Students walking by Wilson Hall, Salomon Center, the Modern Culture and Media building or the Department of English at 70 Brown St. on Sept. 24 spotted confusing changes to familiar buildings. New signs - strikingly similar to the official University ones - had seemingly appeared overnight. They read, "$160,000," followed by stream-of-consciousness prose that illustrated a lazy, high, "intellectually menopausal" student.
Three days later, when Vice President for Facilities Management Stephen Maiorisi first noticed the signs, he had no idea whether the suggestive message qualified as vandalism or was an approved design. A Department of Public Safety spokesperson was equally unaware of the reason the signs had appeared.
The sign's prose read, "...so as to end up flaccid, immobile, alone on the carpet of a dorm room, shirtless, wheezing, intellectually menopausal, cutting lines on an iBook with a pre-paid Discover card, watching consecutive hours of user-generated porn, in the dark, in a hoodie, apolitical, remorseless, eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips from a bag without a napkin: like some hero, pretending to be otherwise, on a Wednesday, during discussion section."
Though a coke-snorting, shirtless slob hardly seems like a University-sponsored message, the signs were actually a homework assignment, created by Adam Delehanty '07.5 for MCM 1700P: "Radical Media," taught by Mark Tribe '90, assistant professor of modern culture and media studies.
"I didn't know what it was," said Gabi Demith '11. "I was confused."
As many students guessed, $160,000 refers to the cost of a Brown education, while the imagery of a useless, indifferent undergraduate reflects on the sometimes wasted potential of the four-year experience. But Delehanty said his sketch of a Brown student doesn't represent anyone in particular.
"The figure I portray isn't anyone or me," he said. "But I thought that people could maybe identify with some part of it and use it to reflect on their own experience here and the way they spend their time here."
Delehanty said he wanted to paint "a worst case scenario picture of what happens to some students" at Brown. Though some students may have found Delehanty's stream-of-consciousness prose difficult, Delehanty said the more jarring prose served the effect he intended the signs to have on his audience. "I was trying to make it clear as soon as you started reading it that it wasn't anything University-sponsored," he said. "It's confusing. I wanted to make the text sound like something that was unofficial. I wanted to make the text sound spontaneous."
Tribe asked his radical media students to design, print and distribute a "radical" poster.
"That's one of the central purposes to the course - for students to develop an understanding of what we think the term 'radical' means," Tribe said.
Delehanty's first thoughts in response to the assignment were not political. But imitating official University plaques occurred to Delehanty before he thought of exactly what he would put on them.
Tribe said Delehanty's signs sparked so much curiosity and confusion among students walking by them precisely because they are, in a sense, not unfamiliar but still imitate the official signs on the buildings on which they were posted. "What interested me about the project was the way he reclaims the face of these official signs for art and for his own creative voice," Tribe said. "In that sense, I think it's an exciting intervention."
To properly reproduce the official University signs, Delehanty called Facilities Management and asked to speak to the person who designed and made the signs. "I said it was for an art project," Delehanty said, adding that the designer told him the exact fonts and colors used in the signs.
Despite their seemingly subversive message, the signs were not removed from the buildings until the Monday after they were posted - perhaps, Delehanty suggested, because they looked identical to the ones on the buildings.
Tribe and Delehanty did not expect the signs would receive as much attention as they did. But both were pleased the project caught students' interest.
"I think it's great when student work captures the imagination of their peers and sparks debate," Tribe said. But students shouldn't expect a flurry of controversial media to appear on campus as Tribe's class continues - their next project is a YouTube video.
