Leeanna Morris stepped out of her hotel onto the crowded streets and was immediately caught in the swarm of buzzing city-goers clamoring to the subway. Mountain sized buildings blotted out the sun, and everywhere she looked was a restaurant from a different nation.

“I couldn’t believe how different it was…not like Dallas at all,” said Morris, a senior studio art major.

Morris certainly was not in Dallas anymore. She was in the heart of New York City on the Meadows’ annual art trip where she had the adventure of a lifetime visiting museums and learning about art.

“It was an irreplaceable experience for an artist,” Morris said, who plans to be a working artist and one day teach her passion, photography.

But the New York Colloquium is in danger of closing down. Because of climbing tuition costs, increased airfare and hotel prices, and higher prices for food and other essentials, most students can’t afford the $3,000 it takes to go.

But art professor Philip Van Keuran, who hosts the trip, says he can save it. He thinks the Dean of Meadows should open the fund for international travel to people wanting to attend the program.

Van Keuran and his students believe New York is a multi-cultural city that allows students to experience a completely new environment, similar to an experience overseas.

“I heard English spoken more in France and Amsterdam than in New York,” Van Keuran said.

Graduate art student Susan Barnett says being in New York thrusts students into a vastly alternative lifestyle.

“It knocks you out of your normal routine,” Barnett said.

But some administrators say New York really is no substitution for studying overseas.

Dean Bowen wants to get students not only out of the U.S. but also out of Europe and studying in remote locations. More exotic places like India, Africa, and Asia will thrust them into a completely foreign environment that challenges them.

Bowen hopes students can have experiences like his in Timbuktu.

“I was in a place where there was one plane a day, dirt roads, no concrete, no money changer…it was tough,” he said.

These are the kinds of trips Bowen believes really change lives and should receive priority for funds.

The Colloquium is a two-week interterm program in January developed and run by Meadows. For 35 years, roughly 20 students visit numerous art venues at their leisure while keeping a detailed reflective journal of their experiences.

In an e-mail, Kathy Windrow, director of the Study Abroad winter interterm program to Oaxaca, Mexico said that if the Colloquium were to be placed in the study abroad program, the number of students eligible for financial aid would decrease.

Students can get only about $300 for a winter-term study abroad program. Currently, the Colloquium is managed within Meadows and the fees students pay help cover the tuition. If the New York trip functioned under the study abroad management, the only financial help students would get would be from the financial aid office.

Senior art major Amy Revier, who attended the trip two years ago through a Hunt scholarship, also went to Oaxaca this past December and sees no difference between them.

“I got the same amount of engagement in both,” she said.

Morris, a photography student, and others fear that if the program were to become part of study abroad, it could become too popular. They say they wouldn’t want other students to see the Colloquium as a chance to party in New York City.

Currently, the program is mostly heard about through word of mouth in the art department, and students like that.

Senior painting major Page Goss believes so far only students passionate about art have gone on the trip and she wants to keep it that way.

“It’s a best kept secret,” Goss said.

At least half a dozen of her peers agree with Revier, visiting New York forces students to adapt to foreign modes of transportation, interact with people from all over the world, and offers them access to elite international museums.

Graduate student Susan Barnett, who went on the trip in 2007, says it was a tremendous turning point that took her artwork to the next level.

“The only other places you can get that is if you were in Paris or London,” Barnett said.

There are many art resources available in New York that aren’t anywhere else in the U.S.

“Emersion is what study abroad is all about, and that’s what you experience in New York,” she said.

Revier is also part of the solution to help save the Colloquium. As president of the Student Arts Association, she told The Daily Campus that for the first time the SAA is hosting a fundraiser to send one student to the Colloquium this January. The event will sell student-made magazines and take place in October in the Doolin Gallery.

Art Division Chair James Sullivan says the real way to get more money for students is through donors. He believes the upcoming Centennial Campaign has potential to provide great support.

The five-year campaign, called “SMU: Unbridled,” aims to receive $750 million in donations that will be distributed among various SMU programs.

Although there are scholarships that can cover tuition, some students don’t think they are enough.

Morris believes that there should be smaller scholarships such as a museum scholarship to cover museum ticket fees or an airfare scholarship.

“A little here, a little there. Every little bit helps,” she said.

Other students think that with a tuition scholarship, living costs are doable.

Art major Erica Briel, who graduated last year, said doing things like going to museums with no entry cost, buying a subway ticket, refilling water bottles, and smart grocery shopping are ways she and others were able to manage.

Revier is encouraging art students to come to the SAA with more ideas to solve this problem and to save the program.

“Money shouldn’t be the difference between a good experience and a bad experience,” Van Keuran said.