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I leave that building with headaches, and I think partly you know it has to do with the materials that we use. And I have accepted that that is part of my life, but I don’t think it’s well-ventilated. I don’t think the headaches should be that extreme every day.
By GARY LONG and DENISE CATHEY | STAFF WRITERS
Energized by the unveiling of renderings for the $45 million Vaqueros Performance Center to house UTRGV’s Division I football program, one part of $80 million in construction projects being completed by UTRGV Athletics, art and design students at the UTRGV Brownsville campus are raising long-time concerns with the art program’s space and facilities.
Their concerns resulted in a meeting April 12 with university officials at Rusteberg Hall in the Brownsville campus, where the art program is located.
Rusteberg Hall is a 20,000 square-foot former automotive technology building. According to students at the meeting, its problems stem from its size, and the fact that it was not built for the needs of art programs. They agreed that while the ultimate long term solution would be a new, purpose-built art building, such a solution would take years and wouldn’t help the current art students who are raising these concerns.
Rusteberg Hall is owned by Texas Southmost College and leased to UTRGV. University officials pointed out they cannot upgrade a building they do not own.
Art students have raised concerns about Rusteberg Hall for years, but students said the frustrations with their building and program needs have continued to build since the November 2021 Athletics Fee Referendum and UT System Board of Regents action a year later to launch Division I football at UTRGV, women’s swimming and diving teams, a marching band and spirit programs.
Students approved the referendum by 3,497 votes to 2,287, MyRGV.com reported.
The regents approved an $11.25 per credit hour athletic fee increase, capped at 12 hours, beginning in Fall 2023 to help support spirit, football, marching band and women’s swimming and diving programs. The increase in the intercollegiate athletics fee will be for new incoming students and graduating students who return for another degree, MyRGV.com reported.
“That’s a huge increase,” said Annie Snelson, a junior studio art major who has posted on Instagram about rats in the building and materials and safety issues.
“That’s a lot of money. I’m not gonna see any of that money. And regardless, my tuition is going up, and I’m stuck in this building. So I wish someone passed a referendum to make a nicer building. I feel like that’s what matters,” she said.
Snelson spoke to The Herald about her concerns prior to the meeting, including about Rusteberg Hall’s rats.
“I hadn’t seen them, but I had been told. I think I overheard it from students or people who had been in the building for awhile. They were like ‘yeah, I saw the rats,’” she said.
“The rats,” she emphasized, saying she had heard horror stories that rats had “walked over people’s paintings, ruined the canvases. They had nibbled on them. I was like surprised. I was freaked out, but thankfully, they haven’t gotten to my stuff. But the first things I heard was that they were there and that they ruined people’s artwork sometimes.”
“Some of the things that I’ve noticed from testaments that I’ve collected from students are like leaking ceilings. The air conditioning doesn’t work very well. It leaks onto artworks,” she said, adding that when it rains the restroom she uses in the building smells like sewage.
“There’s a mold problem. The toilet paper and napkins aren’t refilled often. Also I think in an art building, people are going to be cleaning up messes that they make, and when there aren’t paper towels, it just stays there,” she said.
According to Snelson, art students are expected to spend five hours working on projects for every hour spent in a studio class, which usually last close to three hours, adding that the cramped quarters make doing that difficult. Snelson, who often works in the facility’s painting studio, says the long hours and poor ventilation often leave her with headaches from the fumes from her and her classmates’ paints and materials.
“I leave that building with headaches, and I think partly you know it has to do with the materials that we use. And I have accepted that that is part of my life, but I don’t think it’s well-ventilated. I don’t think the headaches should be that extreme every day,” she said.
At the meeting, Snelson and fellow art and design students Luz Rodriguez, Yentel Marquez and Amanda Pardo shared a PowerPoint presentation titled, “Proposal for Upcoming Changes (UTRGV College of Fine Arts Student Body).”
It presented information gathered by Snelson and the other three about Rusteberg Hall, including that it was designed as an automotive technology building for TSC.
The report stated that the School of Art and Design has a Spring 2022 enrollment of 775.
The School of Music, also under the College of Fine Arts, has an enrollment of 418.
There are also three departments under the Fine Arts umbrella. Enrollment figures, according to the report, include:
>> Department of Theatre: 185;
>> Department of Dance: 109;
>> Creative writing: 109.
Ed Pogue, director of the School of Art and Design, attended the meeting. Afterward, he said the dialogue had been useful in helping UTRGV determine what it can do for the current students, regardless of long term goals.
Pogue said the College of Fine Art is made up of two schools, the School of Art and Design and the School of Music. There are three other departments: creative writing, dance and theatre.
Snelson said she used anonymous Google Forms submissions to obtain comments from current and former students and faculty for the presentation and posted them to Google Docs. Among the comments:
>> “If you stay after hours to work in any of the rooms at Rusteberg, you’ll have visits from large rats in the rafters!”
>> “There was a leak in the printmaking studio which required a tub to sit in the middle of the table to collect water, which blocked working space.”
>> “The lack of space and ventilation in printmaking resulted in not learning lithography and intaglio.”
The report also states, “Everything is falling apart, and it has become a complete safety hazard, exposed wires, rust, molding, rotting, the list can go on.”
At the meeting, several students mentioned transportation issues stemming from needed courses being offered only on the Edinburg campus. They shared the difficulty of arriving on time for classes using UTRGV buses and then transferring to the city metro bus to reach the UTRGV Visual Arts Building.
At the outset, a student mentioned having spent four hours getting to a class in Edinburg, only to have the class spend 15 to 30 minutes watching a video and read from a book “instead of receiving any kind of feedback on my work.”
Several students brought up cramped space in the 20,000 square-foot building. Others mentioned the furniture in Rusteberg Hall, which they characterized as hand-me-down and repurposed.
The report also states, “Everything is falling apart, and it has become a complete safety hazard, exposed wires, rust, molding, rotting, the list can go on.”
UTRGV Executive Vice President and Provost Janna Arney said she was on the students’ side, saying she was there to listen, understand and advocate for the students.
“We can fix what we know. And because of what you brought forward, we have a much better idea and much better understanding of what it is that we can do,” Arney said at one point.
Marcecy Hernandez, an art student aiming eventually to become an art teacher, spoke with The Herald on Thursday, the day after the meeting. She remembered a course she took in analog photography.
“With photography, you use up a lot of space. Also, we would mostly be like on the table outside in the hallway, just so we could look at our prints, our negatives, you know, look at them in good lighting. …We would always be in the hallway, and people would always be trying to pass by. And they’d be like, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing? Oh, we’re outside. We don’t have proper, like tables or setups to hang our stuff.’ And then previously, I had taken painting with Gina Palacios. And that was also an issue. There wasn’t enough space for us,” she said.
