2008 Woodie Awards
DAC Instructors: Flint Center is 'an 800-pound gorilla'
Aaron Wilcher
Issue date: 3/20/06 Section: News
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Warren Lucas, director of dance has taught for 15 years at De Anza. Bob Farrington, director of music, 25 years. Roger Letson, director of vocal activities, 27 years. Mike Holler, Film and Television instructor, who will retire this year, 36 years.
Faculty, who work in performance media - music, theater and dance - call their programs "homeless."
Though these programs have made use of the Flint Center, conference rooms in the Student Center and the Choral Hall for performances, these spaces have significant shortcomings, said the professors.
A new student performing arts center, initiated with 1999 Measure E funds and slated for construction in summer 2007, could fill the void. Proposition 55, passed in 2004, allocated state funds to supplement the building's Measure E budget, according to the De Anza Web site.
If built, the performing arts center will combine a 400-seat dance and theater venue with a new location for the Euphrat Museum of Art and an art history classroom. The design footprint calls for the removal of the Mod Quad, the portable trailers that serve as temporary administrative offices. The Mod Quad is located between the Student and Community Services Building and Parking Lot A, on the northeast part of campus.
The Euphrat and art history lecture hall addition mark a sticking point between the President's Office and the building's planning committee, which consists of Creative Arts faculty and the Euphrat staff.
Holler, Farrington and Letson consider the decision from the President's Office to move the Euphrat to the performing arts center and to build an additional classroom as "unilateral" and as compromising the entire project.
The building project is over budget by $1.1 million, said Jeanine Hawk, vice president of Finance at De Anza. Holler, one of the committee members, said that the decision put the project in jeopardy by over-extending the building budget.
When asked about the decision, Hawk said that in making it, she consulted with the Creative Arts Division Dean, Nancy Canter, who serves on the committee, but not the other committee members. Canter will likely be coordinate programming in the building, according to Farrington.