Mural Vandals Could Face Jail TimeBy Emily Farrell
Seriously, Purchase, what gives? Another mural has been vandalized, this time the one on the side of Big House. On Saturday night somebody decided to break the glass case. Now we all get to look at one more ugly, broken piece of crap on this campus that is already constantly struggling with image problems. The really sad thing is that things like this have become completely par for the course.
We are currently number three on Princeton Review’s “Campus is Tiny, Unsightly or Both” list, third to the urban and concrete-tastic SUNY at Albany and Philadelphia’s Drexel University. (One other SUNY—Binghamton—made the list at number 17.) For a college that boasts a visual arts conservatory and considers itself the artsy-gay-flower child of the State University of New York system, this is disgraceful and just embarrassing.
As a sophomore, I just missed the days of the Henry Moore on the mall and the paint-on-brick murals that I’ve heard once graced the academic buildings. Once, I was told, the ceilings of the arcades on the mall were adorned with student paintings. While the losses of those quirky additions to the campus may have been the fault of the administration—along with the replacement of the Henry Moore with the hideous big green clockless tower—they’re not solely to blame for the unsightliness of the campus. Students, too, must take responsibility for preserving what beautiful things we have left like the murals and the hammocks.
“We have other things we can be spending this money on,” said Alumni Village senator Valerie Weaver. “Maybe our students aren't ready for outdoor art installations that beautify our campus. Let them complain about the brick.”
Not everybody is directly responsible for the vandalism that began almost immediately after PSGA president Jeff Stein’s mural project was realized. And not everybody chucks pumpkins at plate glass windows or throws tables off of mezzanines or scribbles pointless and vulgar graffiti on the walls of the dorms. But it is the people who do these acts that contribute most to the overwhelming lack of school pride that we have as a student body.
“I think that we are fighting a necessary uphill battle,” said Stein. “What they destroy, we must replace. And if we do this long enough, I think we can change the Purchase attitude toward vandalism.”
The murals are just one small aspect of the measures being taken to beautify the campus, a mere footnote on the multi-million dollar plan in the works to redesign the mall. But the point is, they are what we have now. Most of us will have graduated long before the mall project is completed, despite the fact that we’re going to have to deal with construction equipment and inconveniences for the rest of our time here.
Stein has already ended expansion of the mural project due to the extensive vandalism and all of the funds allocated to the project now go to maintenance and repair.
Oh, and just for the record, if you’re the individuals who vandalized those murals, if you get caught, you could be facing jail time in addition to paying heavy fines. If the damage is less than $250, you’ve committed a Class A misdemeanor, the highest form of misdemeanor and can be sentenced to up to a year in prison. Damage exceeding $250 qualifies for a Class E felony, and in addition to fines, there is a minimum sentence of a year in jail, according to Officer Duarte of the University Police.
Even if the consequences of authority don’t make you think twice about damaging school property, just try to consider that this campus is a place where we all have to live. When you blatantly vandalize the school, the damage runs deeper than the physical. Every pane of cracked glass and overturned garbage can says that we do not respect our school and therefore we don’t respect ourselves as students. Is that the message that we want to send to the rest of the world? Let’s do ourselves a favor and stop the needless destruction, okay?
© Emily Farrell |