Campus graffiti: tag you’re it
(Andrew Bennett)
The Saddleback College campus faces the very serious problem of vandalism on a daily basis. From scribbles left on bathroom stalls to other forms of graffiti on buildings, there is a constant fight against people who, for various reasons, destroy school property.
The responsibility of cleaning the graffiti rests solely in the hands of the facilities and maintenance department, who are often placed on the front lines of the battle.
Director of Facilities, John Ozurovich tackles this problem every dayon a daily basis. “We try to clean it up as soon as it happens or we are aware of it,” Ozurovich said.
However, this semester there has been a decrease in the occurrences of vandalism on campus.
“The activity is down a little bit this semester,” Ozurovich said concerningin response to the lack of incidences of graffiti instances on campus.
Director of Safety and Security at Saddleback, Harry Parmer, said that in 2008 there were 49 vandalism calls to his office. These calls ranged from people having their cars keyed to students and faculty discovering graffiti on campus.
When asked about the frequency of these occurrences Parmer said that, “Iit varies:, sometimes it becomes a frequent problem but other times calls into the office are infrequent,.” Said Parmer.
Recently, the number of graffiti instances on campus has decreased. In the past, campus police have apprehended people in the act of vandalizing school property, but Parmer said that there have been no arrests of late.