Change CIA Building Hours

Dear Students, Parents, Faculty and Staff, Last week the Cleveland Institute of Art announced that they will be cutting their building hours from 2 AM to 12 AM this coming semester due to economical reasons. The Institute also just recently raised tuition by a sizable amount. Many of the students that attend CIA are working jobs outside of a full course load and time conflicts do come into play. For instance studio classes run until 4:30 so students must work their jobs after that and don't get out until usually 9 or 10 PM. That leaves 2-3 hours for students to get the majority of our work accomplished. One must take notice that some studio classes run until 10PM as well, which leaves one with very little time to work as well. Also most of the security guards close down the building about a half hour ahead of schedule. This means that if they do this this coming year we will have even less time, maybe having to leave at 11:30PM. This is a very demanding and stressful change. Furthermore we as students find the hour cuts inappropriate not only with the tuition raise but also the funding of the new building. We would like to point out that although we hope CIA the best in the future with its new building we hope to be the main concern right now. As students representing the name of the Cleveland Institute of Art along with following the mission statement of the Institute we do not believe cutting hours is the best way to make up for the economic crisis. For instance, installing motion detectors on the lights would help with cutting energy costs. Lights are left on all night throughout many of the rooms and no one is there using them. Another idea is to have the doors locked at midnight but the building closes at 2AM, that way no one can enter the building after midnight and one of the guards could be sent home then. Simple things like this can add up to make a big difference in the end. Most of the students at CIA are dependent on the facilities to accomplish work especially glass, ceramics, painting, TIME, fibers, printmaking, jewelry, enameling, photography, sculpture, which covers 10 of the 16 majors. Not having the availability of the facilities leaves many students without options in their busy schedule to work at school. If the building hours remain cut until 12 this year, many of us will have much trouble accomplishing our demanding school workloads with quality and craftsmanship. We would also like to call into attention that although 2 hours a night may not seem to be that much, it adds up to 14 hours a week, which amounts to a full work day per week lost. Over a 16 week semester, this amounts to 16 full work days lost or more than 2 weeks. We acknowledge that we are in an economic crisis however due to a sizable tuition raise we find it hard to believe that these cuts in hours are necessary.
Although it remains unquestionable that the building should be open 24/7, we feel this is too much of a demand. We just want our two hours a night back, with no strings attached.