The Invisible Vioce Manifest

Today I got to meet Steven Gridley--the playwright of "Sun, Stand Thou Still." After spending so much time on his script and working incredibly hard to put myself into the universe he created--becoming one of the characters birthed from his own personal experiences and imagination--it was like I got to meet god. An omnipotent presence in the play. Invisible, yet thoroughly sensed. After making discoveries from his cryptic text since last May, I was bursting with questions and practically bristling with fear that I completely interpreted everything wrong. It was kind of nerve-wracking! I told my friend before hand "I'm sure he wrote this role for a tall, curvy red-head...I'm none of those things..." I had this immense feeling of dread that he was going to size me up and down and wonder why I was the one cast. I also quite expected him to be creepy because of some of the grotesque things that happen in the play. He was neither creepy nor judging. I had the chance to talk to him for like five minutes earlier in the day, before he saw the show, and then afterwords for much longer.
He was quietly pensive and somewhat somber; I wondered what he was thinking. He listened to our accounts of our journeys with the script and preparation for the show. I stuttered a bit but managed to pass off the majority of my speech with coherence. The Old Testament references instances of theological allusions blew my mind and shaped my perception of the play.
When he spoke about his experience viewing his own show, I found it fascinating. He basically began with a monologue and then wrote the rest as a stream of conscious--following an emotion. Nothing was planned out before he began writing--and when he came near to the conclusion, he put it away for a year and a half, until he knew how it was supposed to end. He said that, as a playwright, when your plays are produced, it's like of like having your diary on display. Watching the play is sort of like time travel--projecting Gridley back to the time in his life when he wrote it. Now he understands more about what it was actually about. What the symbols meant--what themes and struggles from his personal life subconsciously manifest in his work. He said that he realized he is still writing about the same thing and hasn't really moved on (though he said it in a lighthearted manner).
The play is about dealing with tragedy and loss. The protagonist is dealing with the loss of his wife. What would you do if you could bring a loved one back? Would you do it? It would mean eventually having to deal with death all over again...sooner or later. There is so much to think about. I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to meet the man behind the play, and to have an appreciation for the mysterious events in his life that lead to this "diary" of his subconscious--this play that I am in. The other actors, and myself, have found so much meaning in "Sun, Stand Thou Still" that I am reminded why I am studying theatre. Theatre is a connection of the human experience; it shows me the world outside of my own.

Tonight, I am sad.

Four of my friends (who are roommates) were robbed today. I don't really know what to do or think. They had thousands of dollars worth of stuff taken: laptops, iPods, phones...Whoever it was broke in through a window and completely decimated the bedrooms. Clothes strewn about...everything torn up. One of the girls even had her make-up taken. This incident goes deeper, though, because there are thoughts that one of the girl's identity's could be stolen, as she had some important documents out--including social security. Why would anybody do this? I just don't understand how a human being could so intentionally screw over another. What is it that makes people so heartless? I don't understand how somebody could damage another person like that.
People have been like that for all of human history. The ancient Romans were particularly vicious. For entertainment, the Romans liked to watch barbarians fight each other to the death. They would also congregate in a stadium at mid-day to watch the execution of Christians and criminals--to watch starving lions attack the defenseless people, and rip their bodies to shreds. Sometimes the blood-thirsty Emperor would take people out of the audience and through them into the arena with the beasts.
Just today I was asking myself if our world was very different from the ancient world, and then my friends were robbed. Certainly, they were not fed to lions or even physically harmed, but in essence, it is still a human being intentionally inflicting evil upon another and reveling in their heightened position because of it. It makes me sick. It is absolutely horrible.

