November 9, 2009 12:39:30 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Mon, 9 Nov 2009 15:39:09 EST PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com wrote: >At the school here, we have set up small tables in each of the practice >rooms for non-piano related items, including tools, to teach our students to >respect the piano. Cheap Ikea tables cost $30, and certainly the cost far >outweighs repairs to the pianos from negligence. Paul, This is the California State University. We just lost 20% of our funding and are about to lose more in the next budget year. Coffee tables for 38 practice rooms just aren't on the horizon - even if we had space for them - which we don't. There's barely space for a piano bench, a chair and a music stand. You should see what kind of contortions cellists have to go through to practice. These are small all-purpose practice rooms, and space is at a premium. There was a suggestion to attach cupholders to the wall - but that got nixed, because things attached to the wall don't stay that way very long (judging by the fate of the mirrors in there). Besides, someone might impale themselves or their cello on the cupholder - who needs a lawsuit? And I find that the most well-meaning students who are usually very responsible just get engrossed in whatever they are doing and mindlessly put their drink on the piano - because it's there and they aren't thinking. So, the best way to keep drinks out of pianos is to keep them out of the rooms that the pianos are in.It is a losing battle - but having the administration behind us with some tangible policies at least helps get the message accross. BTW, in the past I tried posting Richard West's humorous signs (plus a few more of my own invention). They merely served as pretexts for graffiti - admittedly, some of them very clever... israel Stein >>In a message dated 11/9/2009 1:06:23 P.M. Central Standard Time, >>custos3 at comcast.net writes: >Mon, 9 Nov 2009 12:48:25 -0500 Zeno Wood <zeno.wood at gmail.com> wrote: >I've found spilling of food and drink to be more of a threat, and harder to >reason with. Students are, after all, entitled to their slurpees, lattes, >and pizzas, at all times. I sometimes think about walking into a practice >room and putting my coffee cup down on someone's violin. I mean, [to be >said with incredulous outrage] where else am I supposed to put it down? >Zeno Wood >Brooklyn College Zeno, We recently had a P-22 knocked out of service by a spill here at SFSU. We informed the Director, who went ballistic (he's a violinist - not a pianist - but is very protective of the pianos). A week later the following signs went up all over the building: "No Food or Drink is Allowed in Any Practice Room at Any Time (exception: water, only on the floor) Anyone found with food or drink in a practice room, or water bottle on the piano will fail Music 150 for the semester." So now I just walk in there, point at the sign, kick them out of the room and lock it. And tell them that next time they are going to the Music Office to get flunked. So far it cut down on food and drinks in the practice rooms quite a bit. But it's only been one week... Of course, the biggest violators are the faculty - and they got read the riot act by the Director at the last faculty meeting. We'll see how much good that does... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091109/975f32a6/attachment.htm> ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ CAUT mailing list CAUT at ptg.org http://ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/caut End of CAUT Digest, Vol 13, Issue 30 ************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091109/611531b2/attachment.htm>
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