Letter: Music department is mired in nepotism, lack of ethics

Editor,

While a graduate student in music

at the University of New Mexico,

I experienced, for the first and only

time, problems with an abusive

teacher.

This occurrence ruined my academic

experience and caused permanent

damage to my family. The

main problem in the end was not

the abuse I experienced, but the

failure of the College of Fine Arts

administrators to address the problem,

which leads to the point of

this letter: nepotism in the music

department's hiring practices, or to

call it what it is, corruption.

In the course of following the

grievance procedure guidelines, I

discovered my "professor" did not

have a college degree. Needless to

say, I was shocked. How many professors

in the music department

have been hired not because they

were the best person for the job,

but because they were married to

or had some close personal relationship

with someone in the music

department that precluded the

need to have a college degree?

Aside from the problems of the

quality of instruction, the most basic

result of nepotism is that students

are unable to resolve conflicts

with abusive instructors, because

they are not talking to administrators

with an unbiased view. They

are talking about someone's wife

or husband or personal ally, and

in a nepotistic system, to speak

the truth is to break the rules. No

wonder the music department has

such serious problems with professional

ethics.

This same teacher coached me on

how to avoid paying gross receipts

tax on my income as a musician.

This is a long-established practice in

the music department, where many

professors use their UNM offices to

give private music lessons without

declaring them as income or paying

New Mexico gross receipts tax. Unfortunately,

this is also what they

teach their students to do. Where is

their sense of citizenship? Where is

their ethical center?

Many professors will proudly

tell you how clean they keep their

personal office space, while the

hallways lie choked with the debris

from years of neglect. If the professors'

personal or professional ethics

do not extend beyond the walls

of their office, what does that say

about those ethics? Why doesn't a

sense of professional ethics extend

throughout the College of Fine

Arts?

The new dean had a unique opportunity

to stand up and say, "This

is not how we do business in the

College of Fine Arts." Instead, he

choked on his ethical response, and

it was just business as usual. Hear

no evil, see no evil.

As long as administrators fail to

set clear ethical standards for the

music department, as long as nepotism

is the first hiring consideration,

as long as no one is willing to

speak the truth, the music department

will remain a professionally

mediocre part of UNM.

Robert Starner

Former UNM student