The following very long thread is my experiences as an Asian American woman at Otis. There is anti-Asian sentiment, general racism, harassment and mention of alcohol.
#FuckOtisCollege #ArtSchoolStories

(1/?)
FOUNDATION YEAR:

My Intro to Visual Culture, teacher Marlena Donohue constantly belittled me and my other asian friends (intl and not) and mocked us. Due to a family emergency, I was not in class but I was informed through a group chat that there was a “discussion”

(2/?) happening between her and the students. She was arguing that the civil rights movement and women's rights movement had ended in the 60s. The class was in an uproar. Mind you this was only a year after the first Black Lives Matter protest and Ferguson protests.

(3/?) As you have seen in the #fuckotiscollege list, there was an incident in my class where Warner referred to our ink drawing portion of the class as a “way of the orient.” He then proceeded to close his eyes and say now picture you are under an apple blossom tree

(4/?) I tried reporting to an academic counselor (white male) and was instead asked the meaning of my family name and then given an hour lecture on the history of the word orient/oriental and how it’s not offensive.

(5/?) Skipping right into the bullshit from DGMD

Advising as a foundation student I was not lucky enough to have Harry to talk to. I had to talk to Kathleen. I have always been passionate about 2D animation since its what my parents did. So ¾ years of otis that was my focus.

(6/?) I told Kathleen I was sad to see very few 2D classes besides the core ones and all she said was you are only going to be doing 3D anyways, there's no jobs in 2D and discouraged me. This happened almost every course advising session.

(7/?) I was so annoyed by the curriculum, me and some friends equally as passionate about 2D animation pitched a new 2D Junior Film class as a prerequisite to the Senior Projects class. I think for the most part it was a success and has continued to be offered as a course.

(8/?) (I realise how important 3D is and I’m not dismissing it in any way. It’s just not for me and wasn’t my passion.)

(9/?) I haven’t seen a lot of it being said but DGMD is a boys club. In my 2D animation classes I and other female presenting students were talked down to by cis white male students. There was a lot of mansplaining about the history of animation and parroting what we had said.

(10/?) Senior year I decided I didn't want to do animation anymore (there was no 2D practicum only 3D) and found a love for visual development and concept art. So I switched into the concept track.

(11/?) I became a concept tutor offering my help to students struggling in character design, story, etc. I took on a student from the Toy Design Dept, bc they lacked the education on turnaround drawings and life drawing. I was extremely happy to help her with her assignments

(12/?) After many meetings (not sure how many but I was far along teaching this student) I was approached by our DGMD office manager. She asked if I was tutoring a toy student. I said yes and then she said well "Kathleen doesn't like that" -

(13/?) and we're not allowed to use the dept money for this. I told her the student is in a digital elective. She told me Kathleen didn't care. I was never aware of this policy. No one told me. Kathleen never approached me directly to tell me this wasn't allowed.

(14/?) So I stopped teaching the student through the dept and instead helped her on my own bc it was bullshit.

(15/?) Okay let's talk about Senior Reviews and the absolute bullshit pulled by the department.

We had been all working on our projects the whole 1st semester. and it was time for our first industry reviews. It was chill we all had rooms according to our focuses and tracks.

(16/?) And then out of nowhere Kathleen changed the rooms to alphabetical order ruining the preparedness we all had.

Come industry review day some rooms had industry reviewers fit to their focuses and tracks and some did not.

(17/?) Mine did not and I ended up with normal Otis faculty as my industry reviewer and their friend who was on her phone the whole time. Many complaints were made about the lack of professionalism and irrelevant industry pros who were there.

(19/?) We received emails from Kathleen saying how ungrateful we were to her "friends" she had invited.

Right before senior show we received an email from Kathleen saying she looked at our websites and some were bad but she wasn't going to tell the students with "bad" websites

(20/?) The weeks followed with multiple unprofessional emails including one with an article about how not to get a job in animation and VFX. Another wildly inappropriate email sent out, listed students names who had not signed up for Industry Reviews bc of personal, health issues

(21/?) saying how it would hurt their grade and art etc.

The biggest issues was previously graduated alumni were still on the email blast so they received these emails harassing and embarrassing current seniors.

(22/?) I was in the process of reporting these emails to the Dean of Student Affairs last year but decided not to for fear of. blacklisting and retalliation.

(23/?) Final Senior Reviews

We were sorted into appropriate rooms with classmates in the same focus. Which was great except once again some of the "professionals" brought in had little to nothing relevant to say to students.

(24/?) My room in particular was proctored by Jan Nagel who did not do her job which was to just keep time and interrupted students the whole time they were presenting. My room was full of very diverse students and the criticism we received from the white reviewers was awful

(25/?) My project was about a vigilante in Hong Kong based on my love for my culture and background in HK and Shen Zhen. I had 3 fully realized and colored/painted backgrounds and layouts. The crit I recieved was "oh this isn't asian enough for me." "I lived in China for ten year

(26/?) All these white reviewers were trying to explain my culture to me. The one white woman reviewer who lived in China clearly had yellow fever bc she singled out me and two other Chinese students afterwards and would not bother talking to the other black and latinx students.

(27/?) I will not speak for my other classmates but they received worse crits and frankly very racist opinions on their work. The only saving grace in my review was my wonderful vis dev teacher, who tried to save each review by actually giving proper feedback about our art.

(28/?) Okay let's talk about Senior Reviews/Show and alcohol. I'm all for a drink every once and a while. I'm all for fun bar networking events. What I'm not here for is having my work talked about by someone not sober on a dry campus.

(29/?) We had an anxiety in the air about the assault cases on campus involving alcohol and substance use. I think I had every right to feel uncomfortable during the mixer after our reviews.

(30/?) We were encouraged to talk to other reviewers about our work. Which cool okay, but a lot of the reviewers were only there for the alcohol. I wanted honest opinions not opinions based on me being a woman and alcohol involved.

(31/?) Senior Show I'm not sure if alcohol was served before Industry Night but there were some people who had taken advantage of that alcohol and had multiple drinks. I had several sleazy industry pros come to my table talking about how welcoming their company is to women. Ew.

(32/?) Otis is a dry campus. I understand the correlation of alcohol and graduating and adulthood. But there are students who are uncomfortable with alcohol and don't drink and I'm sure there are others that don't want their art talked about when not sober.

(33/?) Final thoughts

That about sums up my Otis experience. I want this school to be better for it's students and safe. But it's not safe or a welcoming environment. So until it's fixed I don't recommend it at all.
#FuckOtisCollege #ArtSchoolStories

Idk why I didn't put her last name but remove Kathleen Milnes as dept co-chair for her gross unprofessional and racist behavior.