The Savannah College of Art and Design just celebrated its 40th anniversary. It was established in 1978, by Richard and Paula Rowan, with only one building, Poetter Hall. As the years have gone by, the school has expanded, and all but consumed historical downtown Savannah. On almost every street you pass, you can find an academic or administration building, usually a preserved historical building. I took my comics classes in an old hospice. I worked in a Freemason temple, across the street from the admissions building, formally an armory. Paula Rowan, now known as Paula Wallace, is still the head of the school.

They own the two theaters on Broughton, the Trustee’s Theater and the Lucas, home to the Savannah Film Festival, bringing big names and directors to Georgia every year, and the event is organized entirely by SCAD. It’s no surprise that when I think of the school, I think of the thick Spanish moss covering nearly every oak tree. With SCAD, it’s almost as if Savannah has its own invasive species.

It’s a visually lavish place. The choice of Savannah was well-thought out. A beautiful school in a beautiful town. But those who have worked at and attended SCAD are aware that beauty is only skin-deep.

The Savannah Film Festival on Broughton Street

It’s hard to describe the general tone among faculty and students. Everyone is just a little bit “off”. Us students are all eccentrics, with our own weird quirks and beliefs, but there is a sense of hostility. I remember clearly, a senior in the Fashion department talking about the upcoming show, where only a few collections are chosen to walk the runway. She recalled stories of students coming into academic buildings after hours, and destroying others’ garments. She tried to alleviate the tension she created in the classroom by quickly saying that these actions were punished almost immediately by staff, but the impression had been made on me and the other freshman in the room.

The odd thing was that no one was exceptionally surprised. It’s a tough thing to describe, but it’s an understanding that hostility and frenemies are common in a competitive school environment, where you always feel judged. At a school with class-wide critique, at some point, everyone has to play the critic. I remember, during the quarter in which I later dropped out, I received a pretty favorable critique of one of my projects. I was pretty pleased, but another student who had gotten her critique before mine looked not so much disappointed, but angry. She looked very upset with me for receiving a more favorable critique. It’s natural. We all want a good critique. But even though it was our very first project, being relatively not as weighty on our averages, the stakes felt so much higher.

I don’t mean to accuse my former professors of anything, because I think that it’s by design. I liked all of my professors, I really did. I just think that they were expected to adopt a way of teaching that fit with the school’s ideas. I imagine the thought process is that they think pressure is the best way to encourage students to produce better work. Stress can be a wonderful motivator, but for me and other students, it’s a deterrent.

The workload is already intense, so intense that classes aren’t held on Fridays. Sleep deprivation is not only common, but expected. All-nighters are, at some point, a requirement for a full-time student who wants to do well. Not getting a healthy amount of sleep is treated like it’s just part of the experience. And when you’re in that environment, it’s hard to realize how bizarre that is. Sleep Comes After Death. Sacrificing one’s own health for the ambiguous idea of “success” is not something new, but the “well, what can you do” resignation paired with humor is questionable when students are passing out in the hallways, and dying with such frequency.

SCAD’s attendance policy does nothing to help the immense pressure placed on students. If you miss more than four sessions of a class, you are automatically dropped from it. This is the most common complaint among SCAD students, it being hard to get an excused absence. A professor, on the first day of class, told the story of a student being hit by a bus and not being able to receive an excused absence. A supporter comment on a Change.org petition to improve mental health services (which you can sign here) shares her personal experiences with SCAD’s strict policy.

“I’m signing because I had to drop a class when my grandma died. I’m signing because I got an absence when I got metal stuck in my eyeball and had to spend all day in the ER. I’m signing because my friend couldn’t get an excused absence for chemo-therapy… I am signing because I care about myself and the well-being of my classmates. I am signing because something needs to change.”

Something common in the comments on the petition and other online forums is the opinion that SCAD doesn’t seem to care about its students. It’s a strange, unhappy reality that most SCAD students know: they are not valued by the school leaders. And when mental health and other services provided by the school are so lacking, it’s hard not to agree. It’s hard not to hold the school somewhat accountable for vulnerable students taking their own lives.

An outsider, looking at SCAD’s expensive accommodations and industry connections, would never know that these issues were present. This is because SCAD projects a very controlled public image. The university is very concerned with its reputation, especially to prospective students. Having worked across from the admissions building, I met many of them. In the last couple weeks, it was tough working a shift and seeing kids so excited to attend, who had already been accepted. Of course I couldn’t tell them to go someplace else; I was working in an establishment owned by the school.

Habersham Hall, SCAD Savannah

I think every student realizes at some point that there is something very sinister lying beneath the veneer. Something was wrong. Certain professors would mention an incident in passing, and move on very quickly. There was something spoken of vaguely, something bad that happened, but that was then, and this is now, so we should move on. All we knew was that something happened around twenty years ago. They always presented it as something like, disgruntled professors got upset, so they got fired. No one ever knew what was going on. And none of the professors wanted to talk about it. Then, after several of us expressed interest, one of my no-nonsense professors clued us in. If he were to talk about it, he would also be fired.

I can’t remember how I learned about what happened at SCAD Savannah in the early nineties. Based on the way my professors spoke about it, I would never had guessed.