You may notice while walking around the various buildings on campus, such as Hagey Hall and QNC that many are equipped with pianos, the purpose of which is to provide individuals with the opportunity to hone or show off their musical skills. It can also serve as a social tool that can bring students together, or offer a nice break or release from the strenuous studies that UW tends to put on students. 

 On the flip side, the piano can be loud and prove to be a distraction from the focus required to learn complex concepts or study challenging material. This problem is highlighted when looking into the fate of the piano on the sixth-floor atrium in E7, in which UW staff drilled a hole into it to allow for a bike lock.

Imprint reached out to associate professor Stephen Birkett, a Systems Design Engineering Faculty member, who has a history of working with this particular piano. He shared, “Initially it was acquired by my lab, the piano design lab, for a research project, when we no longer needed it for research purposes we passed it to the Systems Design and Engineering department,” Birkett shared via email. “With encouragement from the chair, the piano was made available in the foyer for all students to play, students across all faculties have access to use and play, I have heard only positive comments from students about its use, and I hope that having it available has had a positive impact on student well-being.” 

With the initial introduction of this piano, it seems that both university faculty and students were in support of having this piano to use and satisfied with the positives that came with it. But, as of late, this particular piano has been quite the area of conflict and disagreement regarding how it is to be used. Just over a week ago, students began to take notice, and images began to surface online of this particular piano being locked up with a bike lock. A large point of emphasis with this method of prohibiting piano use is that for the lock to be effective, a hole needed to be drilled through the piano itself. This move caused some uproar among students. Reddit user u/pax-domini, commented, “As a pianist, this makes me so mad why would you do that? … whoever did this was not a musician of any kind, else they would not have disrespected the instrument in this way.” Another commenter, u/YMRTZ said, “Leave the piano outside, the lock will be cut within the hour.” It appears how UW staff dealt with controlling the use of this piano did not get support from some students.

So where did this all come from or what was the rationale behind drilling a hole in this piano and locking it up, prohibiting student use? Earlier this week, Crystal Cooper, Systems Design Engineering Academic services coordinator, sent a mass email to biomedical engineering students addressing this issue. This email states that “it is important to acknowledge that the use of this piano makes it challenging for students, staff and faculty to work and study on our floor and other floors,” Cooper said. The email stated that this is not the first attempt that has been taken to control and address the distraction of individuals playing this piano. “For the past year we have tried different solutions to allow the piano to be played in a way that is a positive experience for everyone… the first solution was adding a sound meter and sound limit for the piano. This was generally ignored, the sound meter was often unplugged and eventually stolen.” 

Cooper stated that they have tried various signs to communicate the need for respectful playing, and that students even created their own during high-stress times. But, these signs were not deemed effective, so to deal with this situation, other measures needed to be taken. “Recently, we have resorted to locking the piano during class/business hours with a lock that did not require altering the piano,” Cooper said. “This lock was forcibly removed several times and then stolen. This has led to us taking the drastic action of locking the piano in a manner that required altering the piano.”

From reading this email, viewing the comments, and talking to staff and students, it seems as if the largest point of disconnect between both parties is that the piano was physically altered when it should not have been. The email sent on behalf of Cooper pointed out that the piano had been physically altered in the past: “It was disassembled several years ago and as a result, it was never able to be reassembled in a way that would allow it to be tuned properly.” 

The piano is available to play outside of working hours from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.