Most notable is the wall of poetry, where “To Delmore Schwartz” by Robert Lowell has been joined by an anonymous quote:
Rejoice! O Man For your achievements
are great
and number as the stars (read both full size)
and then subsequently, by Jabberwocky in its entirety.

While one student recommends appreciating the joy of being YOUNG and ALIVE, another laments the temporary nature of graffiti, and a third dismisses the entire conversation with “Quit being gay, study!”. (See full size.) Meanwhile, someone else is just kidding.

In the 5th floor women’s bathroom, I discovered “I’m pregnant” in Arabic, translated by Lauren Osborne who wonders if the writer just took a pregnancy test, and the wall was the first “person” she told. I’ve also discovered that Barbie studies in Crerar science library. There’s some elaborate gremlin heads in the Reg study carrels, not far from some ruthless copyediting of another student’s “hip” graffiti (see full size).

Perhaps my favorite so far from this fall is a serious response to what was probably just a whiny Why is Latin so hard?: “b/c they don’t print it with diacritical marks. (it really would be much easier if they did”. Lamenting the absence of macrons in Latin texts not written for learners: I’ve never seen the likes of it elsewhere.

Speaking of the uniqueness of UChicago graffiti, I’m putting together another “analysis” of my enormous corpus of graffiti data, now including material from a variety of universities. Ever since I started examining graffiti from outside the University of Chicago, I’ve had the sense that there’s something unique about the graffiti we have here, but I’ve never tried to quantify it. So now I’m going through each piece of graffiti from each university, classifying it (and weighting certain classes differently depending on their frequency across the entire corpus– orthographic corrections and intellectual commentary count for more than sex or complaining about classes), and assigning a score of 1-3 (1 is for a single word or expected phrase, 2 is for a more fleshed-out thought, 3 is for something with a twist– be it insight, wordplay, or something that makes it memorable). The plan is then to divide the total score by the number of pieces of graffiti, to determine the “interestingness” of each university’s graffiti corpus. One could argue that my metric privileges the UChicago graffiti, but I really am trying to be objective, and I’d like to hope that we can all agree that there really is something more interesting about “Holbach your marks, you’re going to ruin the Staël” than “Fuck you”.

Tangentially (and without having any sense of what the outcome will look like), I’m also working on determining the source of the various music, movie, TV and literature quotes found in the graffiti corpus, to see the differences in genre and media distribution on different campuses.

I’m hoping to have both done by the end of this month, so stay tuned.

The uniquely odd thing about this doodle in particular was that five days later, there was a … follow-up? Remix? Pseudo-Engrish-style knock-off?… in one of the other rooms on the 3rd floor. Reasonably different handwriting, too. This toast looks much more benign– sympathetic, even– the kind of toast that can’t bring itself to smile at your misfortune, but wishes you well as you study. It’s also a little wonky, looking almost more like a bear than toast.

Speaking of bears, the same day Nice Toast showed up, a creepy oneappeared one floor down. In classic Doors style, this bear greets the observer, professes its love, and inquires about the observer’s name. In different handwriting, the bear also asks what the best thing about 29-year-olds is. (Answers are welcome in the comments.)

It’s not a follow-up in quite the same way, but another bear appeared in a Crerar study room about a week later, seemingly born out of a chemistry diagram. It’s a different style bear, and the handwriting (what little there is) seems different, but I wonder if the doodler saw the earlier bear and was (perhaps subconsciously?) inspired. As things to doodle go, bears are by no means the most common– that award would go to depictions of humans, and/or their body parts. In fact, the only previous bears in my collection date back to May 5, 2008: a smoking panda and a bear crawling on all fours.

If you look at the graffiti, however, there are two repeated iconographies of the UChicago-student relationship: being eaten, and anal sex.

Two of the three representations of the UofC eating students portray the school as a fish, one with rows of sharp teeth going after a brain, and another toothlessly devouring circles. A third shows UofC as Pacman, juxtaposed with a panicked cloud labeled “soul” in the first frame, and considerably expanded after eating the soul in the second frame.

I’ve only seen the being eaten iconography on the A-level (all-night study space) of the Reg. But the examples of the anal sex iconography come from two different places: the blackboard in one of the Crerar study rooms, and the study room in the Breckinridge dorm (“at least Harvard uses lubricant“).

I can’t date the Breckinridge piece more specifically than sometime before last Thursday*, but all of the other pieces come from early spring quarter– around the time procrastinating fourth-years are sweating over their BA papers while other undergrads are out enjoying the sun. Perhaps, then, the choice of imagery should come as no surprise.

* The piece probably dates from well before that, given the number of replies. That said, the graffiti there goes back a number of years, so it could still conceivably be from early spring quarter. The Breck study room is amazingly thick with graffiti, and will be the subject of an upcoming blog post. For a preview, check out the set on Flickr.

Who studies there?

