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Convos with the creative folk shaping the arts and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hosted by Shawna Vesco Ahern.
[00:00:00] This is an art. Yap. It is an art. Yap. We're talking art. Yap. Ity art. Yap. Ity y artfully. Artfully artfully artfully.
It's time
Melissa: art. Art is crucial. Um, and art is also hardwired into humanity.
Elizabeth: Will the labor movement have a central role in reimagining arts education in the Bay Area?
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Hello and welcome to Art Yap. Today's episode was recorded at Goat Hall in Petro Hill, [00:01:00] a building that has been a church, a home for the Pickle, family Circus, a music hall, and a keeper of decades of San Francisco strangeness and joy.
It felt like the right place to have this conversation because today we're talking about loss, CCA, California College of the Arts. Has announced its closing. Vanderbilt is buying the campuses, and two people who gave years of their working lives to that institution are now watching it end. But before I introduce my guests, I wanna thank Tanza Solas, who spent seven years as administrative staff at CCA for reaching out and connecting me with the people you're about to hear.
And a quick note on audio. I completely goofed my microphone set up during the recording, so my levels are a little bit iffy. Uh, the guests, however, they sound great. And you know, sometimes there's [00:02:00] loud breathing sounds, but breath in spirit are one in the same. Amen. Get over it. We're moving on. CCAs closure didn't come out of nowhere.
It came out of years of risky financial decisions, expansion that outpaced sustainability and leadership choices that left the institution exposed, and eventually no runway left. That's the institutional story, but underneath it is a bigger question. What does it mean when a place like CCA disappears?
What do we actually lose as individuals and as a community? We lose the students who would've been changed by it. We lose the faculty who built their lives and their practices around it. We lose a particular kind of education, one that took seriously the idea that art and design are not luxuries. That critical thinking and making things with your hands are not hobbies, but forms of knowledge.
When we let [00:03:00] institutions like this fail, and we do let them fail, these things don't just happen. It says something about what we've decided to value and what we've decided we can live without Art. Schools are easy to dismiss until you start pulling the thread of how much of the designed world around you, the culture you consume, the cities you live in, was shaped by people who went to one.
And when you think about it that way, the honest answer is that we don't fully know what we lose and we won't until enough time has passed that we can't get it back. My guests today are Elizabeth Travels Light and Melissa Leviton. Elizabeth is an educator and artist with an interdisciplinary research background.
She taught in the critical studies program at CCA Math and Science, and also worked at SFAI during its closure. She's seen this particular kind of ending before, and she brings both the [00:04:00] historical context of how these institutions came to exist and a clear-eyed understanding of the economic forces that brought them down.
Melissa Levinton has been teaching fashion design and fashion theory at CCA for 27 years across the fashion design, visual studies and diversity studies departments. She watched the institution expand and consolidate over nearly three decades. She also has board experience at a small nonprofit museum and was part of the adjunct bargaining team.
So she understands these pressures from multiple angles. Now, we may have been in a former church recording this episode, but we did not mean for to take on a religious shape, but it kind of did. At some point, I noticed there was a bit of a. Homily or a testimony. And then we had some confessional material and you know what the heck?
A few Hail Mary ideas thrown around too. And by the end, I [00:05:00] think we found something like a benediction, or at least a bunch of good wishes to everyone impacted it, which in the end is all of us. Let's get into it. And what would I understand? None of us prepared for this really beyond our conversations, but that's like I didn't, besides the simmering rage that I've cultivated for the last five years.
Yes, I'm ready. Okay. Well, welcome to our, it's like the best way to enter it that I know. Can you tell me about the moment you found out that CCA was closing? How did you hear about it? And how did you feel?
Melissa: Well, since I'm still on the faculty, I found out about it from an email from the president, which was sent a little after eight 30 on, I believe, the Tuesday morning. [00:06:00] And I don't remember what the subject line was, but it was clearly marked urgent, and I read it and. I felt a combination of fury, sadness, and a teeny, tiny little bit of disbelief, even though I wasn't surprised.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think that's a, I got, um, I don't work at CCA anymore and I got a series of text messages from people I am still in friendship with, uh, who still work there. And I felt I did a, kind of like a dissociative thing mm-hmm. Where I really, um.
