Graffiti Prevalence

[thewayne]

I noticed something at school when the semester started. We have four main buildings/areas for classrooms: math/science, a second predominately math area, the tech center (nursing/photography/computers), and an art building. Add on the library, theatre, student center, and admin, and you have pretty much our whole campus. But the classes are mainly in the first four.

There's a marked difference in the graffiti quantity in the men's bathrooms between the two math areas and the art/tech areas: the math areas have much larger quantities of graffiti in the men's room than the other two. There is a geographical difference, the art/tech areas are up on a hill and are very specialized in terms of their courses; whereas pretty much all students go through the two math areas.

My question to anyone who wants to take a stab at it: why?

We know it isn't so, but we'd like to think that college students are a little more mature than high school students. We have a lot of drug use (and manufacture) in Alamogordo, but I don't think we have a lot of gang activity. From what I've seen, we don't have your classic Crips and Bloods that infest so many other places, they probably got so bored that they left (Alamogordo is not a destination, it's a stop, at least for most).

Is it emotional maturity? People taking art, nursing, serious computer, or photography/graphics arts are "above" your common tagger and don't like to see where they dwell scholastically mucked up?


I dunno, I just find it a little interesting, perhaps even paradoxical. I seem to recall that all of the bathrooms of the three colleges that I attended in Phoenix were thoroughly graffitied, but you also didn't have to trudge up a hill at 4600' to get to the additional buildings.

Maybe taggers just don't have the lung capacity?

Comments

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

In the main women's bathroom in the main building of Bonn University there is one cabin with all walls covered in a very sophisticated discussion about Sartre.

And there are coloured markers from people who have marked the spot where they stopped reading, so they could start from there the next time (mine are the green ones ^^').

I just find the concept of discussing Sartre on a bathroom wall utterly hilarious. xD

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

Oberlin College, in the bathrooms nearest the computer center (back in the '80s when there was one small computer center), used to put up blank sheets of computer paper at writing height in the stalls. Some of the discussions were very very cool, and some were just plain hilarious. Although there was plenty of vulgarity, there was rarely crudity (at least in the womens' room). It did mean people tended to spend a lot of time in the bathroom, but it sure saved on paint.

As for NMSU Alamogordo, I would guess the difference is more likely to do with how recently the bathrooms were painted. The branch campus probably doesn't have enough money to repaint them all every year.

[silveradept]

Climbing the hill to write on the walls just doesn't appeal when you can write all over the ones at the bottom of the hill. Here, the graffiti is high school grade stuff, and not much for discussions. I'd rather have Sartre or philosophy on the walls, or even just a good political discussion. Sadly, in the places I've been, that is not the case.