This past Tuesday I courageously decided to skip my dance class so that I could attend a town hall meeting about Pawlenty's horrible state budget suggestions. Among his many ill-advised cuts was his proposal to destroy the Perpich Center for Arts Education, also know as the Arts High School, in Minnesota.
The whole idea of this makes me sick and angry. I graduated from the Arts School in 1997, and I have only positive things to say about my experience there. How many people go around saying that kind of thing about their high school? Basically, Pawlenty wants to end the "outreach" part of the school (the agency that provides teacher training, arts programs in rural areas, etc.) and turn the school into a charter school. I could go on and on about why turning that school into a charter school is a horrible idea and why it would be as good as shutting the school down for good, but I will leave those thoughts for the legislative people I've been writing to.
Anyway, so when I heard about this proposal, I felt like it was my "civic duty" to try to do something about it. So when I heard about the town hall meetings being held to address the proposed budget, I thought it would be a good idea for me to go and say some articulate, persuasive things about why the arts school has to stay the way it is. So I filled out the online form saying I wanted to "testify," and showed up at the meeting, full of purpose.
The meeting was held at the Minneapolis Park Board building in north Minneapolis (within a few blocks of Stand Up Frank's). There were tons of people there. Probably hundreds--I think I have a learning disability when it comes to estimating anything, but the room was full. I lurked around, waiting for the meeting to start.
Finally, some state representative kicked things off. He told us everyone would get one and half minutes to speak--no longer! Then some other representative type showed PowerPoint slides and read exactly what was on the slides. We all had copies of the slides, as well. I thought it was "interesting" that he glossed over the slide that showed the negative funding going to the arts school.
The first representative guy got back on the microphone to kick off the "testament" part of the meeting. He reminded us of the time limit, and asked that we not clap or heckle. The first speaker was R.T. Rybak.
Ryabak eventually got cut off, but they totally let him speak for over 1.5 minutes. But I guess maybe you've "earned" that, if you're the mayor. Then the unwashed masses began to speak, and the boredom really began to set in. But I stayed where I was, even though I really wanted to dash off to the bathroom. What if they called my name when I was gone, and I lost my turn? I couldn't risk that!
I guess what I learned while listening to everyone speak is this--most people are pretty bad at public speaking. Sometimes the message is unclear. Sometimes embarrassing gimmicks are used to make a point ("Footprints" style stories, for example). But a lot of the time, you just can't focus on what someone is saying because they mumble or whisper or hold the microphone at their waist.
I'm sure a lot of the speakers had good points, and I heard a handful of them. One articulate young woman who spoke about cutting funds for poor mentally ill people almost made me teary-eyed. Of course, I was super hungry when she got up to speak, so maybe it was just low blood sugar. Regardless, I wanted to make sure her funding wasn't cut.
Hours passed, and my name was never called. During this time, two older gentleman got up to speak on behalf of PCAE. Both were current or former parents of arts school students. I was glad that someone was getting to talk about the school, but I wanted to hear from some students, too.
Around 8:30, the moderator announced that the meeting was officially scheduled to end at 8:00, and warned us that the legislators might start leaving, but that at least a couple of them would stick around to hear everyone out. "Everyone" amounted to over 60 more people.
I waited around for another 15 minutes or so, and finally just gave up. By the time my name was called, no one would be there and it would be an exercise in vanity, I figured.
So that didn't really work out as planned. I was reduced to sending emails--when what I really wanted was to impress the legislative people with my exciting, easy-to-understand testimonial. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to make dramatic public statements like everyone else. Knock it: Poorly planned town hall meetings.
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