I didn't wanna feel all the things that I knew I could and would feel with the closure. Um, it is, you know, many people have [00:07:00] commented on how similar the situation. Is and has been to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I went through all the stages of grief with the San Francisco Art Institute, and I just, I left CCAA year before they announced the closure because the writing was kind of on the wall and I wanted to be wrong.
Like I, you know, like I've, I had this like intense feeling of dread. And I was like, I, I need to leave. Like I need to go 'cause I don't wanna be here when this shoe drops. And then to, so to get that news was, you know, confirmation about that decision. Mm-hmm. And also just, yeah, a lot of sadness. And then of course, like you're either in the classroom of students or you're getting texts or whatever social media you're on, seeing it pop up whenever you open up like the Chronicle or something and you see like Vanderbilt, whatever, whatever.
It just like, [00:08:00] it, it's like a jump scare for you. And, you know, maybe that's not what you went online to do right now. There was an article in the Chronicle, I think it was an Annette Asamov article, um, about Vanderbilt. It was, it was written basically focused on Vanderbilt rather than on CCA. Um, the mention of CCA was that Vanderbilt was taking over the moribund.
CCA campus. And I was just beside myself when I read that yes, c, CA will be closing, but there's an awful lot of life still on campus. And to be characterized in the press as dead or dying just felt like a punch in the gut. Yeah. And then I always do the hinter frog in like the question behind the question, like mm-hmm.
What's at stake with trying to frame it that way. Right. And we'll kind of get to that, I think in this episode. And then we'll just back up. Let's pretend, or maybe we do have listeners who don't know anything about anything. They're [00:09:00] intelligent kind people. They listen to NPR maybe, I don't know. And maybe they're not even from this region, but most likely they probably are just my mom.
Hi mom. Um, let's describe CCA in kind of two parts for these people. I was thinking the first one was like what kind of degree programs or what kind of disciplines were there? What does the student body kind of look like as the first thing, like the practical nuts and bolts, what was C, c, A? And then the second part we can kind of take it to the more spiritual, what did it all mean to us and what are we losing?
So let's kick off with like a nuts and bolts thing of like, I know it was founded in 1907 ish, but not in this current version. It went through a couple changes and all that. Yeah. Um, it was founded, um, basically 119 years ago. It'll be 120 years when it finally closes. Um, um, and until the nineties, the campus was entirely in Oakland, um, in the Rock Ridge area.
[00:10:00] In the nineties, the college decided to expand. Um, they bought, uh, the building, which is currently the main building on the San Francisco campus at the foot of Petro Hill. Um, and that is where the design departments were lodged. We started out as a school of arts and crafts. We were a CCA. See, California College of Arts and Crafts, um, springing from the arts and crafts movement, which was essentially a reaction to the industrialization of the 19th century and a return to the idea of artistic principles and the ability of art to improve life and, um, a life that you could live entirely surrounded by art.
So that was the founding. The college and originally their programs, as I understand it, combined fine art and craft. Um, with the rise of design in the 20th century, they added the design [00:11:00] divisions. Um, I'm based in the fashion design department, and that's a department that started. In the mid to late nineties, I was one of the early faculty members to join.
Um, and so we essentially have a highly respected school of architecture. We've got a division of arts and sciences. We have a division of design, and we have a division of fine art. Um, so we have students who are studying in all of those disciplines and taking a lot of cross disciplinary courses as well.
Mm-hmm. And so we have turned out a wide variety of very impressive artists, designers, writers, thinkers, architects, philosophers, and they have infiltrated. The Bay Area ecosystem, and I think our graduates, as well as our very talented faculty, have really enriched life here in the [00:12:00] Bay Area and beyond.
Mm-hmm. And I think too, that's something that maybe a lot of people kind of outside the art bubble or something, don't really realize is like the reverberations that the school and the alumni have through. So many different sectors in this area. And then also internationally. I was kind of digging deep for like famous alumni, just like looking into lists and that kind of thing.
And I was like, oh, these are names I actually recognize as like altering international discourse around like ceramics or. Altering, like the trajectory of how we think about portraiture. Um, all these like very theoretical and then super fundamental ways that they're impacting our economy as well. Mm-hmm.
