When I was a prefrosh, I was taken down into the Butts tunnels. It was creepy in the best possible way, walking down what felt like an abandoned corridor, surrounded by the surreal stenciled and spray painted art work created by years and years of Wesleyan students. It was one of the things that made Wesleyan special to me from the very beginning – one of the quirks that made it different from all the other schools. Last year, when I hosted my own prefrosh, I always brought them to those tunnels to give them a taste of what Wesleyan students could create, given a blank canvas and free reign. Those tunnels were an institution on campus. Everyone knew about them. Everyone had seen them. Everyone loved them. And they weren’t just decorated with the scrawled profanity and stylized penises you might see at other schools. They were full of gorgeously elaborate tags and laboriously copied song lyrics, a testament to the creativity and independence of Wesleyan students. I thought that they were beautiful. And now, for reasons that are not clear to me, they have been painted over. I can only hope that whoever made this decision was ignorant of the sentimental value these tunnels hold to the student body.
What bothers me most is that painting a wall is irreversible. This isn’t a chalking ban that can be lifted. This isn’t a naked party that can be reinstated. This is a part of Wesleyan student culture and history, destroyed forever by a few coats of white paint.
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