Not worth the walls it's painted on
In Opinions
I used to love graffiti. I would wander through the painted alleys of my college town and keep my eyes to the ground, hoping to spot another anti-consumerist stencil or one of the memorials to a suicidal friend. In high school, I was a small fish in a large and scary pond, which is what made graffiti so appealing. More than anything else, it was a way of controlling some part of my environment. Leaving a mark that says, "I was here." But I grew up, and I moved away. I became more confident in myself and found an environment where I didn't have to struggle for recognition in the same way. I put graffiti behind me, and its time other Hampshire students did the same.
I respect the graffiti wall. Some people can work wonders with spray paint and I see no reason not to acknowledge and appreciate the skills involved. When a student is interested in making art, it can be useful to have a canvas pre-built, and the aesthetic of working on a wall can facilitate a different type of artwork. In fact, I wish the graffiti wall were closer to the center of campus, so that it could more easily be used as a way of communicating with students. When time and talent are combined with spray paint and post-mural aesthetics, something beautiful is bound to emerge. Sadly, that's not the only type of graffiti we have on campus.
Unless it's on the wall, graffiti is little more than petty vandalism. It shows a fundamental lack of respect for the campus, the students, and the administration. Graffiti is not critique, at least not the kind of graffiti we see here. It's not about changing anything or expressing something that would be silenced through non-criminal channels. It's about privilege masked by a sense of rebellion. Hampshire graffiti isn't a social survival strategy; it's a way for rich white kids to engage in the perceived romanticism of criminal culture.
But Hampshire graffiti isn't just self-indulgent-it's self-righteous. It too often tries to send a message to viewers and just as often fails in doing so. The Martin Luther Kings that were painted on January 15th provided an interesting reminder of the Holiday's origin, but only by turning King into a disembodied head that students imagine attached to the end of a pike. The W.E.B. DuBois stencil near Emily Dickinson Hall de-contextualizes the text it quotes and makes it just as insignificant and trite as the situationist scribbling in the library elevators. Even the meaningful criticism that was levied against the administration after the unveiling of the "Making of the College 2.0 Forums" was reduced to the level of bathroom scrawl when it was chalked across the Student Services building. For a campus obsessed with social change, our graffiti is either incredibly neutral or decidedly ineffective.
We may not have a beautiful campus, but that doesn't mean we should hastily paint over it in a fit of aesthetic censorship. Even if we wanted to change the campus's appearance (which shouldn't be a high priority when we have things like a housing shortage to deal with), it should be done in a controlled and democratic manner. Graffiti almost always functions as a small-scale authoritarian gesture, usually to resist a perceived repression of the individual artist. Hampshire students are far from repressed, and there are legitimate ways to change the campus's appearance. Community Council can call for the creation of murals, the President can look into aesthetic reconstruction or alteration of the existing buildings, or Housing Directors can arrange for a mosaic of tiles in their residents' windows. There are options above and beyond students spraying color onto the sidewalks.
Graffiti isn't just something you lay down in a night and then wander away from. There are material and psychological costs to seeing our school covered in paint that no one asked for. Students need to recognize this before they go out and stamp the college with their mark. When trustees visit, graffiti becomes a mark of shame. When families visit, it becomes a symbol of the school's inability to put academics before the most petty of student concerns. And when Physical Plant employees find it, it's something that needs to be erased. Students need to grow up and stop playing in the street when there are bigger and better things to do, even if they want to put spray-paint to brick.