Um, it's so interesting to me. And then from your perspective, like what are some nuts and bolts things we should know about CCA? Um. You know, Jeff Gunderson, who was the librarian at the San Francisco Art Institute, I learned this from him. So that's like my citation. Um, [00:13:00] he is, uh, is and remains like just an, an endless source of history and lore about, um, not just the history of the San Francisco Art Institute, but all of the in institutions that it intersected with.
Um, and he told me once that. CCA was founded by some disgruntled faculty from the San Francisco Art Institute who took issue with the drinking. Oh, ooh. Yeah. Because SFAI was like 1880, whatever that it was. Yeah. Post, post Gold rest institution. Uh, founded to, you know, provi, you know, train up local artists, um, for, you know, some very newly minted.
Wealthy families to establishing themselves in the Bay Area. Um, and so some, the founding faculty of the California College of Arts and [00:14:00] Crafts took issue, I think with the drinking at the San Francisco Art Institute, and so founded their own school across the bay in the dry county, ah, of Alameda. Uh, somebody can, might correct me if I'm wrong, but I like the folklore of it.
Yes. And I would say that that, that that relationship kind of always persisted where California like CCAC and CCA were the more practical mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sibling of the two institutions, SFA, I had this. You know, wild commitment to the fine arts. Um, and nothing but the fine arts, right? Um, and CCA was really about, you know, sort of apprenticeship skills, training craft.
Um, and then as you know, as technology transforms over this century, you know, adapting that model to. You know, the computer. Mm-hmm. Um, and, you [00:15:00] know, these modern design practices. I would say the other thing about both SFAI and CCA because you asked about the student body. Yeah. Um, you know, they were, they are named after the regions in which they are located and they were founded to, to serve, um, the regions in which they are located.
And then over time, as the cost of these institutions rose and rose, and Rose and rose, um, and the cost of living in the Bay Area, rose and Rose, and Rose and rose, um, international students were increasingly corded mm-hmm. To attend these institutions. Because FSU did the same thing. Yes. Bcs are doing the same thing.
Yeah. I think most of the colleges and universities in the US are doing similar things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, I mean, by the time I left [00:16:00] CCA, you know, it was an incredibly international program. Mm-hmm. Um, I really, there was, there was so much value and pleasure in that. Um, but it was combined with like some extreme like wealth inequality mm-hmm.
Yes. Extreme, because you had kind of this, you know, because enrollment was declining. Mm-hmm. Really, like if you could afford it, you could go to school there. Mm-hmm. It wasn't like elite. In a competitive like skills way. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was elite and can you afford this way? Mm-hmm. Um, and so you, I would find myself in classrooms where you had a combination of students, you had students who were there on, you know, some form of like merit based scholarship and a combination of, you know, scholarship money and student loan money and [00:17:00] working full time.
Because they had a, you know, they had an idea of what they wanted this experience to be, and they decided that it was going to be worth kind of piecing together, uh, uh, some sort of financial plan mm-hmm. That might, that might make it work. Um, and then you had students who just came from sufficient resources, family wealth.
That, you know, just wanted to be there. Like I'm not an economics person by a stretch, but this is one of the questions that kind of haunts me is like, is the model, the art school model just wholly unsustainable now in this region? Or like what sort of lifelines were offered could have been offered to have changed this?
Or was it kind of inevitable? I mean, 120 years ain't nothing. It, it ain't nothing. No. [00:18:00] Um, you know, those are such complicated, almost interlocking questions. Um, if by art school model, what you mean is education that is devoted to fine art and design. Mm-hmm. Um, I don't, I still think that. Despite everybody's, um, love affair with technology these days, technology needs designers and artists too, right?
Um, these are, these are people that our society desperately needs. Mm-hmm. Um, the arts are what make life worth living. Mm-hmm. For many of us. Certainly for me, think about a world without art. It was actually, um, an AIDS day. Event that we started when International AIDS Day was first, uh, anointed as I believe April 1st, and I was still working at the Fine Arts Museums, we would have what was called a Day Without Art, which, and the idea behind that was [00:19:00] to highlight how important, um, art was in dealing with life.
