Once-graffitied wall is now white
Tagging art, cartoon characters, Pink Floyd writings and more were erased by four students with rollers of white paint in less than an hour Tuesday.
The graffiti mosaic was on a retaining wall that looks down over the Island – the area of Logan just south of campus. The wall sits near the top of a trail that connects the Island and a campus parking lot across the highway from the Merrill Library.
Large black letters across the top of the cement wall read, “Mother should I trust the government,” a famous line from Pink Floyd’s album, “The Wall.”
Those words were no longer visible after a couple coats of thick white paint.
Mary Jane Wollenzien, an undeclared freshman, helped paint the wall.
“I bet the people down below will really appreciate the white wall instead of a drawing of an ugly panther and Pink Floyd writings,” she said.
Wollenzien and her friend, Savannah Wiltermood, an undeclared freshman, came to fulfill service hours for the freshman program Connections.
“Service is great,” Wiltermood said.
This project was part of the service blitz for Homecoming Week put together by the United Campus Volunteers.
A group of students met outside Old Main and split into two groups; one went to paint toys and make quilts in the Taggart Student Center and the other group volunteered to paint the graffiti.
Dave McCammon, a junior majoring in political science, is on the committee for the UCV. He said the organization coordinates service projects all around campus with other organizations including fraternities and sororities. He said they do service projects at least twice a month.
McCammon was in charge of painting the wall, which is about 30 feet long and 10 feet high and completely covered with a collage of illegal art.
It was a mix of graffiti from simple black writings to extremely detailed and colorful art that probably took hours to create.
McCammon was satisfied after they finished.
“We came and whitewashed the wall of ignorance,” he said.
McCammon said the people who graffiti the walls do it for a social outlet and for acceptance with their peers.
Zeniff Jasso, a junior majoring in business administration, who is also on the UCV committee, helped to rid the graffiti.
“We came, we saw, we conquered,” Jasso said.
-joelfeathers@cc.usu.edu