Piano Cleaning?

[Joel Jones]

on 5/11/00 10:29 AM, Allen Wright at allen.wright@oberlin.edu wrote:

> Joel,
> 
> Your practice of covering pianos interiors is intriguing, and I can see that
> it would make a huge difference in keeping them clean. But I'm curious, how
> do you know who to charge when one is vandalized? One of the problems here
> is that we can never be there, for example, when someone spills coffee into
> a piano or something like that, and so we don't know who it is that did it.
> Lately we've taken to charging fines to students that we find with any
> liquids in the practice rooms.
> 
> It's hard for me to imagine something as sensible as piano covers lasting
> for more than a week or two around here, unfortunately - how do you do make
> that work?
> 
> Allen Wright
> Oberlin Conservatory
> 
> 
> 
> 
Allen,
We have a key check-out system where the students are entered on computer as
they practice.  If a problems occurs a check of the list tells us who was
using the room, and a process of elimination usually arrives at the
offending person.  It's not foolproof and many times leads to a dead-end.
    The best system to keep problems in check is  peer pressure . We also
have a no food/drink policy.   This gets problematic at the beginning of
each year and during exams, however we usually hear from our friends about
their friends...   Many students have taken to setting their soda bottles
outside their practice rooms, if their have to have their libation close at
hand.
    Fines -  yes  !  ! !  $50 for removing a string cover.  In our system we
can also pull their card to eliminate practice room use.   We collect a few
fees.  Most of the discipline is card suspension.   There has been very
little vandalism or accidental damage.  (knock on wood)
    It ain't perfect, but it's the best we got.
Advice for today:   keep students in the loop, and make friends.
Joel