When you look at Greek life and other mass organizations and student leaderships opportunities on university campuses, there is a small demographic of students missing. There will be a handful of business, education, history and other "common" majors within most organizations. A group of students that you will not normally find in these groups, however, are art majors.

This goes for performing arts, bachelor of arts, dancing, theater, arts education, etc. We do have our own groups like the amazing brotherhood of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Kappa Kappa Psi and the lovely sisterhood of Sigma Alpha Iota.

We have these amazing groups that will help give art students that Greek life experience and leadership experience. We even have the Pi Kappa Lambda which is an honors society and it dedicates its efforts to furthering arts education in public schools and college. But when some universities (like mine in terms of Sigma Alpha Iota) do not have chapters, why do we not see art students in other organizations?

To be honest: other organizations outside of our particular organizations do not have the same understanding of the demanding schedule and outside time commitments of a music student. Music students are a different kind of students. I've had up to twevle classes and quite a bit of people I know have up to fourteen.

We have rehearsals outside of the time scheduled for them, a certain amount of required concerts (on and off campus, I might add) to attend, and practice times for required performances and lessons. And this is all on top of having to study for our classes and most likely, general education requirement courses.

The ideal amount of studying time is taking the credit hour of the course and either doubling or tripling it, then you will get a total of how much time you should be spending outside of that class studying. With most music major courses, I can assure you that even if it is a one-hour credit course (or zero-- I have a few of those on my schedule), the minimum you would spend on that class is four hours.

It is hard for other organizations to wrap their head around that we physically can not make something or simply do not have the time for it, versus that we do not want to be there. When people join an organization, it is with the intent that they want to participate in activities, programs, etc with that organization.

Why would anyone join something that they do not like or have no interest being in? The problem with organizations that either has no art majors or a serious lack there of, do not seem to know how to differentiate between the two ideas of not being able to do something versus not wanting to do something. With everything that an art major has to do, sometimes they are just physically unavailable to participate in certain events and be completely active.

Being unavailable is the nature of the beast. This concept also applies to other majors like engineering, nursing, accounting, pre-law, law school, student teaching etc, students who work full time outside of classes.

The difference is, which is what I am personally finding and seeing, is that majority of people know and understand the hardships, outside time commitments, and the strenuous workload of majors like engineering and nursing (they are hard majors and those who can do them are a whole different kind of student).

There is just a lack of knowledge and understanding surrounding what it is like to be an art major, whether if it is performing arts, arts education, music therapy, etc. The most frustrating part, however, is that there doesn't want to be understanding.

This is why arts is the first thing to go from funding, it is not seen as a necessary portion of education and life. However, music drives our passion and purpose in life, just like helping and serving others through medicine or building safer buildings and being economically and environmentally efficient buildings and not infrastructures.

We love the beast, but sometimes the nature of the beast is frustrating to work around. What is even more frustrating is when organizations do not understand where we are coming from, despite the fact that we want to be active members of organizations on campus and leadership titles, it's just even when we try to finesse with the system to make multiple things work, we are still being blamed for not being active for "not wanting" to do something, and not being understood as "we can't" do something.