Opinion > April 24, 2008

By Bryan Davis Keith | Old Gold & Black columnist

In my four years at Wake Forest, I have seen some ugly things done to the face of the campus. I saw firsthand the construction of the infamous archway on the Quad, seeing the Quad’s previous subtlety and symmetry utterly obliterated by a lopsided and pointless stone structure.

I saw an anonymous donor, under the guise of the senior class gift, deface the very face of my soon-to-be alma mater by attempting to externally demonstrate a commitment to the old campus that the university has traditionally left in the dust.

I saw the construction of something dubbed the “Interfaith Arch” alongside Wait Chapel, a visually displeasing and completely out of place work of “art” that serves no viable function but to leave students and visitors alike contemplating not the beauty of faith but the ugliness of metal, not the intermingling of faiths but what faiths were somehow deemed important enough to make it onto the arch.

Recently, I have seen another abomination of a structure added to the face of campus, though this time not in the shape of an arch. In front of the Benson food court, there has recently been erected a nasty-looking cream and green metallic column, a site for flyer posting. This is supposedly the first of 12 to be constructed around campus, or so is rumored (the university is mum on activities — that sounds familiar).

Aesthetically, calling the structure hideous would be polite. It is fortunate that the structure is as insignificant on the Mag Quad as it is. Bearing no resemblance to the brick and stone of campus, the grass of the Mag Quad or even to the colors of the university, the thing doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, it is a sore thumb. More importantly though, it demonstrates an attempt to centralize the posting of flyers rather than allowing students to post all over campus as has been common practice during my four years and many years prior.

I have hung more than my share of flyers on this campus during my time here and have heard on more than one occasion rumblings that the powers that be are not fans of having flyers papering every surface on campus. During my SG campaign two years ago, my fellow candidates and I were having to replace our flyers on a daily basis to combat facilities management who kept ripping down everything indiscriminately every morning because the trustees were in town. To those responsible for the construction of the Mag Quad’s sore thumb and the mantra that flyers everywhere are a bad thing, I pose this question: What’s the big deal?

Seeing flyers plastering every square inch of campus is not an example of a defaced campus, but of a vibrant one. Those flyers don’t represent masking tape and paper littering the walls, but the efforts of student leaders and organizations getting their word out to their fellow students. They represent the very scholarship and activity that makes Wake students who they are and gives the university the reputation it so desperately clings to.

Attempting to centralize the placement of such publicity materials makes no sense on numerous fronts. No matter how many flyer posting columns are built, there are high traffic areas (dorm halls especially) that they will never reach. The sheer volume of activity on campus precludes the notion that one structure, or even 12, can adequately serve the publicity needs of 4,000 students and 160 plus organizations. Perhaps most importantly, the supposed benefits of these sore thumbs to alleviate clutter and ugliness are completely outweighed by how sterile, generic and ugly they themselves are.

Having thousands of flyers in dorms, class halls and the walls and sidewalks of the campus quads may appear to be smudges on the pristine beauty of campus, but any smudge that constitutes a symbol of an active and vibrant student body is one that I for one am willing to see on the image of Wake Forest University.

The metallic column that sprung out of the Mag Quad offers no functionality that the Pit wall just a few feet away doesn’t. It’s an aesthetic nightmare, a zit on the Mag Quad.

Wake Forest, pop this project like the zit it is.

Bryan Davis Keith is a senior political science major from Southern Shores, N.C.