Mm-hmm. Um, and expressing our, our individual and joint experience of this life. So I think art is crucial. Um, and art is also hardwired into humanity. Um, um, I your question about tech haunts me, 'cause I don't know the total arc of it, but when there was the SF expansion Yeah. The student housing didn't Nvidia step in and give like last.
Nvidia stepped in and donated, I believe their foundation donated 20 million. Um, and that gets to kind of your second, the second part of your question. I don't think necessarily the art model is broken. What I think is broken, um, is the weight. That we don't give to the importance of art. And it has [00:20:00] long been this way in the United States.
We've always been kind of uncomfortable with art as a discipline, um, as if it doesn't really fit with this sort of rugged, individualist, western cowboy, um, myth that, um. We have as a country about who we are and where we came from. Um, art is crucial and art, um, suffuses everything, we all experience all day, every day.
I'm a fashion historian. Think about the clothes we're all wearing. We go through life dressed in textiles. Those had to get designed, those had to get made. The clothing had to get designed, and the clothing had to get made. Arts and crafts. Right there. Um, without that, our societies would break down. So the fact that we have never really been able to have the [00:21:00] importance of them accepted in American society, um, I think is, is a real tragedy for us as a people, as a culture, as a country.
But what happened to CCA? I think is in some ways rather more banal. Um, the board of trustees made some incredibly risky financial bets and they didn't work out. The way it was planned or devoutly hoped. Um, and in the end, despite 20 million from Nvidia and 20 million plus from the board of trustees, um, and 20 million from the state, the whole.
That those financial decisions had made, had dug for us, was so wide and so deep. I've been calling it Marianna Trench of [00:22:00] Financial Holes, is that despite the best efforts of, you know, the current administration and the board and whatever donors they've been courting, they couldn't dig their way out of it.
There's the anger. Exactly. Because it could have been avoided. Mm-hmm. I think about the,
the sustainability of the model, sort of in the context of, you know, what are the kinds of decisions of high school graduate needs to contend with. Mm-hmm. Um. Upon graduation and thinking about their future and what has been the increasing cost, right. Of a college education, public and private. But I mean, these private schools are, you know, upwards 50, $60,000 a year, [00:23:00] not including housing.
And, you know, part of the, the economic model for a lot of, especially private colleges is students are required. To live on campus for one or two years to pay rent and tuition. Mm-hmm. Because this is part of how they make the balance sheet balance out. And I think the, the humanities in general are undervalued.
Yes. Especially compared to like the sciences, the hard sciences. Um, and so the, the kind of the. The hard math about what if, if we are forced, right? Socially, like we don't have Medicare for all. Like where will your healthcare come from? Mm-hmm. Right? Cities are increasingly expensive. How will you afford to pay rent?
And if you're sort of forced to contend with those kinds of, you know, choice or [00:24:00] circumstances for these very, like basic necessities, then you know the choices you make around where to go to school, what to study. Be or get, you know, become shaped by very pragmatic things, right? What is the return on this investment?
And what I loved about teaching at CCA and SFAI was how courageous the students were in making the choice that they made. Mm-hmm. Because they really, they really believed in what they were. Looking for, like they really believed in, in, in the thing that they were pursuing, and they were, it's a little reckless, you know, like the return on investment isn't promised.
It's not, they were betting on themselves. Mm-hmm. Everyone that I knew in the nineties that went there, they were betting on themselves. They were, and a lot of them have really. Cool [00:25:00] studios in Petaluma and they've made a name for themselves and they did it. But yeah, at the time we'd go to their really cruddy apartment downtown and because you could still find affordable, cruddy apartments downtown, make a box of mac and cheese.
Yep. Or whatever. And it really was this sense that you had a bet on your own ingenuity and all these other things. Um, 'cause you knew society wasn't gonna make a path for you. Yeah. But it was like a group of people who felt that way. So it somehow felt like, not safety, but at least solidarity. Mm-hmm. That was the way it was or the way it felt when I started teaching there in 2000.
Um, so it was a really devoted group of students. They were passionately interested. And devoted to what it was they were studying. They were ingenious, they were resourceful, and you know, they went off into the world [00:26:00] and you know, found their way. What happens to these students now who are midway through a career path?
