For two days, small groups of students from Michigan State University’s music therapy program picketed outside the Hannah Administration Building in East Lansing, Mich.

The university announced months ago that no new students would be accepted to the program and that it would be phased out over the next three or four years as a cost-cutting measure.

The students and their supporters don’t give up easily.

“When faced with budget crunches, why would one cut a program that has appealed to the community, that assists those without a voice?” master’s student Virginia Anderson asked MSU’s Board of Trustees Friday morning.

But the program’s fate is likely sealed.

Music therapy is essentially the use of music to improve clients’ emotional well-being, cognitive function, social skills and physical health. It can help patients manage chronic pain, alleviate stress in Alzheimer’s patients, and improve the communication skills of people with learning disabilities.

MSU’s program began in 1944. It was the first of its kind in the world.

But MSU officials said earlier this year that, faced with bleak budget prospects, cutting a program with only 21 undergraduates, 13 graduate students and two professors nearing retirement was the right choice.

The cuts will ultimately save MSU about $250,000 a year.

Friday morning, students argued that the program has seen increasing numbers of applicants, that music therapists are finding jobs, that the field is growing.

Phyllis Shance argues that the free music therapy clinic created by her father, Robert Unkefer, one of the program’s early professors, “builds bridges with our community and creates connections outside of the music building.”

That clinic will close when the program ends, though the pay clinic run through the MSU Community Music School will continue.

Provost Kim Wilcox says the pickets and pleas likely won’t change anything.

“We’ve been through and around lots of different possibilities and haven’t seen any yet that would make me feel optimistic,” he says.

“I appreciate that the students are passionate,” he adds, “and I appreciate there is a community need, but we have majors with 1,000 students in them, and we have to look at those differently from those that have 20-some undergraduate students.”

Source: Matthew Miller/Lansing State Journal