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