Despite his tough schedule of marathon training, ribbon-cutting and general university presidential duties, President Lawrence Bacow has been making regular appearances around campus. In the form of a black spray-painted image, Bacow's face can be found on steps, bricks, and sidewalks across Tufts.
Created over the course of two late nights in November, these works represent several in a series of "tags" - graphics applied without authorization to public surfaces - made by a group of three freshmen, Will, Jake and Joe, who agreed to speak anonymously for fear of punishment. Their names have been changed.
Considered a public art form by some and simple graffiti by others, tagging has made its way into subway systems, city buildings, and now, college campuses. The images recently tagged around Tufts include Bacow, The Little Prince, and an image of a kitten wearing a lime as a helmet.
According to Ethnomusicologist and Music Lecturer Joseph Schloss, using stencils to tag allows artists to create neat, recognizable images. He said this is a budding phenomenon.
"It's a relatively new thing," Schloss said. "I think traditionally, a lot of graffiti writers saw that as kind of cheating, because you don't have to create a style each time ... but as a practical matter, it's become more popular lately."
According to Schloss, stenciling itself can be traced back to artist Frank Shepard Fairey's street art campaign featuring wrestler "Andre the Giant," and has since spread to the most obscure of locations and subjects.
"That thing of just stenciling people's faces I think really comes from [Shepard Fairey] ... the Larry Bacow thing is a direct outbreath of that," Schloss said.
Schloss also described the mentality behind those choosing to stencil.
"There's a sense that there's somebody doing it - why they're doing it or why they choose that image to be representative of it is an open question," he said. "Partially, it's just to be mysterious."
According to Jake, the stencil images were different from much graffiti, which consists of personal signature tags rather than graphics.
"There's a huge difference between personal tags and [the stencil of] Bacow," he said. "There's a kid who has his own personal tag [on campus] - 'mask' - it's a signature."
Jake also echoed Schloss's sentiments about the private nature of tagging. "It destroys the originality [if people know the artist]," he said. "Tagging is supposed to be anonymous."
But for Jake, staying anonymous is not just an artistic goal - it's a legal one. TUPD Patrol Supervisor Sgt. Joe Tilton cited Massachusetts law, which considers tagging a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,500 fine and up to two years in a correctional facility.
According to Tilton, if one of the perpetrators were to be caught, "We couldn't turn a blind side."
Joe is all too familiar with legal consequences. As a high school student, he was caught tagging and placed on unsupervised probation for six months. While tagging certainly presents a legal issue in terms of property damage, Tufts has abstained from removing the stencils.
"If it was a bias or hate crime, it would be different," Tilton said. "Or if it was an act of intolerance, obviously we'd take more of a stance."
Joe affirmed his and his friends' intention to keep the tags respectable. "We've refrained from doing inappropriate things and tagging buildings," he said. "But I feel like they [Tufts] can't approve of it."
As members of what Tilton referred to as "a small town," most Tufts students interviewed said the tags were more likely art than vandalism.
"I feel like it's an accepted part of Tufts," said Carlos, a freshman who said he completed a stencil of a lime-green kitten in December. His name has also been changed.
Sophomore Alissa Brandon, who has never tagged, said she doesn't mind the graffiti.
"Personally, I think it looks cool on the buildings. It gives them personality," she said. Brandon said she remembers the large white boards outside of the Granoff Music Center that had previously served as a blank canvas for graffiti art.
"I don't think they're really demeaning or polluting to campus," she said. "Some if it was really artistic."
Senior Alex Bezdek had mixed feelings.
"It depends," he said. "If you have an entire potential for a mural and you can put something together, then it's really something to be taken seriously. [But] when you get tags over tags - that gets bad. When it's not done in the right context, it can look ugly."
Which begs the question for Jake, Joe and Will: Among Louis Vuitton symbols found on the memorial steps and Cartoon Network logos on dorms, why Bacow?
"We just wanted to do a positive tag, and we like Bacow," Jake said.
Schloss noted the significance of such iconic symbols made public by tagging.
"What I like about it is - in certain ways, I think it's a commentary on commercialism and the way people's faces become symbols of things," he said. "It's interesting to take somebody like the president of the college and just put [his] face all over the place ... I think it's one of those things that's partially respect and partially making fun of him at the same time, and that's what's so powerful about art."
Jake said the tags were intended to send a positive image, not a negative one.
"We want to know if [Bacow has] seen them," he said. "He could take it the wrong way, and hopefully he doesn't ... We're rooting for him."