My husband did a stint as a student assistant in Eckhart Library, and as he recalls it, the patrons were generally of two varieties. There were the students whose expensive math textbooks were on reserve– these would check them out, work for a bit or take the book elsewhere, then return the book and leave. Then there were the serious math students who would sit and work for hours. The faculty also have 24/7 library access, and while my husband never experienced the situation, there’s a whole set of procedures for what to do if it’s time to close the library and a faculty member insists on staying.

What are the study spaces like?

The main floor has some tables and chairs– not very graffiti-friendly. However, two corners of the library have two isolated study cubicles each– for a total of eight, four on each floor.

Where is graffiti written?

Strangely enough, only one of the two study desks in each pair seemed to be heavily graffiti-covered. No particular pattern: sometimes it was the desk in the corner, sometimes it was the one closer to the center of the room. Some graffiti was scratched into the wood desk, but most of it was on the surrounding walls.

Graffiti content
Declarations of love

If you love algebraic topology, Eckhart is the place to write it. Apparently noncommutative algebra is sexy; so is Antoine. I’m not entirely clear if the object of love is human or math, but someone has also written in Chinese* “I love you / I have dreamed / [after the blue mark] Ha ha“. Also with an unclear object is this “official” declaration of love.

Math

I’m not at all a math person; interpretations of the math content by math people are more than welcome. I’m told this one might involve the Riemann zeta function. There’s a pretty generic-looking equation that might mean something profound to the right person. And “the math” involved in explaining what an English major is doing there involves dividing by zero. That might be funny to the right person.

Doodles

There’s a drawing of some sheep in a house, a drawing of a piano, the number 7, and some circles and squares (though at Eckhart, maybe that should be filed under “math” for its geometric content, rather than “doodles”). Someone also drew some kind of pirate “going phishing” (possibly Paul Sally, our local “math pirate”).

For the full set of photos from Eckhart, check out the photo set on Flickr.

* Thanks to Matthew Felix Sun for the Chinese translation!

Crerar is the easiest data to start with– for the next couple months, until we move back to the Reg, my office is based out of Crerar. What’s more, last week I got a tip about some good graffiti in the men’s bathroom in Crerar but the logistical issues involved in the Crerar men’s bathrooms make that the topic of another post.

About the library

Crerar is the “science library”, home to “more than 1.4 million volumes in the biological, medical and physical sciences as well as collections in general science and the philosophy and history of science, medicine, and technology”¹.

Who studies there?

As a former student, my impression of Crerar is that it’s where the “serious” science students go to study. (This in contrast to all the folks writing “I hate chemistry!” on the walls of the Reg.) This would include your serious pre-med types, med students, and science grad students. Unlike the Reg which is pretty deserted in the early morning hours, by 8:30 or 9 AM the big open study room on the first floor of Crerar already has more than a few patrons.

What are the study spaces like?

The first-floor study area (made up of rows of tables) seems to be well-attended, but the second and third floors also have plenty of tables and a few study carrels mixed in with the bookstacks.

There are a lot more tables than carrels, and there aren’t nooks with study desks built into the walls like the Reg. On one hand, that’s bad news for graffiti, but the lower amount of foot traffic in certain “public” areas (like the staircase between floors) makes them more feasible targets for vandalism than the equivalent in the Reg.

Where is graffiti written?

The tables appear to be graffiti-free, and I could only find two pieces in the carrels. The major loci of “graffiti” are the blackboards and movable whiteboards in and around the study rooms. The bathrooms are also home to some graffiti.

Graffiti content
Alliterative socialism

There’s a (possibly single-person) alliterative meme following the pattern of “[Socialist-related] [social event]“. “Bolshevik bash” is the “flagship” phrase that appears on a carrel, on the stairs, and in the center of larger piece of graffiti in the women’s bathroom (see right, click for larger version):

• Bolshevik bash
• Communist cavort
• Soviet sleep-over
• Marxist mingle
• Proletariat potluck
• Collectivist cookout

Motivation

The one and only (non-Bolshevik) piece of graffiti in the study carrels is written in Korean, and reads: “I’m gonna study like a crazy maniac. . . . Until the day that I become a surgeon! – Who?”

More soothing is a piece I found written in lovely cursive on the blackboard of a green study room, reading simply, “do not fret”. (Click for larger size.)

Doodles

There’s something about doodles and whiteboards. Like the A-level in the Reg, the whiteboards in Crerar appear to be a magnet for strange, non-academic drawings. Did you know that Crerar hosts the meetings of the Secret Chemistry Club? And most girls go through a phase of loving ponies… granted, not usually around the same time they’re possibly studying for the MCATs.

Special thanks to Andrew Lee Chen for the tip about Crerar bathroom graffiti, and to David Yung Ho Kim for translating the Korean.

* I’m not counting Harper, which doesn’t have books anymore, or Mansueto, which is a giant hole in the ground at the moment.

¹ About the John Crerar Library