Think Happy Thoughts

After two years and one month of college, I have finally discovered the secret to not hate my life when things get insanely busy (and I mean INSANELY busy). I've had nervous breakdowns and panic attacks and used to hyperventilate regularly. At least three people during the day would stop me and tell me to "breathe...just breathe..." (The rhythm of that phrase still dances about my head like a familiar, obnoxious friend.) It turns out the secret to my very sanity was spoken to me in my childhood: "Think Happy Thoughts." In the movie "Peter Pan," the children get sprinkled with fairy dust and they need only to think happy thoughts to be able to fly. The youngest one, I believe, keeps repeating "candy!" and he is the first one to take off. So sometimes when I'm getting in the shower at three in the morning after chugging coffee to stay awake to finish a paper, I think about candy. Seriously. Candy Canes, sparkling purple and green gum drops, Fun Dips, chocolate Christmas truffles, the little pink mints my Grandma would give me...those candy hearts you get around Valentine's Day... The thought of candy is so much better than the actual thing because it can live on, forever, in my memory as it was during childhood. Candy during childhood was magical. Candy now makes me feel like a fatty with no self-control and bad teeth. When I was nine years old, the smell of my plastic Halloween pumpkin mixed with tootsie rolls, smarties, peanut butter cups and Carmel apple suckers was this exciting transcending experience. If I did that now, in reality, I would be thinking about how many carbohydrates I already ate that day and how far I need to run in the morning to work everything off.
The point is...the thought of candy, with all of its emotional and sensory ties to childhood, can be kind of an elixir to get me through when things get crazy. Of course, it works with much more than candy. I can pretend it's Christmas. Last night I rode my bike home at ten o'clock at night. I new I had a ton of work to do before bed, so I started singing Christmas songs at the top of my lungs. It totally worked.

After re-reading this blog, I have come to the conclusion that I am insane.

The Life of a Theatre Major

"Be fire!! Be it more!" The words of my acting professor echo across the black box as she moves her body in frantic, asymmetrical movements across the floor. Indeed, it seems as if she is burning; I would be frightened to be in her way as limbs fly about like the fluid rise and fall of flames. Her eyes flash fiercely, and the longer she goes,the more intense and rapids her movements become.

"Or you can be earth." Movement stops. She sinks her feet into the floor and roots immediately extend from her soles and twist down, deep, into the earth. She is grounded like a tree and rests, confidently and anciently within herself. Every movement takes a long time, and nothing is said or done unless it is done carefully and with deep meaning. And very slowly. Earth is connected and grounded.

Fire, earth, water and air. These are our elements. We become them in class, and throughout the rest of the day, the acting students at Aquinas College secretly label all of their friends, roommates, co-workers and professors as a certain element character. One of my bosses is earth, and the other is fire. (They probably wouldn't get along) A girl who sits next to me in class is air...And I believe I am water.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the strangest sampling of our training. We also do animals and colors and music. Yesterday we had partners move our bodies around, and we had to create a different character for each manipulation. If my partner turned my hand slightly to the left, I had to come up with a different character. Beggar. Debutant. Young foolish boy. Space alien. 47 year old man drowning. 32 year old man with tattoos mugging a young lady. Elderly lady who just broke a hip. Old man holding a lantern, entering a dripping cave. Ballerina in the 19th century performing in masquerade for a large audience.

I had characters flitting in and out of my head for the rest of the day.

Sometimes Using Protection Doesn't Help.

Pop-up adds are like unwanted suitors. They are deceptive and sly, and sneakishly invade the lives of unsuspecting females. A half hour ago, I performed a virus scan in attempts to assure the safety of my Internet activity. But as soon as I entered the realm of the Internet, it was like I put myself on some kind of shady market. A pop up add had the audacity to present itself as an anti-virus warning. It falsely clothed itself in evocative language, meant to stir the heart of an unsuspecting, naive maiden. "Your computer is at high risk! Hurry, download me and let me protect you! Lend me access to the secret of your files and I shall be valiant and battle the many viruses that beat down your defenses!" And I, being a trusting maiden with little experience, began to take the hand of the sly gentleman pop-up add, trusting his intentions were pure. Luckily, my father came to my rescue on his noble telephone and waged verbal battle against the trickish deceiver. One-two, one-two, and through and through! My father's abuses made it clear, that the so-called protector of P.C. merely wanted to get into my files... He gave me instruction to oust the scoundrel, then with a click of the phone, he was off. I turned my eyes, ablaze, upon the trembling add, and loosed my venom upon the restart option, bidding the fool a vicious adieu. Thank God for my honorable and timely-telephoning father. He is my hero.

My Meatballs Tell Me I'm An Epic Failure

I don't know why I thought I could take on the Legendary Grandma Wehner recipe for meatballs. I obviously over-estimated my domestic skills at the age of twenty. Now with the atrocity of my failure, it is utterly clear that I am a struggling college kid who knows what she wants to be, but has absolutely no clue how to become it. As I look into my pot of freakish meat-mush,I see myself. And I suck. At least at cooking--though it is hard not to let that obscure mix of random ingredients (that I added in a panic after terribly miss-reading the cookbook) go deeper into my introspection and attribute my failure to every aspect of my life. I just wasted several pounds of ingredients (for which I rode my bike to purchase) and shamed my Grandmother and all my female ancestors of whose domesticness I will never live up to. I am left with two less hours in my valuable evening, and no dinner for the next three days--but this goes much further than starvation. I will never get a husband at this rate...I will probably die off and leave the rest of humanity to the more intelligent alpha females who are clever enough to follow recipes and attract a mate.