And a question we kind of brought up in our separate call was, what does it mean to even be accredited if we're gonna be dropping a bunch? Of these students midway? Well, what they're trying to do is negotiate what they're calling teach out agreements with, um, specific schools. I've seen a list of six or seven or eight of them.
Mm-hmm. Um, and students were asked where they would be interested in transferring. So there has been at least some student input into this. And obviously different schools have different, um. Have different, uh, focuses. Mm-hmm. So one school is not going to be appropriate for the entirety of the current freshman and sophomore student body.
Mm-hmm. Well, people are here on visas and there's like a lapse or something like that. Right. And they're also looking for schools that have parallel visa arrangements to [00:27:00] CCAs so that. Those students can also segue reasonably seamlessly. Mm-hmm. So it's, you know, it's a lot of work, but it is something that they have been focusing on.
Mm-hmm. I don't know. I, I have a meeting on Wednesday, there's a faculty retreat and the president and provost will be speaking on, you know, the current situation. And my guess is that, um, where they are in those arrangements will be discussed. So. They're, they have been, to their credit, very focused on trying to make the transition as easy and successful for the students who will not graduate by, uh, the end of, uh, academic 26, 27, so that their educations won't be interrupted so that their costs won't go up, so that they will have, you know, a soft place to land.[00:28:00]
What if we have some sassy listener right now who's thinking, but we have Vanderbilt coming in, like, isn't that the same thing, isn't it fine? Like, what, what could we get from CA that we can't get from Vanderbilt? I don't get what the problem is. We don't know what Vanderbilt is going to be offering. They haven't been very forthcoming mm-hmm.
About what exactly it is they are planning to do. They've talked about having, and they're in other places too. Like they're in like Miami. They're, it's a whole nother model with university education. Right. Um. They, they've been expanding very aggressively. So the New York campus, I believe is opening this fall.
Uh, west Miami Beach is under construction. Mm-hmm. They're fundraising. Um, they've got, um, they have to get accredited. To teach whatever it is they're planning to teach on the San Francisco campus. They're not accredited for it yet. Mm-hmm. So I think [00:29:00] that's part of the reason why they haven't been very forthcoming about what it is they're going to teach, because they, their ducks are not all lined up yet.
And they did say that they don't have a plan to ab absorb CCA in any correct way, shape, or form. Well, they're absorbing the Wadis Institute, which is essentially our professional. Museum space. Mm-hmm. Um, and they have pledged to keep some kind of CA archive, but that's not really preserving CCA mm-hmm.
That's preserving the memory of CCA, the history of CCA. But CCA is a very alive, very vibrant place right now. And you know, unless Vanderbilt actually. Chose to merge with CA and allow CCAs programs and philosophy and faculty to continue. CCA will no longer exist after Vanderbilt takes over [00:30:00] and Vanderbilt has not guaranteed that they would accept our students.
They've said that students can apply. Mm-hmm. But they have a less than 5% acceptance rate, so. It's hard to know exactly how our students would fare. Mm-hmm. In applying to Vanderbilt. And they also have not committed to taking any current faculty. Mm-hmm. Or as far as I'm aware, any current administrators.
Mm-hmm. We'll find out more in June, and in the meantime, we just have to wait, which is incredibly frustrating. Yeah, that's an interesting question too. With SFAI as well, like what happens after the entity disappears? What happens with all the stuff and the memory? Like who, who gets to own that now? Mm-hmm.
Because, um, SFAI was. [00:31:00] Um, at risk for bankruptcy. Mm-hmm. I think there was an attempt to separate, like the historical archives as, as an asset mm-hmm. Um, from the institution, um, so that it couldn't be just like bought and chopped up and sold, uh, for parts, essentially. Mm-hmm. Um, so it was preserved. I think primarily by SFAA, the San Francisco Artists Alumni Association.
It was like the SFAI Alumni Association. Um, and I believe, I mean SFAI has, you know, in some way also been, you know, I think it's, um, Loreen Powell Jobes mm-hmm. Has financed, um.
