaces creates a vicious cycle. As more and more rooms are reserved, there is a greater demand and students will be more likely to continue to reserve rooms. It should be noted that it is a violation of Conservatory policy to reserve rooms in Robertson by simply leaving your belongings there.

“It just creates a positive feedback loop because the more they reserve, the more scarcity there is, and the more others suffer,” he said.

Although, from an outsider’s perspective, the behavior of some Conservatory students might simply be a product of absentmindedness mixed with carelessness, Ghezehey noted that students have developed creative ways to ensure that rooms they want to use are reserved in their absence.

Each practice room door contains a small window that allows others to peer in and check whether the room is available. Students frequently place jackets on raised music stands to obscure an outsider’s view into the room, thus preventing others from being able to determine whether the room is available.

An eerie feeling results from the collective action of students who decide to reserve rooms they are not actually using, Ghezehey explained. On a certain floor in Robertson, all the practice rooms might be occupied — or appear to be occupied — but there is no audible music. Ghezehey must wait patiently for someone to return to a room and retrieve their belongings.

“The halls are quiet — no music at all — but the rooms are full and no one is in them,” he said. “I sometimes wait for 15 minutes for someone to come, and I obviously could remove their stuff, but I don’t want to be disrespectful.”

The garbage problem in Robertson is compounded by warmer air temperatures and greater humidity brought on by the spring weather and by the recent malfunctioning of the Conservatory air conditioning systems. Food that would normally remain fresh for longer periods of time is rotting faster and producing noxious smells, which have proved to be a threat to the health of Conservatory vocalists like Ghezehey who rely on clean air to breathe.

“It’s also a health hazard, especially now that we are in the spring and the rooms are overheated, stuff is going to smell bad [fast and] rot,” he said. “Fungus is going to grow. Bacteria is going to grow. How is it going to be a practice room? It’s going to be garbage. Who goes to [the] garbage and sings? Maybe raccoons.”

In Ghezehey’s view, the trash problem in the Conservatory practice rooms serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the disregard some students have for the labor of Conservatory custodians, who Food bowls line the windowsill of Robertson Hall. Courtesy of Benhur Ghezehey

Conservatory Meets Class of 2026 Enrollment Goals Despite COVID Challenges

Megan McLaughlin Senior Staff Writer

In spite of the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, the Conservatory nearly met its enrollment goals for the class of 2026. The overall target for the incoming class was set at 135, 85 being Bachelor of Music students and 50 being double-degree students. Director of Conservatory Admissions and Enrollment Management Beth Weiss explained that the enrollment currently falls slightly lower than the original plan.

“Since the last few admissions cycles exceeded enrollment targets, we wanted to be mindful of capacity,” she wrote in an email to the Review. “At present, we have enrolled 117, which put us within reach of our net-tuition-revenue goal.”

This year, the Conservatory planned to have auditions in-person for the first time since January 2020. While auditions were initially scheduled for the first week of Winter Term, a rise in campus COVID cases in the weeks before led to auditions being shifted to a remote format.

“A lot of students only get to see campus in person during their audition,” said Assistant Director of Conservatory Admissions Florence Gill, OC ’03.

In-person auditions are often an opportunity for prospective Conservatory students to see Oberlin’s campus and facilities for the first timeand can be vital in giving them an impression of the Conservatory environment.

Although students were not able to visit campus for their auditions this year, they had a myriad of virtual options to connect with the school, work late into the night after many students have left.

“The Conservatory students are the ones who have no regard for the working class — if you are leaving food there, if you are leaving trash and garbage there and expecting others to come and clean up after you, that is a pattern of disrespect,” he said. “Music belongs to the masses, and if you cannot treat yourself with humility and grace, then you’re not a musician. I think you can never be a musician if you can’t exercise compassion, solidarity, and responsibility toward the custodians.”

For first-year Classical Piano major Victor Shlyakhtenko, however, the garbage problem is less of a barrier to practicing and more of a threat to the pianos in the Conservatory, which are at the receiving end of the trash problem and resulting liquid damage. “This is more . . . than just smell,” he said. “The point is that the pianos are being destroyed by the students. In short, if students are showing disrespect to the instruments, then there is less likelihood that the administration will do anything, and they will probably make budget cuts for piano maintenance.”

Second-year Classical Piano major Grace Tubbs thinks that the garbage problem can simply be solved by a simple mantra.

“People should clean up after themselves,” she said.

including information sessions and faculty panels. While the short-notice change from in-person to remote auditions may not have been the format prospective students were hoping for, Weiss noted that the Conservatory saw an increase of campus visits from March to May 1.

“The shift to virtual auditions did not lead to application withdrawal,” she said.

“I think virtual in some capacity is here to stay,” Gill said. “If nothing else, it maximizes access.”

Although virtual and recorded events are not always the preferred method of student engagement, they can create even more anticipation for campus visits. The class of 2025 completed their auditions virtually last year, and were not able to meet any of their classmates in-person until coming to campus in fall 2021. This year, with the additional programming, double-degree fifth-year and Conservatory Peer Advising Leader Jane Vourlekis has noticed increased attendance and enthusiasm from first-year students in her ConPAL sessions.

“There’s a lot less isolation in this school year compared to the prior year,” she said. “The first two years I did [ConPAL], there was no pandemic whatsoever, but now that we’re in this pandemic, people are … designing a place for connection.”

While the Conservatory did not meet its goals for enrollment this year and faced difficulties regarding auditions, prospective first-years can once again form connections with each other and the Conservatory that was lost in the early parts of the pandemic thanks to the return of in-person campus visits.