When you walk into a stall in one of the WJ bathrooms, you might be lucky enough to see a custom graffiti gallery. The art is interesting, but it can make bathrooms look less clean, especially if they already need maintenance. It doesn’t cause many problems, but there is a chance it can become too much.
I’ve seen the graffiti in the bathrooms since my freshman year, and since it’s always showing up, the school isn’t able to clean all of it. Every couple of weeks there are some new writings and a few weeks ago I started to see the same tag or logo with the number 25. I’m guessing the number is to represent the new year.
Nobody knows who is behind the art in the bathrooms. Most of the time, the graffiti is made of logos, also known as “tags” left behind by the originator. Although it’s everywhere, it doesn’t bother me because the bathrooms aren’t my property.
Sometimes, the graffiti consists of repetitive words like “SRAMS”. Other times, the work is more abstract and colorful. A random smudge of paint in colors like purple or red stands out against the black-and-white scheme of the bathrooms. The graffiti can be found in random places, like hand dryers or on the backs of toilets. The students behind all of this are clearly dedicated. However, this often creates more problems for the already busy building services. Building services have to constantly clean multiple bathrooms and they have to repeatedly check dozens of bathroom stalls.
There are no vulgar words or depictions painted in the bathroom, so I assume the artists are just using the abstract nature of graffiti to express their beliefs with no malicious intent. Since they seem to promote the same tag it’s possible that they are just trying to leave their mark at WJ through creative expression.
If I was a parent and I was getting a tour of the school for my student and decided to look in the bathroom, I would be concerned that WJ is a bad or unkept place due to stereotypes about graffiti. Since graffiti is usually seen as a crime it could make a parent think the school has criminals and wouldn’t want their child in WJ.
I think the graffiti in WJ bathrooms is interesting and cool to look at, but it can become problematic if it continues to spread. For example, if graffiti started showing up in hallways or in classrooms, action would need to be taken.
