Considerable anger is directed at the current Pennsylvania Academy of Music by members of the public and a few who are to share the blame for the past financial debacle. Yet, apart from students and faculty, there are no links from the PAM of today with that of the past. For example:
- Veri and Jamanis no longer have any ties with the institution, not even a pension after twenty-years of unstinting efforts.
- Not a single member of the Board of Trustees that presided over the grandiosity and financial bungling continues to serve.
- Chair Holmes Morton, MD and Interim Director Tom Godfrey, MD are volunteers.
- Not a penny of tax payer money is going to the school.
- A new location in a modest but adequate setting for the coming year will soon be announced.
- The school is accredited, which represents years of efforts and accomplishments.
- Its students are distinguishing themselves and a credit to our community.
- Wonderful programs have and are still taking place.
PAM is now poised to achieve the very goals for which it was established. Indeed, those who love music and can afford to support such efforts, are likely to soon return as donors.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water!
Most of this information is not general knowledge. And a bad reputation is difficult to overcome.
In a Seinfeld episode from 10 years ago, Jerry and Elaine go to the movies to see “The English Patient”. Frustrated and bored Elaine yells out in the crowded theater ” …die already!!!” .
After all this school has taken from us and the tedium of hearing about it ad nauseum, many of us feel the same way. They had their chance.
Please refrain from showing Millersville University’s building when speaking of PAM. If you want to garner more sympathy, why not show them homeless on the street.
Editor: I noted the icon was outdated earlier today and we will change it tomorrow. Thanks.
After having been personally involved with PAM in the past, I have to say that I find it heartbreaking that such a wonderful cause has been buried beneath egotistical blame games. At its roots, PAM is a institution that enriches the musical lives of a multitude of students from acroos Lancaster county and south central PA.
What PAM needs to survive is stop focusing on the grandiosity of its faculty and aspirations and start showing the people something they can connect with: Lancaster county youth showing tremendous musical talent. Take the pride back, PAM. If Veri and Jamanis are truly out of the picture, this should be simple.
You can’t walk before you crawl, an adage that might have served the founders well. Begin crawling by showcasing the true reason you still exist: your students.
Here are some thoughts about your legitimate question — why all the hostility toward the new PAM — put together by several former employees and faculty members:
Unfortunately, the reservoir of bad feelings toward PAM runs deep. Many of its former teachers are still in the region teaching at local schools or in private studios, still offering excellent music education, just not under the PAM name.
Not surprisingly, when these former teachers hear of claims about what PAM offers or will offer, they are skeptical, and reasonably irritated at the implication that PAM has some special claim to superior music education. The same holds true of donors, students and parents who have gone on to realize the value of the region’s other music education offerings, comparing them to what they had at PAM.
What they and others have witnessed at PAM seems to have been bad planning, bad (or no) budgeting and a bad attitude toward outsiders.
Even with the best of intentions, the latest leaders are — one assumes, inadvertently — sending the message that these problems might not have been solved.
For example, on planning — as has been noted on your pages already, disinterested observers reading the newspaper articles about MU and PAM could have predicted that PAM would have to leave their building, yet insufficient planning seems to have taken place for that move.
In addition, in a recent newspaper article, the former dean of faculty was quoted as saying that an artistic endeavor such as PAM doesn’t lend itself to things like a “feasibility study.” Message to the community: nothing’s changed.
As to budgeting, it is perplexing that the school went ahead with its summer festival, an expensive undertaking, when it was facing budgetary problems. The summer festival must cost a great deal, since the school always seemed to provide scholarships for most students, especially those brought from China, students who dazzle audiences and donors while here but then return to their native land. Message to the community: nothing’s changed.
Lastly, when you read in the paper that the current leadership seems to be blaming donors for being forced to take the steps toward bankruptcy, even going so far as to say donors will find their reasons for nonpayment of pledges sounding “pretty silly in federal court,” an old “to heck with everyone else” attitude still seems in play.
Other nonprofits, as well as PAM in the long run (there’s the bad planning again), might see a chilling effect on pledges from such an attitude. What future donors will want to give to an institution quick to blame them if things go wrong, quick to imply their nonpayment reasons will be aired in court? Message to the community: nothing’s changed.
So the “new” PAM still feels like the old one in some important characteristics. As mentioned, this could be inadvertent, but nonetheless, it’s there.
As to the founders and their current pension-less state, it’s pitiable, to be sure. Unfortunately, their devotion to PAM seemed to involve control at all costs, even the cost of good management.They are lucky to have good friends willing to help them in these times, and one hopes they find some peace.
If PAM doesn’t survive, music education, some of which is excellent, will still continue in the region. We may find the art of teaching and learning music begins to thrive in ways not possible while PAM continued to dominate the news.
In fact, those who wish to support music education might want to spend their resources on the many fine music education offerings in the area not continually grabbing the spotlight yet responsibly managing their resources, including the prep program at MU since it will now occupy PAM’s former building. It would be wonderful to have that building alive and vibrant with the arts, perhaps even employing many of the excellent teachers once under PAM’s label.
It could become a terrific addition to the arts scene downtown, precisely the use for which the building was originally intended. It just won’t have the PAM name, and hopefully, none of its baggage.