Cleaning Up Our Mess(ag)es

Middlebury’s campus is fairly outspoken about a number of issues, both on campus and in the world beyond.  Recently, some of the methods used to spread social awareness have arguably had too great of an impact on our facilities staff to be, ironically, socially just.

This week, I talked to Wayne Hall, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor, and Bradley Lambert, the stonemason for Facilities Staff, about the reccurring incidents of graffiti on campus this year and the implications of these incidents for Facilities Services.

I had speculated the frequency of graffiti usage had increased this year, but I had no idea to what extent.

According to Lambert, “There’s been upwards of 12-14 incidents this year, which is 5 times more than we’d have in a regular year.”

Furthermore, the most recent incidents, including the one in front of Atwater dining hall, proved to be the most difficult to clean.

“Each of those incidents was actually a day and half’s worth of cleaning,” said Lambert, “What we used [last] Monday and Tuesday to clean up that graffiti was about the same amount of product as we used in the last two years.”

Lambert explained to me the process of removing the graffiti from both Bi-Hall and Atwater Dining Hall, the locations where the bulk of the damage was incurred.  Since BiHall is a stone surface and Atwater is wood, there are a multitude of time-intensive steps associated with the cleaning of each one.

First, Lambert and whoever is helping him have to ready their equipment.

“It probably takes an hour to get everything ready — get all the hoses, the pressure washers and chemicals. You need to be wearing protective equipment; rubber gloves and a rain suit, because some chemicals require respirators.”

Depending on the extent to which the paint permeates the stone, it can be relatively simple or quite a pain ­to remove.  “The harder the stone ­— like granite — is one of the hardest stones. It actually comes off easier because it doesn’t penetrate into the stone. BiHall, that’s all marble, though, so that took a while.”

After wetting the stone down, they apply a harsh stripping agent that breaks down the paint. Then, the Facilities crew must use a pressure washer to get the paint off.

“You can’t really use a regular hose or just a scrub brush. We had to do it twice with everything — I went through once, washed it, came back Tuesday morning and you could still see a faint shadow, so we had to use more of the product, let it sit longer, and pressure wash it again,” Lambert said.

Lambert showed me a bottle of the product used to clean stone surfaces.  “That product is elephant snot, and it actually looks like what they call it … it’s a really goopy, kind of grey material.”

“And the elephant snot’s not cheap,” Hall added.

Removing paint from the defaced wood walls of Atwater Dining Hall is even more time-consuming, because stripping the paint from the wood also involves stripping the finish from it.

“Those two walls have to be completely stripped down to bare wood, and then you have to try to match the finish back with the building. When you get on to wood, really the only thing you can do is strip it,” Lambert explained.

Due to the increased amount of labor, as well as the cost of the products used, the Atwater incident was incredibly expensive to fix.

Hall showed me the damage report, “[The Atwater dining hall incident] was about a thousand bucks.  But also, that doesn’t look at the time that we were taken away from doing something productive.”

Lambert testified to the loss of productivity.

“We have other stuff we’re trying to do right now … getting ready for commencement and language schools, and I have my own masonry repair list. So it just takes away from that,” Lambert said.

And last week’s graffiti was by no means an isolated incident.

“There have been others in other locations that have been 100 bucks, 300 bucks – it’s been adding up,” Hall said.

“We had quite an incident at the CFA – you know where the terrace is that faces the pond and the fields? Well, there’s a huge wood wall, and the whole wall was done. The guys were called in on a Saturday morning, mainly because there were a lot of athletic events going on, and to have that be viewed by the public just isn’t a good image for the College. And these guys, you know, it’s their weekend. They like to be with their families.”

The clean-up process is also hazardous due to the toxicity and strength of the chemicals needed.  Facilities workers wear full respirators, a rubber suit and gloves.

Lambert showed me the warning label on the product used to clean wood: “Reports have associated repeated and prolonged occupational overexposure to solvents with permanent brain and nervous system damage.”

“So it’s not something you want people using a lot,” Lambert said. “But it’s what works. Some of the messages, because of what they’ve been saying, we’ve been having to get them off quickly.”

But it’s not the messages that Lambert and Hall find problematic, just the techniques being used to publicize them.

“Get a big piece of poster board and write what you want; put it on the building. Everyone will see your point, and we can take it off,” Lambert said.

“There’s the slate boards in BiHall; write on the slate with chalk. There’s also the whole big board downstairs in McCullough,” Hall suggested.

Hall then left me with a couple tasks that, while troublesome for Facilities to clean up, were easier to find the humor in.

“Someone used to stick a pumpkin on the lightning rod on top of McCullough, and we’d go up with a ladder and remove it.  And you know the Frisbee dog outside of Munroe? Well someone would always spray paint the balls a fluorescent orange every year, and one of our painters would be over there having to clean that off. That kind of stuff, it’s inconvenient, but it’s not so time-consuming and destructive.”

Both Lambert and Hall understood that not all students are on the same page concerning graffiti’s acceptability. Hall said, “We’ve had a really nice response from all the students that have been coming and going and apologizing, so that support is nice.”

Hopefully, the minority of students responsible for the graffiti this year will realize exactly how their actions are impacting those who are not part of the student body they are targeting. Cleaning up after their propaganda for social justice is clearly not a light endeavor. For the facilities crew, it has been time-consuming, expensive, dangerous, and simply put, an unnecessary waste of resources. As I see it, valuing a socio-political agenda targeted at the privileged over the hard efforts of the Facilities staff is anything but “socially just.”