My 19th Century Soul-Mate

I have decided (perhaps by coercion, at first) to do a class presentation on Lydia Maria Child. Until three days ago, I had never even heard of her; but after only a matter of hours researching her, I have been sold to the persuasion that she is one of the coolest people that ever lived. Unlike the other transcendentalists, she actually put her life on the line for what she believed in--her radical abolitionist views. Lydia Maria Child published appeals for the emancipation of the African people in an age when men were being dragged through the streets with a rope around their neck, for having the same dispositions. I discovered an amazing quote from Child, which expresses her sentiments about the social uproar stirred by her most famous abolitionist work, "Appeal for that class of Americans called Africans." I promptly memorized it.

"I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken; but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is not in my nature to fear them. A few years hence, the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I have not even the most transient interest; but this book will be abroad on its mission of humanity long after the hand that wrote it is mingling with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."

I think that Lydia Maria Child is on the same level of awesomeness as Xena.
Her devotion to truth and "moral beauty" strengthens her, and raises her to the status of "bad-ass" in my book.

A Skill for Many Uses

Today I punched open a watermelon. I brought out the fruit for the guests, in the midst of my roommate's birthday celebration last night, when somebody jokingly suggested that I use my karate skills to cut the gourd. It would be more entertaining than the conventional cutting with a knife. I jokingly agreed. Somehow I found myself standing over the watermelon on the porch, with all of the guests in front of me on the lawn, like an audience before an act on a proscenium stage. I thought for a moment about which strike would be the most efficient to crack it open with, and I decided on the favored palm-strike. The first time, my hand slipped off after impact, and the watery gourd absorbed most of the shock. Embarrassment. I shook my hand off and assumed a better stance. With everybody watching me (nobody being a martial artist like myself) I realized I had forgotten to do a spirit shout, and probably did not have enough oxygen. I tried again. It cracked a bit and sprayed juice over my roommate Allyse, who had been holding it in place. After a couple more strikes with my palm, I had the watermelon completely split in half and was photographed viciously eating my spoils of victory. I'm not quite sure what the point of the experience was, but I feel pretty cool.

Rome Fell Because Their Entertainment Sucked.

Does my intense partiality for classical Greek theatre over Roman theatre make me a snob? I dare say there is no competition. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes are theatrical giants, to be revered. The dawn of theatre as an art form arose with these playwrights; the Aristotelian model was put into place, and is still practiced in script analysis to this day. These Greeks of the fifth century B.C. transformed the myths of Homer into evocative performances, relevant to political and societal themes of the age, and instructive in ethical conduct while inspiring sympathy and catharsis.
The Romans, however, were all about entertainment value. Their canon of plays are almost completely farcical, and are disturbingly similar to our modern-day sitcom. Roman theatre was inspired by the Etruscans and the bawdy mime, and any serious content was blatantly plagiarized from the above mentioned Greek theatrical giants. The Roman playwright by the name of Seneca produced "The Trojan Woman", "Media," "Phaedra," "The Phoenician Women" (all of which he stole from Euripides) and "Oedipus," (taken from Sophocles) and "Agamemnon," (from Aeschylus). He didn't even bother to change the titles. However, he did decide to display the violence on stage in gory detail--much like violent movies in today's culture.

I do not think very highly of television sitcoms or unnecessarily violent movies. I like to have richness and depth in my entertainment. I always feel the need to improve my way in some form, and the idea of sitting down a watching an episode of some pointless, pansy-plot-lined show makes me want to gouge my eyes out and wander the rest of my life in exile.

My Nose and Lost Love

It is strange how much perception and recollection the sense of smell can provide. I typically have very poor olfactory reception, but sometimes it kicks in double-time. Today while I was sitting in my Transcendentalism class, I--by chance--caught the scent of the boy sitting next to me and was suddenly transported three years into the past. His natural scent (and I'm not talking about "B.O."--his natural clean aroma) was very similar to my high school boyfriend's. Instantly, I remembered vignettes from our courtship in incredible detail--little things that had been long buried in my subconscious. For about five seconds I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Luckily, I lost the scent. I'm glad that my nose decided to stop functioning at that moment, because a class about poetry supplemented with an eerily strong redolent of lost love would have been poignantly irritating.