A form of renewal mm-hmm. On the, on the [00:32:00] historic campus. Mm-hmm. That land where SFI is located is titled in such a way that it must be an art school. Um, but they have, they have turned away from the accreditation model. It's going to be sort of an art artist in residency. Yeah. Kind of a. Um, with like some education stuff happening there.
Mm-hmm. Um, but it's, it's not what it was. Certainly you won't be able to get a degree there. Mm-hmm. That's interesting though, about the time, but you'll make connections. Yeah. Yep. Well, I mean, you will still have an opportunity for, to learn. To network. Some people will. Some people will. Yes. That's you over year.
Yeah. Yeah. And there is a certain irony, I just have to say this in the fact that one of the people on the advisory committee for the reborn SFAI is Stephen Beal, who was CC'S president from 2006 [00:33:00] to 2023 and under whose watch the majority of the financial expenditure that basically has brought us down was made.
I'm not sure. That's irony. I think that's another word we're not allowed to say.
That is wild though. Mm-hmm. I didn't know that. Yeah. Who's writing the articles about that one? 'cause that would be interesting. You heard it here on our Yeah. I mean, I think what it part of, I mean, part of what it speaks to is that the, the people who. Make these decisions do not bear the consequences.
Mm-hmm. Of them. And as a, a labor organizer or somebody who is active in the adjunct faculty unions at both SFAI and CCA, one of the things we were routinely calling attention to was the fact that [00:34:00] trustees and super well paid administrators would make decisions. About the future of the institution.
Highly consequential decisions, loans, land sale agreements, um, that students and faculty would bear the consequences of. Mm-hmm. And so you had this, you know, kind of this like class, I mean, not kind of, it was like a very class based system that I think structurally. It's, it's why things started to fall apart because you just, you had like this really, like this profound disconnect between what was happening at these schools day to day in the classroom.
Relationships between students and students. Students and their faculty students and their studio managers. Just the day-to-day life of the [00:35:00] school, which is this like incredibly like weird, vibrant, dynamic. Um. Exciting place. And then people who get to get gather for meetings like once a quarter, once a month, uh, look at spreadsheets and.
Think that they alone know how to fix what's not adding up about the institution because the fix was always to just like raise tuition. Right. Make it more difficult. Right. For more people to understand money, get more money from students. Right. And then, and then you wonder like, why is enrollment not, yeah.
Why isn't enrollment rising? Just exhausting. The system is not sustainable whatsoever, right? Yeah. But the radical utopian in me is always like, what? Policy. How do we change this entire paradigm? Like could someone wealthy or city or state or someone have stepped in, somehow gotten a hold of this property, made it more reasonable to run this school?
[00:36:00] Like it's literally what could we have done? It's the debt is the thing. Yeah. Just is who you know is like there and. I think there could be legislative fixes that prevent nonprofits from borrowing the kind of money that was being borrowed. Right. Because that's part of, you know, that's where it's like you're, you're a nonprofit.
Like you're supposed to run on like donations, gifts, mm-hmm. And some operations. And when that starts happening and you're on the inside and you know it, who do you even whistle blow to? Because it's right out in the open. Like it's, this is how all business, like, it's, it's like from a, yeah. Sort of neoliberal economic perspective.
This is like, this is how you do things. Because again, they don't bear the consequences if things go badly, right? Mm-hmm. Well, and I think for a long time. The school has operated under this idea that if you build it, they will come. And that was, [00:37:00] I have to say, that was seemed very much the ethos in the teens.
Mm-hmm. Where there were an awful lot of schools spending millions of dollars on new buildings, new gyms, new dorms, you know, all of these things that they hoped would attract more students to them. So we kind of fell into that too. Um, but. You know, we, we outran our audience and you know, in explaining why even though.
So our current president had, had raised together with the board, you know, 60 or 65 million in a very short period of time. He, he did an amazing job. Mm-hmm. Um, why they were still reorganizing and cutting staff and faculty. Mm-hmm. Um, and the answer was always, we have a structural deficit and nobody really wanted to admit.
What was at the [00:38:00] root of the structural deficit, they would explain by saying, well, enrollment is down. Well, yes, we know enrollment is down and we know that CCA has always been, as they euphemistically call it tuition driven, which means the tuition pays for the operating expenses of the school. Mm-hmm. Hi.
