Dear Provost Fuchs, We, the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni and administrators in the creative arts at Cornell, are deeply concerned about the recommendation to restructure the Cornell Council for the Arts in a report submitted to you, based on the findings of an ad hoc committee chaired by AAP Dean Kent Kleinman. In particular, we are disturbed by the elimination of the grants programs, which has regularly funded faculty, staff, student organizations and undergraduate/graduate student artists, in a professional, unbiased and fair vetting structure since 1967. In its place, you have accepted Dean Kleinman’s recommendation to fund “two years to those units, with the expectation that when the central funding is no longer provided in FY2014 the individual units will continue to provide similar funding opportunities for students, and faculty.” In essence, the “units’ you describe, are the chairs of departments, who will make decisions on art projects. After two years, the individual departments will have to come up with the monies, with no budget increase, in order to support its artists. We believe the elimination of grants signals a larger administrative attitude toward the arts at Cornell. (moved from bottom) In addition to the obvious harm to student and faculty creative projects because of lack of funding, the committee report provides no opportunity of support for staff artists and registered student organizations, or anyone not affiliated with the 12 units. We agree that it is extremely important to raise the visibility of the arts at Cornell and we do share in the belief of providing the best creative arts experience for our students and faculty. But we are convinced that the model proposed by Dean Kleinman is seriously flawed and will not achieve desired results. It would have been beneficial if a larger number of interested and invested parties were included in the dialogue, before a report recommending dramatic changes to the CCA was published. Without larger inclusive consultation, Cornell’s creative community will suffer. Before implementation by Cornell’s Central Administration, we respectfully ask that you consider the serious implications in Dean Kleinman’s report that will negatively impact individual artists. We ask that you meet with a delegation of faculty artists and students to hear the voice of practicing artists at Cornell and consider reversing your approval of a remodel that ignores Cornell’s emerging and faculty artists, and instead invests in publicity and celebrity artists. On July 1, 2014, 100% of the funds allocated from the Office of the Provost since 1967 to support hundreds Cornell artists will be permanently funneled to support one annual art project with an outside celebrity artist. Cornell’s image is worth more than that. By signing this petition, we are united in our objections to the report.