I would like to challenge David Pesci’s statement that the Butt tunnels were repainted “a little more than three years ago.” I am a senior, and three years ago I was a freshman living in the Butts. I remember an incredible density of graffiti in the tunnels from the first time I saw them during Orientation Week in August, 2003. From that point through my sophomore year, when I also lived in the Butts, I visited the tunnels frequently to do laundry. For two years, I noticed only occasional additions. The “density” remained essentially constant.
Either Pesci is mistaken, or the majority of the graffiti that I saw at the beginning of this year was the result of a Herculean effort over a very short period of time, perhaps at the end of the 2002-2003 school year. I cannot believe that this is the case.
There is something about a process of accretion that makes it wholly different from an act of design. It is what makes Paris different from New York. It is what makes my bedroom at home different from my bedroom at school. It is what makes Pesci’s claim an insult to the visual intelligence of anyone who had seen the thick layers of developing styles and unique personalities that had found expression in the tunnels, and it is what makes the fresh coats of paint such a tragedy.
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