WLU MUSICAL SECRETS INFORMATION LETTER

Welcome to WLU Musical Secrets!

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. By participating in WLU Musical Secrets you are telling us that you have read this letter, understand the details of the project, and are giving consent for any information you provide to be used in the ways that are outlined in this letter. So please read carefully before you proceed!

My name is Lauren Smee and I am a fourth-year music student in the comprehensive stream, and I have been developing this project with the help of professor and choral conductor Dr. Gerard Yun. Dr. Yun can be reached at gerard.yun@gmail.com should you have any questions or concerns.

The intention of WLU Musical Secrets is to provide a forum for anonymous communication amongst WLU music students about the emotional experience of being a music student, and to use quotations, paraphrases, and ideas from the responses to create a poem-like text, which will inform and become part of an improvised piece of music created by the WLU choirs and performed at the WLU Choir Concert on April 3rd at 8:00 pm. The idea is to have the choirs expressing through music and words their thoughts and feelings and those of their colleagues about the experience of being a music student.

All current WLU music students, graduates of the music faculty, or students in other faculties who are taking or have taken courses in the music faculty are invited to participate. Participation is entirely voluntary and anonymous.

There are two ways to participate. You may choose one or both. You may fill out a Secrets card (provided in the third-floor music lounge, the practice rooms, and other areas of the Aird building) and slide it into locker #112 on the third floor of the Aird building. You may write, draw, collage etc., anything you like onto your Secrets card, although I would encourage you to keep it to the theme of how you feel about your music-making. Or you may answer a short questionnaire:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=iRtidNhkMFEGugDXVheLDQ_3d_3d

Any information you provide may be used in the creation of the text or music for the improvised piece of music. Any information you provide in your Secrets card or questionnaire answers will be posted to the WLU Musical Secrets blog.

http://wlumusicalsecrets.blogspot.com

By participating you are consenting to this disclosure. Once completed the text will also be posted to the blog.

Participation is entirely anonymous; the questionnaire will not provide me with your name, email, IP address or any other identifying information, however, I cannot guarantee confidentiality while your data is on the Internet. Participation is entirely voluntary, however, once you have submitted your Secrets card or questionnaire answers, you may not withdraw them, as it would be impossible to do so while retaining anonymity. If midway through the questionnaire you would like to withdraw, simply delete your text and close the window without clicking “done,” and your responses will be destroyed. You may answer as many or as few of the questions as you like and your answers may be as long or short as you like. After the completion of the project your data will remain on the blog indefinitely.

In order to ensure anonymity, I discourage you from including any information that may identify you or another person. Do not include your name, the name of any full-time, part-time (CAS) faculty, or the name of any other student or person in your response. Please do not disclose your instrument, program of study, or name any courses you have taken or ensembles in which you have performed. You may refer to these experiences and how they have affected you, but you may not name them. For example you may write, “one of my teachers once told me that my sound was too quiet and sounded weak and this made me feel that he/she didn’t value my personality as I felt I was expressing myself,” but not, “Dr. Teacher told me in second year that my sound was too quiet and sounded weak and this made me feel that she didn’t value my personality as I felt I was expressing myself through my oboe-playing.” If you include this type of information I will edit your response to exclude the identifying details (eg. . “[A teacher] told me… that my sound was too quiet and sounded weak and this made me feel that [he/she] didn’t value my personality as I felt I was expressing myself through my [music-making]”), or exclude your response from the project altogether. By participating you are acknowledging and consenting to the risk that your response may identify you, despite precautions taken by Dr. Yun and I to ensure anonymity.

Thank you for your interest! I hope you enjoy participating in this exciting opportunity to share your stories, to read those of your colleagues, and to hear them reflected back to you through music.

Sincerely,

Lauren Smee

This project has been approved by the Faculty of Music Ethics Committee:
Dr. Carolyn Arnason, carnason@wlu.ca, 519-884-0710, ext. 2154
Dr. Heidi Ahonen-Eerikainen, hahonen@wlu.ca, 519-884-0710, ext. 2431