I admit. It was me.

My journalism professor indirectly called me out in class today, for being grotesquely behind in my blogs. I feel like I am committing an abhorrent sin by actually blogging about this, but perhaps through my public confession I shall be baptized in vocabulary and syntax, and shall be born again through grammatical grace and offered a seat at the table of tagmemics.

In my defense, it's not my fault. I blame it on all of my other professors who load me up with assignments and expect me to prioritize their classes. I blame it on the 18 credits I am taking with my new double major, and I blame my decision for the double major so late in the game (as a junior) on my inherent indecisiveness, passed down genetically from both of my parents. I also blame it on my social life and the amount of coffee I feel I need to drink everyday, and on the patriarchal society in which I live. I blame it on Marilyn Manson. I blame it on everything else so that I don't have to own up to the fact that I can be better than I am now.

And I hope my displacement of blame has not thrown me out of favor with the gods of writing...I'm still looking forward to that baptize and new birth.

Resurrect Emerson

My Transcendentalism class is seriously blowing my mind, and, after four weeks of classes, I cannot shake the feeling that we should attempt to bring Ralph Waldo Emerson back from the dead.
After reading his social commentary in the Divinity School Address and his essay "The American Scholar," I believe absolute hell would break loose. During the time Emerson wrote and spoke at lyceum gatherings, the industrial revolution had barely begun. Already, Emerson warned his contemporaries against the "iron lids covering the sluggard intellect." He was caustic toward the scholar who settles for less than his full potential and mindlessly reads dead books of the past and repeats nonsensically back what he was taught to think. "Men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and are called 'the mass' and 'the heard.'" Emerson mourned the fact that his contemporaries lost sight of nature and the ability to comprehend the richness of meaning in the abounding natural world.
Emerson's worst fear was that the United States would become so caught up in Manifest Destiny that it would become thoroughly absorbed into a culture of materialism, rather than a culture of artists and poets.
In the year 2009, it is difficult to say that Emerson's worst fear did not come true. What would he think about our cellphones/laptops/facebook/twitter/multiple cars/GPS/iPhones? As a culture, we are completely displaced from nature--too busy to contemplate the "refulgent summer" with the air "full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay." Emerson saw himself as a sort of prophet for his age. If he were alive today and (God forbid) saw what became of his country after the industrial revolution--what would he say? And would anybody listen?

The Social Incrimination of Intergender Athletes

I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be Santhi Soundarajan. Soundarajan is an athlete, who competed in the 800 meter dash for India until she was disqualified and banned from competing when she failed a gender test. The same thing is happening right now with Caster Semenya from South Africa. Neither of the two have external male parts, but it has been discovered that they both have XY chromosomes. During an interview with BBC News, Soundarajan shared her feelings of bitterness and mortification. She has been shunned from her society and has to think twice about going to her local grocery story. She is labeled as "the woman who failed her gender test." A couple weeks ago, I heard some DJs on a radio station crack jokes about Caster Semenya. The whole situation is truly bizarre, to be sure, but listening to Soundarajan's replies to the prying questions about the tests she underwent and the embarrassment she has endured was truly heart-breaking. I ran cross-country in high school--which is a big difference from running internationally or for the Olympics--but I do know how much pain and endurance it takes to be good. I put sweat, blood and tears into my high school running career. It was exhausting emotionally as well as physically, and I was devastated my senior year when I was knocked off varsity; a bunch of 60-pound freshman girls cropped up and picked off our fastest runners (including myself), one by one. I cannot even fathom the disappointment, and perhaps, the sense of a life thus-far wasted, that Soundarajan and Semenya experienced with the failed gender tests.
Aside from the sympathy I have for their athleticism, I disdain the mockery that is occurring. The issue of "intergender" is a new concept. I do not believe that it is quite understood, and it has certainly not been taken into consideration for the qualifications of professional athletic competition. Soundarajan admitted that she never experience puberty and has never had a period. Semenya has muscle packed onto her body like a male. This is all very strange, but we need to remember that they are human beings and have every right exist and live out their dreams as anybody else. Soundarajan spoke of other women who never received their period and who never had children, but were valued, still, as women in society.
I don't have a solution, necessarily, to this controversy. Are Semenya and Soundarajan mostly male or mostly female? Which category would it be more appropriate for them to compete in? In any case, my heart goes out to these women and the strangeness of the social incrimination they are forced to bear.

