Talk:Santa Fe University of Art and Design

Excessively promotional details regarding campus
The amount of detail given, without sources, on the different buildings on campus seems excessively trivial and promotional. I am going to pair it down to the bare essentials. Any discussion would be welcome. Grayfell (talk) 22:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Subdivision of alumni section
An alumnus of the school sent me a message saying that he felt that SFUAD was misrepresenting itself by using his name. He felt that the school is different enough now from what it was in the past that conflating the two schools was deceptive. Having transitioned from a non-profit to a for-profit, I can see his point. Since this is veering into WP:BLP territory, I felt that the best solution was to divide the alumni section into a St. Michael's College section and a College of Santa Fe section. This way it's clear that there is a difference without actually making a value judgement unsupported by sources.

Better still would be to arrange them by year of graduation, but that would involve a lot more sources. Grayfell (talk) 10:04, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Grayfell (talk). That makes much more sense. I think that wording in the "History" section could use some minor revision, also. I think it would make it clear that these are two different administrations on the same campus. Taram (talk) 17:01, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I re-wrote some of the hostory adding clarifying information and newspaper citations, so I removed my "What do you think" question here -- though I am still interested in what you have to say.
 * Taram (talk) 18:43, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Looks pretty good to me, but a couple of points:
 * The bit about Lewis University is unsupported, and could use more context. It's not really clear what the connection is to CSF, other than proximity. Did the Brothers all move there, or something?
 * The bit about the alumni building seems a little too heavily weighted. The school changing its name and focus is a big deal, and it's given the same amount of space as the alumni building issue, which is only supported by an AP blurb. That's a bit odd. Grayfell (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Regrading Lewis, in my editing and rewriting, I apparently cut out the references at some point. Sorry and thanks for noting that. The Brothers did not move to ABQ, many stayed in Santa Fe to continue work at St. Michael's High School.


 * The article (as of yesterday at least) seemed to imply to me that the College of Santa Fe simply had its name changed to SFUAD. I know you have made a number of edits to correct that perception. In reading the newspaper histories and the Wikipedia "View History" pages, there seemed to be more of a struggle with the campus moving from a Catholic Educational Institution run by the Christian Brothers to a Private-Public Educational endeavor.


 * Because of their historic ties to NM, at least, the Brothers (and maybe the Archbishop of Santa Fe, but I could not find documentation of that) seemed to seek a way to sponsor a collegiate style setting that was not as financially draining as CSF was for them. So, that is how Lewis ended up in NM. In the mean time, SFUAD was also establishing its own individual presence. The last move in that direction, before the name change, took place when the alumni were asked to leave the campus eleven days before the name change was announced. So, that is why I included Lewis and the alumni info. It was part of the chronological process of separating the two schools which use(d) the same campus while the CSF sponsors (Christian Brothers) continued their higher ed presence in the state at a new locale. :::::CSF had a theology component along with general ed and media arts while SFUAD is focused solely on art and media.


 * Perhaps that was incorrect or maybe you can think of another way to comment about it? Thank you for your thoughts and for adding a second set of eyes to this.Taram (talk) 05:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

As part of a chronology, it makes sense, but the connection between closing the alumni building and renaming the school isn't made in any of the sources that I've seen. Laureate gained control of a school that had filed exigency and closed its campus for an extended period of time. There have been a lot of changes during the transition. Setting aside personal feelings about Laureate, of which I have plenty, highlighting this one controversial issue as being exemplary of the school's changes is a bit confusing and maybe unfair. If the Alumni Hall closure was seen as a sign of things to come, that should be supported by sources, otherwise it's original research.

You bring up a good point about the differences between the schools. CSF had a number of programs that SFUAD doesn't (their undergraduate art therapy program was one of only a few in the country, as I recall), but I'm not sure how to source that info. Have any of the local papers done a story on how the school is different? I'll poke around for more sources.

As an aside, the convention seems to be to spell De La Salle with capitals. I would've thought otherwise, but c'est la vie (or maybe that should be C'est La Vie). Grayfell (talk) 06:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)


 * LOL, I really enjoy your French. Thank you! As for the local papers comparing and contrasting the two schools, I have not seen anything that I recall. That said, the Albuquerque Journal has written alot about the progress that SFUAD is making in terms of enrollment and their new emphasis on filmmaking and digital arts. Now they may have written on other subjects, but I am aware of their film industry emphasis because of my work. This past week, there was a front page article about the use of soundstages on the campus for a new TV series about the building of the Atomic Bomb in Los Alamos. The series, called "Manhattan," uses the Christian Brothers' former residence on campus as a soundstage. (I only know that because they had a photo of the Governor and her new dog touring the building as it was being refurbished.) Taram (talk) 06:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Inaccurate Information
Copied from Talk:College of Santa Fe:

The Santa Fe University of Art and Design is in no way at all affiliated with the College of Santa Fe. This entire article and the redirect from CSF are extremely misleading and downright false. The College of Santa Fe was CLOSED. Not "almost closed" or "saved from closing" or "nearly closed", etc. To say there is any relationship between the 2 institutions is like saying the new Chipotle Restaurant is a "continuation" of the dentist's office that used to be in same building, just because they are in the same building. This needs to be fixed permanently as Wikipedia, at a minimum, strives not be to present information that is blatantly WRONG. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venqax (talk • contribs) 17:17, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I share your frustration with the new school and how Wikipedia describes the change, but this isn't straightforward. Wikipedia goes by sources, and sources are pretty consistent in describing this as a drastic change for a single school: "Formerly known as the College of Santa Fe, the school was poised to close before the city of Santa Fe stepped in to buy the property located near the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Michael’s Drive for $19.5 million in 2009." That's typical, and there are plenty more just like that. Some are more nuanced, saying it's the same campus, but even then it's a grey area. My concern is that splitting the article into two would be a WP:POVFORK. It would risk creating a distinction so Wikipedia could praise one while denigrating the other, which is not going to work. If you know of news articles or other reliable sites which talk about the difference between the two organizations, I would love to see them. From what I've seen so far, though, they're mostly treated as being the same, and that's what Wikipedia goes by. If you still want to pursue this, I think the next step would be Wikipedia:Request for comment. Grayfell (talk) 03:19, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Now that SFUAD has closed, and this time unambiguously, the grounds and buildings are known collectively as the 'Midtown Campus', and are clearly not a school anymore (since the public is not even allowed in except to get to the Screen (cinematheque) for theft-discouragement reasons). The ongoing fate of the property is being decided and the status may change soon, so perhaps it would suit Wikipedia to see what the future brings...but we should start thinking now about the issue above again; namely, whether the physical property and the organisations that used it over the years should have separate articles. I think they should, since it brings editorial focus to the scope of facts that can be presented for each topic. Thus each article could be fleshed out more (for example, I like the alumni lists; they could be proseified in the individual articles and updated with SFUAD students too), and the campus article could point towards each one. With the perspective of (albeit recent) history, I think NPOV could be maintained using editors' discretion such that the various articles do not end up being forks of each other, but have carefully partitioned content. What say ye all? Arlo James Barnes 06:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * LInda Swanson, the chair of the Art Department at SFUAD was the chair at College of Santa Fe. Tony O'Brien was faculty from CSF of photography became chair of SFUAD for photography. Many of the faculty were a continuation of College of Santa Fe. Also, the first year of SFUAD, students from CSF were in attendance. There were many carryovers from CSF to SFUAD. It's accurate to build the history of CSF, and continue it to SFUAD Badabara (talk) 21:34, 12 April 2020 (UTC)