A Frustrated Letter to Syracuse

Graphic by Emma Novy

At the beginning of this year's fall term, Syracuse University announced that they were pausing admission to 20 undergraduate majors within the College of Arts & Sciences. In this list, majors from African American Studies to Russian Language and Literature were temporarily no longer accepting new students into their programs. Since the university's announcement to pause these 20 undergraduate majors, more information has come out that suggests some majors within the Setnor School of Music, like Sound Recording Technology, will be cancelled. 

Syracuse University's SRT program is a major that combines music production, audio engineering and skills for the music industry. In the early 2000s SU added the major, and became well regarded in the industry for its training and professional development.  

Sarah Lavin, a Syracuse Sophomore in the SRT program and my roommate, came to Syracuse for the scholarship opportunities and the music production facilities. She’s passionate about what she does and over the year I’ve known her she's become one of my closest friends. On February 12th of this year, SRT students received an email.  

“The head of Sound Recording Technology reached out to all of us and called for a meeting, and they told us that our dean had told them that they’re (Syracuse is) not planning on unpausing our major,” said Lavin. “So after the current freshmen have graduated there's just going to be no sound recording technology at the school anymore.” 

For Lavin this caused unrest, saying she continues to worry if her degree will mean anything 10 or 20 years after she graduates, once Syracuse University is no longer known within the industry for their recording program. After struggling to come back to Syracuse last year with the lack of federal money she received, Lavin says that she believes it's her time to move on from Syracuse. 

“I just don't think it's really worth it anymore for me to even consider taking out loans if there is no major here really anymore. Even though it's technically still here, it's just not as present as everything else, which is kind of disappointing,” said Lavin.  

Lavin says her teachers have said that they believe the university sees the program as numbers on a spreadsheet. But even with their small program, Lavin fails to see why her major is being cancelled over numbers but more money at Syracuse is being put into E-sports centers and our Sports teams. 

“We have three or four. Now I'm not sure, but just how many people at this school are using those esports centers every day. There's a bunch of money going into these esports centers that are only used for students in their downtime when they could be playing on their own computers or something. So that I think is ridiculous,” said Lavin. 

Personally, I fail to see why we need more esports centers, only a month ago I learned that there is one in Barnes. Never has anyone I’ve known spent time nor has stepped foot within an esports center. It honestly makes me wonder if money at this institution is being spent wisley. 

I met Sarah a year ago when I was looking for a roommate, we got dinner and I instantly knew we clicked. We spent our year planning what to do in the future, where we would live our junior and senior years, where we would go for breaks, where we would live after graduation. Her friends and myself will miss her dearly. 

“I'm definitely really sad about it. I love my friends here, and I love my life here, and I love being here. But I just think that with these two big obstacles I have now, with money and my major now being basically discontinued, there's no point in me really trying,” said Lavin “So why shouldn't I go explore other opportunities at other schools or like in other places.”