I Hate Keys.

I have decided, as of 7 and a half minutes ago that I hate keys. Not metaphoric keys, such as "the key to my heart" or "the key to a locked piano" like in the Chekhovian play "The Three Sisters"...I mean the little metal things you use to open doors. Or in my case, fumble around for, while juggling a large backpack, a stack of books, a coffee mug, and something completely asinine for an acting class--like a rubber machete (I have gotten used to the strange side-glances), and then, with my two free fingers and my teeth, prying open the zipper of my purse to find this crude and primitive object (that was fashioned by a skilled worker who clearly had no consideration for my feelings) that will (finally) open the door. Of course I am chagrined by the fact that an inanimate object emotionally kicked my butt and reduced me to a mess of silent curses pricks of tears. In the 21st century, you would think all of the local landlords would install voice recognition door-openers...or retina-scanners...that would be nice. Anyway, I guess my life is kind of like a Russian, Chekhovian play in the sense that I can attain some kind of fulfillment in my life by hoping tomorrow will be better. In the mean time, I am content. I am content, I am content.

I'm afraid of the dark.

Sunday night, all of my roommates were gone. I was left (slightly paranoid)eating my dinner in front of the T.V. for comfort. It was around 11:30pm. Unfortunately, I selected the History Channel episode about the Aztec calendar--which if you don't know, is going to end in the year 2012. These experts in weird areas of Academia were telling me how the world might also end in the year 2012, and how the global temperature changes and natural disasters of late, strangely resemble the happenings in the book of Revelations. I turned off the T.V. and tried to shake off the idea of the Antichrist when the drier buzzed. My laundry. I always forget about my laundry. For about two and a half minutes, I thought about leaving it in the drier, but the echoing, monotonous tone rang out again, summoning me to the depths of the damp, cement basement. As I descended the creaky steps into darkness (the light switch was broken) I suddenly remembered that I had gone for a run a couple hours earlier and did not lock the door. That's when the unwanted thought bubbled to the front of my mind: "Somebody could be down here." The buzzer echoed again, loader, from somewhere in the darkness. Hoping my eyes would soon adjust, I plummeted all the way down and took several long strides toward the drier, my bare feet cold against the floor. I couldn't see anything. Complete, utter darkness froze me where I was at. There was a light bulb someplace with one of those little chains...!! Where was it?! I snatched at the phantom light bulb that refused to manifest itself. Somebody could be right behind me, ax held high, about to murder me in cold blood. Maybe trip me and slam my face into the cold floor then stuff me into the creepy paint closet... I panicked. A little bit. I ran back upstairs, suddenly perspiring, and did not feel normal again until glorious light from the kitchen healed the molestation of the darkness. I shuddered, then silently reprimanded myself for being so scared of the dark.
Since I didn't have a flashlight, I lit a candle and submerged again into the damp darkness, feeling a bit like Odysseus descending into hell: my mythic quest-to retrieve a load of whites. The candle's liquid light pour into the room and lit perhaps a 5 foot radius. Pretending to be brave (but holding my breathe) I checked the creepy paint closet for masked-murderers, prompting the candle to burn every shadow, one by one. No chain-saw bearing lunatic. No crack addict with a razor. I was happy.
But as I folded my laundry upstairs to re-runs of "Everyone Loves Ramond" I kind of wondered about the creepy hallway closet and behind the bathroom curtain.

Transience

I have always heard it said that people come into your life for a reason. They may be part of your life for many years, or perhaps only one year, or even a month. It might be a day. An hour.

Those relationships can not be taken for granted. I had somebody in my life who I thought would be around for a very long time, but our relationship ended abruptly. An experience that leaves me shaking.

If I could go back, I would have enjoyed every moment with more depth and feeling, knowing that this is not how it will always be. I have found it to be the same with familial relationships. The time I get to spend with my Dad is precious and will not always be the way it is now. My nine year old brother is growing up fast, and I don't want to miss it. I want to embrace what I have, when I have it, and to recognize the beauty inherent in these things so as to not merely recognize it in retrospect.

