Nearly a third of students may find their classes canceled or rescheduled next February due to changes in the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.
The festival, which has been an off-campus event in recent years will return to the University of Idaho campus and the Lionel Hampton School of Music in 2017.
Every February, the event attracts around 3,000 people, including elementary through college students. In the past, it has attracted as many as 10,000, said Torrey Lawrence, director of the school of music.
Lawrence said Jazz Fest earned the university the National Medal of Arts in 2007 and UI remains the only public institution to have received the award.
Vern Sielert, professor of trumpet and director of jazz studies, said the event started purely on campus, but grew to the point of requiring off-campus locations. As attendance declined, he said the on-campus locations were cut and only the off-campus ones remained. Sielert said starting with the Jazz Fest’s 50th anniversary in 2017, the event will return to campus.
At Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting, Sen. Annette Folwell of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences proposed a resolution that passed unopposed in support of bringing the event back to campus and expressing the senate’s willingness to accommodate the challenge the move presents.
The main challenge is that Lawrence has requested to use parts of certain buildings such as the Administration Building, the Teaching and Learning Center and the Agricultural Science Building.
While Jazz Fest will occupy rooms for two days, about 23 percent of classes will have to be canceled or rescheduled, Provost and Executive Vice President John Wiencek said.
Class time could be made up through distance education methods like Blackboard assignments, Lawrence said.
Another option, Wiencek said, would be to cancel classes for all students and start the spring semester two days earlier, on a Monday instead of the currently planned Wednesday.
“To provide some student perspective, I think if we did cancel the two days of school that would totally just be an invitation to just skip it and get out of town,” said Nate Fisher, ASUI representative for Faculty Senate.
Fisher said he does like the idea of bringing the event back to campus. He said he personally did not know much about the event his first few years at the university and he suspects that is the case for most students.
“I think this move is wonderful and I think it will provide a lot of opportunities for students to get back into the process,” Fisher said.
Wiencek said the event has value in recruitment efforts because of the number of students outside the university it brings to campus.
Vanessa Sielert, associate professor of saxophone and jazz bands, also said getting prospective students on campus is an effective method of recruiting.
“This event brings more prospective students than both our Envision Idaho events combined,” Lawrence said.
If most of the student body is absent it will not provide the visitors an accurate representation of college life, Wiencek said.
Sen. James Foster of the College of Science said he wanted to remind Faculty Senate and leadership that recruiting students is not the only reason the university puts on the festival.
“This is a chance for us to educate students at Idaho about how wonderful jazz is and what the music profession is,” Foster said. “And I would say, most importantly in my opinion, the mission of a public university is to be the curator for our culture, to maintain the history of the civilization that has come before us. So even if no freshman came in and we were just educating our own students, I think we would be doing a great thing.”
Wiencek said he agreed with Foster on the primary purpose, but that recruitment is an aspect of the festival that cannot be forgotten.
A return to campus is not the only change Jazz Fest will see. Lawrence said the festival will be condensed from four days down to three, lasting from Feb. 23 to Feb. 25.
Vern said due to popular demand, the performances will return to a competitive format that Jazz Fest has employed in the past. Vanessa said despite the change, there will be options available for non-competitive performance.
“They had the most incredible winners’ concerts,” said Liz Brandt, Faculty Senate Chair. “I would tell students ‘You’ll feel so charged when you come out of there,’ because they are just so talented and amazing performances.”
Nishant Mohan
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