Music societies and the music department

Dear Musicians of TSR!

A fairly straight forward question.

If you're university has both a Music department and various Music societies (bands, orchestras, ensembles etc), how cooperative are the music department with these societies?

In a bit more detail:
I'm lucky enough to go to a university with both a strong music department and very good extra-curricular music options, with a large variety of ensembles.
Of these, 3 are "official university ensembles", which are officially affiliated with, funded by and supported by the University itself.

The rest (the majority), are student led ensembles, which are ran by the Student's Union. These societies have their own individual student governance, and are largely responsible for their own finances, with some grant money from the Student's Union at the start of each year.

There's a definite gap in the running of and perception of the University ensembles and the Student ensembles, despite the fact there's a large crossover in players.
This is all in addition to the music course, which runs completely separate. These societies make up nothing of the course, and unlike other universities/conservatoires, there's no expectation to go to these ensembles for your degree.

Yet invariably, these paths cross. Largely due to the fact that pretty much all of the music cohort do attend ensembles in some shape or form. However, from experience, I've found the music department's view of these societies, especially the student led ones, to be cold. The music department and student societies seldom work together, rarely interact, and if they do, societies are more often than not viewed as an annoyance or an inconvenience by the department. There's very much a "I could be doing better things now" attitude by a lot of the staff when it comes to student ensembles. Quite a few of the interactions with the music staff, in particular the head of music, are "this is a problem", or "you need to sort this out before we punish you" sort of thing.
I understand a lot of staff aren't being paid for this, yet I find the disinterest, bordering on spitefulness, by the music department unbelievable. This in turn has put off the student led societies from working with the music department, out of fear that staff will invariably criticise their practices.

Years of this has created a fairly strong rift between the two, and it makes for quite an annoying situation. Two groups, of which a lot of people belong to both, and have common interests, aren't working together, in a time when the arts is being continuously harmed by other, outside factors.

I wanted to know if any other universities have had a similar problem? How cooperative are your music departments with your music societies? Is this a nationwide problem, where music departments feel superior to the ensembles their students run?