The Name-Sake Of My Blog

For some reason, throughout my life there has been a strange, long lasting joke about me being a witch. I believe it started when I was nine years old, on the school bus. There was a boy that was picking on me (as boys so often do in elementary school), so I demonstrated my only means of intimidation at the time: I shook my eyes. Short, rapid, back and forth movements. It is a voluntary trick and I know several other people who can do it, but the little boy had never seen anything like it. He paled in complexion and mumbled something about me being a witch. For several weeks thereafter, I was referred to as "the witch" on my school bus. Many years later, my neighbor and I worked on a short film entitled "The Witch Next Door," and the year after that, I was cast as the Wicked Witch of the West in my high school's production of "The Wizard of Oz." I'm not quite why people get that impression from me. I have never successfully levitated anything, nor have I ever transfigured a hamster into a tea kettle. I do have an assortment of broom sticks, however, but that is merely because I enjoy sweeping.

The primative regression of the non-meat-eater

I would like to caution the vegetarian from becoming too carnivorous with fruit. It seems that, after vegetating in a meatless state, the novice will regress to a primitive humor in which certain aggressions will become manifest. My lengthy field research culminated fifteen minutes ago when I saw my sister (a vegetarian of three weeks) stab a plumb to death, and, with juice dripping through her fingers, she whispered her intentions and promptly masticated the thing. I have also witnessed her in the produce isle of the local grocery store, stalking about with a hostile look in her eye. The particular look that she exhibits is akin to the cave man as he hunts his mastodon. She peers creepishly over the cartons of red delicious, seeking out the timid avocado. When she spots her prey, she delicately advances with bated breath. When she is no further away from the quarry as I am to this computer screen--she lashes out. One swift, powerful snatch, and the avocado is her's. I have observed this with squashes as well as avocados...and occasionally bean sprouts. Oh, the fickleness of the bean sprout.

What You Don't Think About

Everybody has seen movies like "Signs," "War of the Worlds," or "Alien Versus Predator," and everybody seems to laugh it off later. But hold on just a moment--have you ever stopped to think about what you would do if that kind of thing happened? I mean, actually happened. It is entirely probably that there is intelligent life out there, in the vast vacuum of space, and just as possible that this intelligent life might want to come to earth, violently wipe out the human race, and utilize our planet for their own recreational purposes.
You need to have a plan. My roommates and I do. Our emergency-alien-attack escape plan is posted on our fridge, next to the coupons and shelf of foil hats.
You need to ask yourself questions such as this: If the aliens come in through the front door, do I have a back door through which I can exit? If they are weird amphibious aliens that transport themselves via water in our pipes, do I have tight drain fasteners? And lastly, if I am driven to the depths of my basement, have I mastered the Japanese art of hari-kari?
There are very important things to consider, and I encourage every one of my readers to take these precautions seriously.

Scrawled Words and Scowled Faces

“Don't worry about what other people think about you. They don't do it often.”

These were the words scrawled in the bathroom stall of the women's restroom, on the first floor of our library. Black ink, spidery handwriting. It was written in kind of an arch, giving it the appearance of an ugly, drooping rainbow.

Several things struck me as I read the line. First of all, it was not there the last time I used that particular stall,so it happened recently, and there absolutely had never been graffiti in this clean, respectable bathroom before, so it must have been done by a freshman. Secondly, I wanted to know who in their right mind would think it would be okay to deface Aquinas College property—a great school for which the perpetrating punk is paying a considerable amount of money to attend—and furthermore, why did this person have to deface Aquinas College property with a statement so idiotic? I would love to reply to this girl: “You should,indeed, worry about what people think about you. We are all offended that you wrote on our clean wall; we know you're a freshman, because in college we don't do these things; and all of us—yes ALL of us—have secretly labeled you as a dumb-ass.”

This little incident hits a nerve connected to a larger incident. Last fall, during a pro-life celebration day, somebody spray-painted “Bomb Abortion Clinics” on the brick wall in front of the library. It was scrubbed off a couple hours later, but fact that the deed was done struck me hard. There was good reason to believe it was done by an angry pro-choice student because somebody had also placed wire hangers on the pro-life information desk--but no matter who did it (pro-life, pro-choice) somebody was gravely mistaken when they thought they had a right to communicate such violence at the expense of our beautiful college. It's our college's property. That wall was donated by a generous community member who believed in the respect and cultivation of education. Whoever spray-painted it showed incredible disrespect to that donor, to every student attending the college, and to everyone of our brilliant professors. Like the little scrawler of bathroom walls, I would also like to have a chat with the spray-painter... scowled