Help Us Create a Plan for Lasting Change at WebCo!

Change needs to happen!

Thank you, Kiah.

Thank you for the opportunity to help enact positive change!

I love WebCo. Their teachings guided and taught me to be an artist. A human with opinions and passion and a work ethic like no other. I have faith the professors will practice what they so passionately teach us and collaborate by listening with empathy, kindness, without unproductive/warranted pride, and a fire for change.

I love Webster Conservatory. The training I have received here is unparalleled. I would not be the artist I am today without the skills of Webster Conservatory. I have the utmost respect for my teachers and the leaders of this Conservatory. But to adequately prepare me and my classmates for the industry of tomorrow, we unequivocally must take action today. I believe that WebCo can do better. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think so. I wouldn't write this letter if I didn't think so. I invest in the possibility of change.

Please hear and make the painfully necessary physical changes outlined in this petition. All of them. Make uncomfortable conversations an expectation, a requirement, of being an artist. Of being a student in your classrooms. As you prove to us in freshman year movement, was physically digging into the discomfort is where true growth, learning, and change actually happen. You teach us to listen openly and actively respond/change/grow in scenes and songs. Please actively respond and listen to THIS. Find longevity in your response and change.

The most important lesson I learned at Webco was the necessity of empathy and listening to tell a story. To find truth and tell a just and compelling story, one must openly consider as many points of view as possible. To do so requires sincere diversity and the knowledge that what you can bring to any role or design is merely a reflection of your experiences; the knowledge that there are far more experiences to which you have not lived or discovered. I am hopeful that the program that taught me this can evolve into a program that actively practices this lesson. On my first day of my second year, a class with faculty Gad Guterman, emphasized the role of the theatre as a mirror to society...So I ask you Webco, what do you want to see when you look in the mirror?

Man, I didn’t realize how many things I had pushed down and forgotten about until I saw this! Webco holds a very special place on my heart and I am forever grateful for the experience, but man it was hard to be a POC in the conservatory. Thanks for this and 2025 can’t come soon enough!

This is a wonderful and absolutely necessary step in the right direction. WebCo needs to do better.

Class of 2018. Proud to stand in solidarity. This change is past due.

2025 is plenty of time. Enough is enough.

It’s the least I can do...

Webco Alumni, Class of 2015

Before I left WebCo, I was involved with BLM in St. Louis. I’ll never forget when someone in my class told me we needed to ‘pick our battles’ when I asked my classmates to join me for an on campus walkout in honor of Anthony Lamar Smith, a local black man whose life had been taken at the hands of police. I’ll never forget how only 8 of the 25 performance majors in my class walked out.

I stand behind my Black, Brown and Non White WEBCO friends and peers! I am excited to change the conversation

Long overdue and completely necessary.

I cannot pretend understand firsthand how hard my friends have had it, but I can empathize and demand change. I wish the conversation had been stronger while I was a student there. You are an educational facility and you owe it to your students (past, present, and future) to: continue & strengthen the dialogue in school; to send out students that will facilitate necessary change in every personal and professional encounter they have in school and out; educate yourselves better so you can be better teachers for all of your students, not just the white ones.

I recently told my girlfriend who is a POC that her voice would probably not be heard by her college faculty. I based that on my experience in dealing with The Conservatory and Webster on issues concerning minority groups. I was wrong. De Paul cancelled her finals as a result of the political climate in Chicago because the student body spoke up and voiced concerns. I truly do believe Webster is the exception to the rule when it comes to listening to their student body and the needs of their students in regards to mental health, support groups and loosening the grip of an already stressful environment. That needs to change and it begins with faculty listening to students past and present.

It’s time for webco to stop living in the 80s. We must make radical change.