To Support an Arts Community on Campus?

Yesterday I learned the sad news that someone had seen fit to attack (yes, that is the verb I want) the public art in the new quadrangle between the Art and Music buildings. Worse yet, I learned that some students support the destruction and defacement of public property as a form of artistic expression.

Most of us in English are familiar with the history in our discipline of banned and even burned books. Although Adolf Hitler's name is tossed about often by those seeking to label their opponents as Hitleresque, it is not at all a stretch to associate history's worst mass murderer with book banning, book burning, and the destruction and defacement of art. Congratulations, art destroyers! You really have joined the fascists.

For a few moments, let's examine the possible motives behind defacing art works. Perhaps the vandals were merely expressing their free-speech-protected rights to speak out against art they disliked. I support free speech, but painted frat symbols are not a form of speech, and those who did the speaking by spray paint are not willing to speak publicly. Free speech requires a speaker -- dear speaker, please come forward and acknowledge your words/paint.

Perhaps the vandals were unhappy with the appearance of campus. Ours is a rather pretty suburban campus with lots of red brick, walking paths, and green spaces. A student could, however, prefer an urban campus with no public spaces at all, preferably one surrounded by symbols grafittied onto all available surfaces. I would suggest however, that in choosing to attend TCNJ, the student selected for himself a campus in which public drawing had been traditionally confined to chalk on sidewalks. Please honor our traditions, dear spray-painter.

Perhaps the vandals were unhappy with the taxpayer-borne costs of the artwork. I sympathize with the difficulties of paying taxes in New Jersey. I myself pay taxes in New Jersey, but I express my opinions about my taxes at the ballot, and not with spray paint. Dear vandal, may I suggest that a can of spray paint never affected anyone's tax bill, except to increase it as the costs of repair to defaced public structures are considerable?

Perhaps the vandals were dismayed to learn that decisions at TCNJ are sometimes made by figures at the top. A suggestion has been put forward that campus-wide expenditures ought to be put to a campus-wide vote of some sort. I'm sorry, but only student government candidates are put to a campus-wide vote. A college president and a college board of trustees are not democratic institutions. The USA is a democracy, but America's schools, universities, corporations, armed forces, churches, and many more of its social institutions do not ask students, employees, soldiers, or believers to vote on grades, salaries, combat orders, or doctrine. All important decsions at TCNJ are voted on by the Board of Trustees, but not by whichever cohort of future alumnae/alumni happen to be on campus together.

Perhaps the spray painter was dismayed by his tuition bill, and believed that TCNJ could not both afford public art and keep tuition costs down. I sympathize with anyone dismayed by tuition bills, as I myself pay two tuition bills. Tuition costs, however, include a great many expenses that do not benefit every student. Nonetheless, all tuition payers bear the costs because each is receiving some of the benefit. One student may enjoy the college's recreational facilities, another its support of All-College-Theatre, and a third be thankful that the School of Science labs were updated. All TCNJ students do not benefit equally from all of its expenditures. If all of TCNJ's expenditures had either to be enjoyed by a majority of the student body or be eliminated, we would have a campus with one sports team on which all athletes competed, with one club to which all students belonged, and with a library that owned one book.

I am forced to conclude that it is impossible for anyone to have defaced our public spaces for a good reason. Anyone accepting his acceptance to TCNJ has joined a community. I call upon all members of that community to respect one another, and to disagree respectfully. Spray painting artwork with fraternity symbols is not respectful disagreement with the purchasing decision. It was a cowardly, ignorant, and deeply anti-social act, one which its perpetrator should be ashamed to own. Come to think of it, he IS ashamed to own it. His shameful silence is the only sign I can see of his eventual repentance for his egregious sin.

Diane Vanner Steinberg