Have you finished your Humanities & Arts requirement? If so, don’t think that your creative days are over. Thanks to one of campus’ newest councils, pretty soon you might be picking up that paint brush and drawing on walls or taking a stand at the mic to read poetry as the audience finger-snaps to your verses.
Coming at you in mind-blowing 3D is the Humanities & Arts Student Advisory Council (HUASAC), a newly created committee of students who are trying to bring back art, literature, and all the in-betweens. The main purpose of the council is to advertise the humanities and arts classes to current WPI undergrads as well as prospective students. By bringing the students closer to the department and its faculty, the HUASAC will try to get the right side of your brain working again.
HUASAC, supervised by the Head of the Department of Humanities & Arts, Kristin Boudreau, consists of students from all walks of college life who share the same enthusiasm and passion for the humanities and arts. As students who have already taken a few courses or are involved in activities related to the HUA, they bring their ideas to Boudreau on how WPI can further fulfill its students’ array of expectations and desires. “I’ve convened this group to help me tap into the enthusiasm and innovative ideas of our student body,” says Kristin. “WPI students who share a passion for the humanities and arts are in the best position to help me see what our department can do to enhance the community experience at WPI.”
Although it seems that the school already has a full schedule of events, the HUASAC will try to conceive fun and creative activities that involve both faculty and students in hopes of attracting a wider audience. “The WPI culture emphasizes collaboration,” Boudreau explains, “so I thought I would see what I could learn by bringing together strong and impassioned students who are involved in our writing programs and our theatre and music productions, who like to write poetry and attend poetry slams, who have come back from London and Morocco enthused about language and culture and history and art.”
The creation of HUASAC was initiated by sophomore and physics major Anna Chase, who started a Facebook group over the summer called WPI Humanities & Arts MANIFESTO! The group consists of a number of WPI students as well as students from other colleges and universities. “I created the group and met with the director over the summer to talk about courses and stuff, so I just proposed the idea to her,” says Chase.
Chase gathered a group of students from the Manifesto group who were interested in being a part of the student advisory council. The council also includes students who were recommended by faculty members.
HUASAC’s first meeting last Wednesday, September 30, was attended by Boudreau and several students who proposed ways in which the Humanities and Arts department can gain more recognition at WPI. A variety of ideas were laid out, such as the creation of social events to gather humanities and arts faculty members with students interested in knowing more about the professors’ areas of study. Many of these gatherings would be similar to those that other departments already hold throughout the year, so it is high time for the Humanities and Arts department to equally advocate for itself.
One of the plans that the committee seemed to be on board with outlined the organization of a Humanities and Arts department “fair”, with a format like that of the Global Activities Fair. There would be numerous tables set up that provide information about classes and activities for certain subject areas, such as traditional art, computer graphics, poetry, or jazz music. Through an event like this, the HUASAC would hope to overcome the traditional overshadowing of their offerings by core math and science courses.
Although the fair sounds like a fresh start to enlist student interested and extend information about classes, some students disagree. “I don’t think so”, says sophomore and chemical engineering major Greg Anderson. “The Global Fair is advertising global centers for projects and is completely different from the Humanities and Arts. That would be like holding a mathematics fair and saying ‘Oh, take this Differential Equations class!’”
Another goal involved the establishment of more activities on campus that bring the WPI community together through creative collaboration and design. One of the suggestions offered to Boudreau was to put a gigantic canvas out on the quad with paints, markers, and the like. It will be a mural that anyone can draw or paint on, exemplifying WPI’s unity and close-knit community. As it will be on canvas, it will also be mobile and can be re-located to different areas of campus if it were to be displayed.
“I’d love to see more public displays of the cultural work being done here at WPI”, commented Boudreau. “So much of the intellectual and artistic work we do is necessarily private and solitary, but that doesn’t mean that the fruits of that work must be enjoyed in solitude.”
Expanding on this idea, a few of the council members suggested introducing murals to the outside wall of every building here at WPI. For example, one wall of Stratton Hall would display a mural that represents what the building houses – in this case, mathematically-inclined illustrations.
Although many students have shown interest in having a mural on the quad, a few are hesitant about the idea of murals on every building. Sophomore and electrical and computer engineering major Stephen Lee warned, “It’s going to make the school look really funny. It’ll look like graffiti on the wall, especially if it’s going to be permanent.”
In regard to the advertisement of classes, the HUASAC is also trying to bring more art onto campus. Any art that is already here on campus is hardly noticeable, and if there is a small exhibition held at school, most students cannot find its exact location. Not only are more exhibitions needed, but Anna Chase also suggested promoting more student art, on-campus readings, and workshops; not just academic classes.
The council wants to hold events in prominent places on campus where crowds can view a dedicated art gallery space or perhaps listen to readings or lectures on philosophical or historical topics. They are hoping to stir interest and share cultural experiences with the community.
However, the Humanities and Arts department has yet to procure its own building. The main office and the HUA faculty offices occupy a small portion of Salisbury Labs. There are no designated sections in Salisbury Labs for specific HUA classes; therefore they are all spread among the buildings dedicated to other departments. One idea, previously proposed to President Berkey himself, was to erect a new building specifically for the Humanities and Arts department where the tennis courts currently reside (located across the football field and Park Ave.). Having a single building for the HUA would gather all of its classes under one roof rather than having them scattered throughout campus.
Though it was only just established, the HUASAC is already planning to bring changes to campus. WPI may be a tech school, but that doesn’t mean it’s strictly limited to science and technology. “The WPI plan recognizes that humanistic and aesthetic concerns are at the heart of most of our major contemporary problems,” concludes Boudreau. “Artists and philosophers and historians have helped us to see the important context of a dilemma: that even the most contemporary discussions might have something to learn from the traditions that have shaped our culture.  I think most people at WPI share that assumption, but our public conversations and our public spaces could do more to realize it.”