The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra’s last-minute funding drive didn’t keep the music playing, and decreasing public funding contributed to its financial ruin. A major issue in the federal pissing match over the budget is funding for the arts.

GOP House members voted to completely cut funding for National Public Radio in March after Chief of Fundraising Ron Schiller made a misstep caught on tape. Painting the arts, or noncommercial media, as a joke or frivolous misses the tangible value it has in communities, and is a frivolous side issue in the budget debate.

After taking a stroll downtown a few weeks ago, Syracuse looked more alive than I had ever seen it. Droves of people poured out of the civic center, clearly after a symphony concert I hadn’t heard about. I’ve only been to the symphony once, but I can’t imagine anything else in Syracuse that can bring so many people into town for an evening of culture and intellectual stimulation. An arts organization like the orchestra helps to ground our city in something more than a university on the Hill, and allows Syracuse to hang onto its status as the Central New York metropolis. We can only hope the SSO will find a way to continue in the future.

The New York Times printed two stories this week on how seemingly innocuous public artistic endeavors have come into the limelight with the budget debate. Tea Party-leaning pundits have lampooned federal funding that helps support a cowboy poetry gathering in Nevada. A public radio station in rural Appalachia is at severe risk of going silent if funding for the Corporation for Public Radio is cut. These organizations serve a similar purpose as the SSO, although their influence is difficult to understand from a semi-urban hill in the Northeast.

National Cowboy Poetry Week begins Sunday. The rural Westerners who participate in this art form make up a portion of America rather far removed from Syracuse, but the rich tradition it represents is vital to the cultural diversity that we can take pride in. Poetry gatherings like this exist to preserve communal art traditions that are becoming more and more rare in the modern media landscape. Entertainment exists outside our coastal bubble, things other than Hollywood blockbusters, The New Yorker and ‘Jersey Shore.’

Public radio lands a little closer to home. Radio seems like an outdated medium, but it still plays a vital role in communities where the Internet and other modern media might not be as important, or where the capital doesn’t exist for local television stations. Aside from that, radio is also a uniquely communal, somewhat old-fashioned experience. Every time I listen to the NPR news in the morning, I get a distinct feeling that my neighbor could be doing the same, that the whole community is listening together. As you drive to campus or to Wegmans, it’s entirely likely that the motorist next to you is listening to the same thing, through the same airwaves.

Our government is in a financial mess at the moment, but arts funding is hardly the problem. The Republican drive to eliminate federal funding for NPR was largely symbolic and ideological. Less than 15 percent of NPR’s funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Even less federal funding supports projects through the National Endowment for the Arts, whose grants serve a mostly legitimating role. Local media and forums for art are not outdated and will not be supplanted by modernization of the media landscape. Congress obviously should be arguing about more consequential things.

Scott Collison is a senior philosophy and physics major. His column appears every Wednesday, and he can be reached at smcollis@syr.edu.