MFA class of 2016 withdraws from program

The seven master of fine arts students that make up the Roski School of Art and Design’s class of 2016 announced on Friday that they are leaving the university as a result of grievances they have with the program’s funding and curriculum.

“Because the University refused to honor its promises to us, we are returning to the workforce degree-less and debt-full,” the students wrote in a statement published online.

The MFA program at Roski is a full-time, two-year interdisciplinary program. The seven master’s candidates — Julie Beaufils, Sid Duenas, George Egerton-Warburton, Edie Fake, Lauren Davis Fisher, Lee Relvas and Ellen Schafer — announced that they are dissolving their candidacies as a result of what they feel were false promises made by the university.

According to the students, upon admittance, the Roski administration promised them a partial scholarship for first-year tuition, and upon completing their first year, the students would receive full-tuition for their second year, benefits, a stipend and a teaching assistantship. The former students said they were the first class since 2011 to acquire debt to attend Roski and the first group of students since 2006 that did not have teaching experience after their first year in the program.

The students blamed Roski Dean Erica Muhl, appointed to the position in May 2013, for the cuts to program funding.

“At every single turn, the dean and every other administrator we interacted with tried to delegitimize and belittle our real concerns, repeatedly framing us as ‘demanding’ simply for advocating for those things the School had already promised us,” the students wrote.

In response to the allegations that Muhl and other administrators were stripping the master’s program of funding to finance more well-known programs with greater name value, Muhl said that the program has and continues to financially support its students as promised upon admission.

“The USC Roski MFA program remains one of the most generously funded programs in the country,” Muhl wrote in a statement. “These students would have received a financial package worth at least 90 percent of tuition costs in scholarships and teaching assistantships.”

Muhl was criticized by the students in the written statement for her lack of experience with visual arts.

“She, along with Roski’s various vice and assistant deans, made it clear to our class that they did not value the program’s faculty structure, pedagogy or standing in the arts community, the very same elements that had attracted us as potential students,” the students wrote.

Aside from the students that have decided to leave, several Roski faculty members have also opted to leave the university in recent months including the former program director A.L. Steiner, who stepped down in November as director and whose contract was not renewed by USC as of May 15.  Additionally, in February, the graduate coordinator Dwayne Moser left the university, and in December, tenured Roski professor of painting and drawing Frances Stark left the university for unknown reasons.

Though she would not discuss the reasons for her parting ways with the university, Stark wrote in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that she supported the students in their decision to withdraw from the program.

“The students are correct in terms of funding, curriculum, and faculty structure,” she wrote in the statement. “All changed in relation to the program they agreed to enter.”

Though the students are no longer enrolled in the program, they wrote in their statement that they plan to continue to collaborate artistically.

“The MFA Program we entered in August 2014 did one great thing: it threw us all together, when we might not have crossed paths on our own,” they wrote.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that former program director A.L. Steiner is currently still employed at USC. She is actually not employed at USC. The university did not renew his contract as of May 15. The Daily Trojan regrets the error.