Pausing here for a second because after we recorded my guest reach out to correct something she just said, what's actually documented is that it's student dorm rental revenue, going to debt service, not tuition directly. The broader point still stands though with enrollment down CCA likely didn't have enough operating dollars to both run the school and service the debt.
That's what pushed them to the sale. She wanted to make sure the record was straight. Alright, back to the conversation. But, um, what nobody explained was that tuition was having to go to debt service. [00:39:00] Um, and that, that, that was like the, you know, the 800 pound or the 900 pound gorilla in the corner that was there that nobody wanted to admit to.
And I suspect that there are a number of people who worked there mm-hmm. Who didn't know. Um, I found out about some of it because along with Elizabeth, I was on the bargaining team, um, for the contract that the adjuncts. Uh, signed, the adjunct faculty signed in 2022, so we bargained for several years. The staff was also bargaining for several years, um, and we finally got a contract, but at the time they were doing a lot of digging into CCAs finances through publicly available records, which are available on places like ProPublica.
And there was enough information there to piece together at least a chunk of what was happening. [00:40:00] So that's why I wasn't entirely surprised when I got the email that Tuesday morning, and obviously why you saw the writing on the wall last year. Yeah.
You know, we're in this lovely space and for sure that you said used to be a church. Yeah. And it looks like it, and I feel like we had. We had a homily. We did a sermon, we did a little bit of confessional, and I'd love to end on a benediction of stories, but I'm not, I'm not sure if that's appropriate.
Maybe we need to just end in anger. Well, we talked, when we had our initial conversation, we talked about, you know, are there positives that could come out of this? Yeah. Um.
And I've been trying to think about whether or not I can see any. [00:41:00] And one thing that I did notice when I was on campus for my class last week, there was a sign in the, uh, doorway of, or on the door of one classroom that said one of the architecture classes is imagining a future CCA as essentially a popup, a CCA on wheels.
How could this work? Mm-hmm. Um, and I also read in the paper, I believe over the weekend that City College in San Francisco is letting go of its downtown campus building. And I thought, I wonder whether or not that architecture class at CCA, some of the faculty, some of the administrators, whatever, is left of the college's endowment, um.
Whether there is money left over after the sale goes through, the price is not public. So I have no idea, um, [00:42:00] what Vanderbilt will be paying for it and whether there will be funds beyond what's needed to clear the debt. I certainly hope so, but I don't know that they did note it was pennies on the dollar compared to other.
Locations they were looking at in the area. Sure. Because they would have to outfit all of those, um, to become. College dorms and college classrooms. Mm-hmm. And CCA already has all that, so they don't have, and so they get to get up and running a whole lot faster 'cause they don't have to build it. Um, and the cost of construction, both new and renovation is sky high.
Yeah. And even higher these days, given the price of oil. I like, I like talking about the nomadic model, but then we went. Back to anger. We did. So going back to the nomadic model, it's like let's, let's, let's, um, posit that there will be some money left over. I don't know how much, um, [00:43:00] but, or what's going to happen to the endowment.
But if there is enough money for CCA, either to occupy a current unoccupied building somewhere mm-hmm. Take over city college's downtown campus, taking the. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Do something. It was clear that there was at least some impulse on the part of our current student body. Mm-hmm. Who in a lot of ways, I mean, the faculty and staff have a lot to lose, but the students, I think have more to lose because this is their future.
This is the future that they banked on. The two classes that we'll be able to graduate, the class of 26 and the class of 27 will still have the future. They'll be able to get out. But for the hypothetical classes of 28 and 29, they're gonna have to reinvent their education experience. So they have a lot to lose.
And at the same time, perhaps the [00:44:00] most, again, by imagining a different incarnation. For CCA. I like that. That feels good. Yeah. So that, that would be the most positive thing. Yeah. I could see coming out of this and just about the only positive thing I can see coming out of this. What about you, Elizabeth?
Any non-denominational Hail Mary? I mean, I think, I think clarity is always to, to see the situation clearly. Even though like the disillusionment doesn't feel good, the clarity has its own kind of gifts and rewards. Um, I think there's a bit of a reckoning around, you know, what is art for, who is art for, is it to continue to enrich already wealthy corporations until they find a way to use an AI language learning model to replace you?
