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Guest Column
Caryn B. Harris
Proposed arts cuts unfair to students

This is a copy of a letter I recently wrote to Gov. James McGreevey.

My name is Caryn Harris and I am a graduate of East Brunswick High School, class of 1998. Since my time as a high school student, I have rarely paid much attention to what went on in the educational system of my hometown. Until now.

During a recent visit to my parents’ house, I read a newspaper story on the governor’s proposed budget cuts to funding for the arts. The idea of taking away any of the already too low funding that the arts gets prompted me to take action.

During my time as a student in East Brunswick, which started in elementary school, art class — any art class — was all that I looked forward to during the day. I took every art course offered. I took classes in which I had never had any previous interest for the sole reason that I had taken everything else.

Art education is one of the seven academic areas included in the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, which East Brunswick follows. However, it was obvious that the arts never get enough funding to buy all the supplies that are needed for students to get a proper education. In an education system that puts more emphasis on sports than art, we knew that the arts were never going to see the much-needed funding they deserved. It is unthinkable to me that money will be taken out of the severely short budget.

I did not participate in any of the various sports teams or take any advanced placement (AP) classes, nor was I involved in the Model United Nations. Although I was in National Honor Society, National Art Honors Society, took honors classes and was ranked highly among a very competitive class, I was not involved in sports, and I (and hundreds of other students) was often overlooked by administration.

Every student has something he or she excels at and something in which he or she is interested. For some, it’s sports, while for others, it’s academics. For others, like myself, it’s art. These classes and teachers played a large role in my happiness and success at school.

I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with myself in college, but it was the art teachers who helped guide me to look at schools with a strong art department and to decide what schools were worth applying to. It was the art teachers who helped me put together a competitive portfolio that got me accepted into art departments at nine colleges and universities on the East Coast. It was the art teachers who taught me the possibilities that the field of art had to offer in terms of careers.

I never realized the value of the 35-minute elective I had after my lunch period until now. As a graduate of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), Ewing, where I recently received my bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design, I can look back and say that it all started in the art classes of the East Brunswick school system. It was there that my interest helped form my talent and gave me the tools I would need to later succeed in the art field. I have worked in an advertising agency, the NBC News graphics department and in a direct marketing firm. While I attribute my success through college to be a product of TCNJ’s art department and my own passion to make something of myself, I realize it began with art class once a week at Frost Elementary School and was fostered through Hammarskjold, Churchill and East Brunswick High School.

The East Brunswick public school system has always, in my opinion, given the arts the short end of the stick. Academic perfection and sports involvement were always what "really" mattered. This is echoed by the entire state of New Jersey, as other schools also do the same. So it is no surprise that at the time of budget cuts, it’s the arts that will suffer. In truth, it is also the students who will suffer — students who are artistic and talented who will never get the chance to explore their skills properly because "Well, something had to be cut."

I urge you to strongly reconsider the cutting of the budget for the arts for New Jersey’s public schools. Such an action would be the end of art education, which would edge us closer to ending art altogether. Pablo Picasso once said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Right now, you have that power.

Caryn B. Harris is a resident of East Brunswick