Students at an arts school in New York were shocked and baffled when the Dean of their university responded to an email asking for some of their tuition fees to be refunded after their academic year was effectively ended by coronavirus with a video of her dancing to R.E.M’s hit ‘Losing My Religion’.

That’s a pretty out-there response, and wholly not what the students were expecting.

Basically, a group of students from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts – a school that counts Lady Gaga, Woody Allen, and Whoopi Goldberg amongst its alumni – signed a petition asking for some of their annual $58,552 fees to be refunded.

That’s not an unreasonable request, given that it’s hard to do a performing arts course remotely.

Well, instead of a reasonable response to that request, the Dean of the university, Allyson Green not only refused to refund the funds, but sent them a bizarre email attachment that contained a video of her dancing to R.E.M’s 1991 alternative rock classic.

To make things even more strange, in the text of the email she asked the slighted students to ‘dance along’.

Hey, who needs to eat and live when you could dance to a lovely song?

Naturally, the students weren’t happy to be told that they’d not be refunded any of their fees, and some described the dance video as “embarrassing”, but they’re probably equally as put out by the eventual response offered by Green afterwards.

She told Artnet News: “The focus of my career as a performer, choreographer, and dance educator, and my most authentic mode of expression, has always been dance.

“In the video, I shared the song with which I have welcomed first-year students to the Tisch School of the Arts for the past eight years.

“It is a piece that-as I explained in the accompanying email-speaks to frustration and disappointment, and that helped see me through the loss of 30 friends to AIDS, another difficult period for artists.

“What I meant to demonstrate is my certainty that even with the unprecedented hardships of social distancing and remotely-held classes, it is still possible for the Tisch community to make art together, and that all the artists in our school will find ways to remain closely connected even as circumstances challenge us.”

“I regret it if my email left the reasons for my dancing misunderstood-although I will note that I have also received many positive acknowledgements-but its intent was surely neither frivolous or disrespectful.”

Righto then, that makes perfect sense now.

Oh wait, no it doesn’t.