A fish with a huge bubble. A cat in the distance saying "HAI."
I do not know what the drawings of these images on the wall outside of the campus center mean, but it is an expression, and it makes me smile.
Public space is highly contested, and I could not have experienced this phenomenon more first-hand than during the recent events associated with the wall outside of the campus center. Before I left for spring break, I walked past the wall with emptiness, feeling helpless from not being able to exploit the potential of the wall as a space for public expression. When I returned, I saw the wall with this new funny content, and it made me as happy as a little child is when given a bar of chocolate. I write this op-ed to explain the sudden activity you have seen on the wall, to thank the person who drew the fish and the cat and to make an eager plea to the entire Tufts student body: The wall is a space that belongs to you. Use it.
It would be fair for me to start with the mural made by Shepard Fairey. With the permission of Tufts authorities, the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) was honored to bring Fairey to campus to paint a mural as a prelude to the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) Symposium whose theme this year was "Cities: Forging an Urban Future." Fairey chose the wall outside of the campus center as the ideal space for his mural. The mural was meant to promote public art and expression, which is integral to the feeling of belonging in every community. It was also one of the stops on "Bike Tour: Shepard Fairey Off Site," an event to be held on May 17 and June 28 in conjunction with his exhibit at the Institute for Contemporary Art, which highlights several other Fairey works across Boston in the form of a bike trail for art enthusiasts. As a Tufts student, I was proud that Tufts was part of this tour.
The mural brought about color, beauty and a call for thought on campus, and I loved stopping to look at it for a moment every time I walked past the campus center. Then one day, the mural was gone, and replaced by posters that I personally did not think were either intelligent or aesthetically pleasing. A particular Experimental College (ExCollege) class was given an assignment to post politically stimulating advertisements, particularly on the Fairey mural. What angered me most about this event (apart from the fact that the mural had been destroyed) was that the mural was replaced by something that I did not think was intelligent. Had the advertisements been provocative in a respectful and meaningful way, I might not have been so upset. It also seemed astonishing to me that a professor hired by Tufts had suggested the destruction of public art.
I heard this story in my EPIIC class, and like many of my classmates, was furious and upset, and rightly so, considering that the mural had been a class effort. However, we then saw what the students of that class had achieved. Those students kindled the beginning of several efforts to transform the wall into a space for public expression. Such a space had not existed on campus, and it was exciting to think of how this possibility could be exploited.
I must stress here that what followed with the wall was not an EPIIC-related event, but the efforts of a few students who felt strongly about this, saw the potential of the wall as a space for public expression and wished to catalyze this event into a wonderful opportunity that would enhance awareness and involvement on campus. A small group of us, without the knowledge of either our professors or the rest of our classmates, devised a plan of action, the implementation of which kept getting delayed because of logistical reasons. In the meantime, we saw a poster on the ground against the wall that said "Isn't this space for all of us? Have a nice day." This was done by someone from the ExCollege class, and my friends and I began to get really excited because we realized that we were all heading toward the same goal.
A couple of days after, we implemented our plan. It was 20-degree weather and we began at 5 a.m. Our feet froze and our hands were callused several hours later because most of the work had to be done without gloves. But we were proud of and hopeful for our efforts. We constructed and erected a wooden frame on the wall, inside of which an elephant (Jumbo) was holding a paintbrush with the message, "Dear Tufts, Make a Point." Our intention was to project the wall as a blank canvas, inviting Tufts students to use it as a space for thoughts, views, art, poems or any form of expression. We did not expect it to last more than two days, and each of us hoped that someone would replace it with some form of expression. That would in fact have been the success of our efforts. Our message, however, was misunderstood. That very evening, the frame was taken down, broken into pieces and deposited at the door of the IGL with the message, "Dear EPIIC, You missed the point." The next day, university authorities washed out the remaining contents of the wall.
This last incident upset me terribly. I had really thought that our message would convey to the Tufts student body that this space belongs to all of us, and that our efforts would motivate at least someone to put up something new on the wall. However, when I heard about the message and the broken frame, I felt lost in an unnecessary controversy and caught up in a petty dialogue. More than that, I feared that our efforts had all gone down the drain, because evidently a lot of people had not understood our message. I, along with my friends, had really believed in the potential of this wall as a space for public expression, and it hurt me to think that this string of events was instead being manifested into a dialogue, controversy and misunderstanding between two groups.
Frustrated, one of my friends put up the following message on the wall that was taken down before anybody really got the chance to see it. It said:
"To Whoever Dismantled The Panels: I am afraid it is you who has missed the point (and its perpetrators). A frame, despite its borders, is as boundless as the expression it contains within.
Because the interaction with the Shepard Fairey mural got torn down, we merely attempted to preserve the wall as a place for such public expression. Please — Use. This. Space.
I agree that public art and space can only evolve through such creation and destruction. However if both of us are truly committed to public art, then our final objective must be creation. We cannot allow ourselves to be stuck in a paradigm where one group only seeks to destroy what the other creates.
If you choose to strike this message down (and I think you should — it doesn't deserve such space on this wall) please replace it with a work of art, an idea or a thought.
I look forward to your response."
To me, this message very well summarizes our intentions and the hopes that we have for the wall.
I do not know who drew the fish and the cat on the wall. But whoever it is, I cannot thank you enough. The reason I think that it has stayed up on the wall is because it is neither insensitive nor disrespectful to its audience; it does not depict a bashing between two groups, but is a genuine expression of a Tufts student. This being said, I think we, the Tufts student body, have our claims to the wall — it belongs to us. Make use of this space respectfully, sensitively and intelligently.
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Radhika Saraf is a sophomore majoring in economics. She is a member of this year's EPIIC class.