Right? Is it to create. [00:45:00] Art objects that become blue chip investments. Mm-hmm. For already wealthy people. Right? Or is it what, you know, what Melissa was speaking about earlier, is it about enriching like daily life for people, all people? Mm-hmm. And you know, often the theme of I taught at math and. Science courses at both SFAI and CCA.
And you know, often the theme was looking at the history of wealth inequality in the United States and, you know, sort of mapping the trajectory of art history onto, you know, changes in the distribution of wealth. Over, you know, the last a hundred years or so. Mm-hmm. And, you know, pointing out to students that they were born and they live in a time of some of the most extreme wealth inequality that the world, let alone this region has ever seen.[00:46:00]
Like this isn't normal. Right. And like I'm old enough to remember. When San Francisco had, you know, a pretty like rich, diverse working in middle class. Mm-hmm. Um, and that is increasingly like shrinking, right? Um, so there's, so you can have some clarity around this is what wealth inequality does, like this is what it looks like, this is what they are capable and incapable of doing.
Mm-hmm. Um, and then we would often look at, you know, that chart alongside. Um, you know, the charts put out by the International Panel on Climate Change. Hmm. And think about like, we are reaching unprecedented temperatures, global averages. Um, you know, we read the report, these are the effects. Um, it sucks to talk about them because it's hard to function with that [00:47:00] understanding of what we're doing to our planet and our food systems.
Um. And the environment, but it's also, you know, being able to think those two, two things together requires imagination, and it's going to require like creativity and ingenuity. Mm-hmm. I really believe that, you know, that demographic that I love teaching so much. Like these high school, you know, I thought of the undergraduate years, and I mean this with like love and respect, but it was like the kindergarten of adult education.
It is, right? It's like we're skill building things are open. Like you have, you're making some commitments, but you're still young. Like, you know, yeah. You could go to graduate school for something else if you, you know, like there's still like, it's a very open and. I have a lot of faith in that age group to, you know, to figure things out.
And I think part of what like their superpower is, is that they don't have like the same [00:48:00] level of investment necessarily in maintaining the economic system. Mm-hmm. That like has sort of given rise to the situation that they now have to struggle through. And so they're more open to alternatives. Yeah, I think that's beautiful.
And in these unprecedented times of disorientation, at least these kinds of things give us bearings. Not to get reoriented, but to at least have a direction that we're traveling and usually collectively. Yeah. And so I guess if we can take away one thing, it might be that, and I, I hate to do this because we do it at the end of every episode.
I've got my magic eight ball here. Okay. And we, you have to ask her, uh, a yes or no question. And she doesn't fool around. She doesn't lie. So if it's a serious question, that's the serious response. So I'll put that there. And then whoever wants to start with your yes or no question. [00:49:00] I'm, I'm thinking, oh yeah, take your time.
Because this is a real thing. I'm like, I'm feeling the pressure. Yeah. Everyone says that when I bring her out. It's true. Mm-hmm. Um, a yes or no question. Mm-hmm. Okay. I have one. Okay. We have to shake her and do it. Do the whole thing. Okay. Um. Will the labor movement have a central role in reimagining arts education in the Bay Area?
Reply hazy. Try again. Whoa.
I don't know. Magic eight Ball. She's not in the mood. We'll just leave her alone right now. Okay. Do you wanna try Melissa? I can try. Okay.[00:50:00]
Will there be some form of continued existence for CCA after? Vanderbilt ticks over in 2027. I almost don't wanna hear the, I know, let's see. I'm sweating that there. It's, I know I need, I didn't bring my readers either. I'll take a picture of the answer. It is decidedly so. Wow. Okay. Wow. Okay. You heard it here first, folks.
Um. Thanks for listening to Art Yap. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support the show is to leave a rating or review. Share art Yap with a dreamer, a maker, a friend. Because good ideas are better when they don't end. For video trailers and sneak peeks, follow us on Instagram at Art yap underscore podcast.
Until next time, [00:51:00] keep imagining. Keep creating and keep yapping.