Word: ofas
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...OFA was started under Bok to try to make some sense out of the jumble. “The objective ought to be to provide an undergraduate experience in which as many undergraduates as possible could be encouraged to actively be involved in the arts,” Bok says of the initial impetus for an organization to advise extracurricular activity. Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus James S. Ackerman, who chaired the 1970s committee that suggested establishing the OFA, characterizes Bok’s model as one which rewarded broad-based involvement in the arts. “President...
...divisions have struggled even to run in place. FAS’s lease on the Rieman Center for Performing Arts, Harvard’s primary dance rehearsal and performance space, expires in June 2005 when the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study will convert it to a meeting space. Although OFA dance program director Elizabeth W. Bergmann says Summers promised undergraduate dancers in his office hours that there will be no gap between the loss of Rieman and the availability of a new building, he has left it up to FAS to determine where the space will come from. College administrators...
...Faculty, who have generally opposed giving curricular credit for the arts, favoring theory over practice in the few instances where credit is granted. “It’s not something the faculty have wanted to embrace, the practice of the arts,” Mayman of the OFA says. In part, it’s due to longstanding fears of academics who generally oppose granting tenure—which might imply equal respect or importance—to artists. “I think the Faculty’s opposition is characteristic of academic thinking everywhere else...
Chronic understaffing exacerbates the resource problem. OFA Director of Programs Cathy McCormick calls understaffing and lack of space “burning emergency-level issues.” Just two employees are responsible for the technical needs of every Harvard theater space outside the Loeb, taking care of safety and training for hundreds of students a semester. “We have kept kids from getting injured literally by running from space to space,” McCormick says. But she says FAS shot down the OFA’s request to add a new technical position...
...OFA’s unrestricted funding from FAS has grown at the constant FAS-wide rate of 2 percent per year. But after Harvard reclassified hundreds of employees last year to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act, requiring them to fill out timesheets and paying them overtime, the OFA has borne a disproportionate load, as its employees often work odd hours to maintain theater spaces and box offices. McCormick and Memorial Hall Complex Director Eric Engel say the changes cost the OFA and Memorial Hall Complex $68,000 in one time expenses and $58,000 per year thereafter...