There’s a problem with this picture, mainly in that it was taken outside the Liberal Arts Building on the USM campus, and it’s the best graffiti I could find. This is the building where the poets and misfits go to school, and this is all they can come up with? Largely the area is clean of graffiti. Largely the campus is clean of graffiti. At least the parts of it I saw on my walk about this afternoon are.
This is much better:
The eyes are on the outside of the International Building, and I had to search high and low to find them.
The campus has become entirely too nice. It now has places that look like this:
Lovely, but artificial. Manufactured. Planned.
If you walk around the two-year college campus were I work, you’ll find all manner of places where student creativity has spontaneously erupted on the spot. I remember USM as a campus where that happened when I was a student there…a few years ago. Today, I didn’t see it. Maybe that was because I picked a day when the students weren’t there, but it was more than that. The students didn’t seem to have left their own marks. Maybe because they have a fake plaza and a Starbucks now. They don’t need to carve out their own spaces.
On the other hand, the Alumni House gets extra points for out of season yard art:
And even on a manicured campus, the trees were doing their own thing. This one has decided to rest its branches on the ground:
This one has let a few uninvited plants move in:
But honestly, if you have fond memories of hanging out on the front steps of College Hall and imagine the younger generation doing the same, forget it. Self-respecting college students will not be found among the chained down rocking chairs.
Really, Alma Mater. Rocking chairs? What’s up with that?
Bring back 80s funk. I need it. I don’t need to see a Liberal Arts Building that looks like a museum.
So, so sad.
