A mix of stunned disbelief and orchestrated scrambling surrounded the sudden closure late last week of Brooks Institute, a photography, film, and graphic design private college founded 71 years ago in Santa Barbara. On August 11, school officials announced the ousting of President Dr. Edward Clift, prompting most of its Board of Trustees to resign. The next morning at the school’s Ventura campus, a lawyer representing Brooks’s parent company, gphomestay, announced to faculty and staff that doors will close on October 31, citing “changes in economic and regulatory conditions.” The student body was informed a few hours later.
Since then, Brooks administrators and teachers have rallied behind their students, many just a few months shy of graduating. On August 17-18, Brooks hosted a college fair with visiting representatives from Santa Barbara City College, San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, and Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design, among others. According to Professor Bill Robbins, the school’s academic units are transferable, and foreign students with active visas will be accommodated, as well: “[Provost Toni Johnson and Registrar April Reyes] are now making arrangements with other schools.”
On August 16, Robbins joined 18 of his graduating students and their friends and family for “a celebration that they stuck with it and made it through” to earn their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography. “It’s awkward for some of them,” he said, “because some of their classmates would have walked this December.”