North Campus dorm windows become new art hobby

Dominique Johnson
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 04:59:57 +0000
Arts & Life, a&l, a+e, arts & life, arts and life, featured, north campus

The opening of the new North Campus dorms has inspired students to use them for a new purpose: window art.

Using sticky notes or colored paper, students living on North Campus have taken advantage of the large windows in their rooms to create messages and pictures. Many of the messages are meant to be humorous.

In six-person suites, residents have reign over four windows, and some have collaborated to create a larger, multi-window message.

Logan Cahall, a second-year in economics who lives in a suite in Scott House, has one of the most popular window art pieces — a marriage proposal. The window says, “Jess, Will You Marry Me?” In reality, no one in his suite is engaged or has proposed to someone named Jess. He and his roommates only wanted to grab attention and make people laugh.

“We went on Carmen and looked at the most popular girl name on campus,” Cahall said. “Jessica was either No. 1 or 2. It turns out there are about 630 people with that name.”

The display has caught the eye of at least one person with that name. Matt Thurman, a second-year in industrial and systems engineering and one of Cahall’s roommates, said he discovered a photo on Instagram posted by someone named Jess with the caption “I said no.”

He added that football fans walking toward Ohio Stadium took pictures and waved at him and his roommates.

“It was a popular name. We figured someone was going to get embarrassed or have a good laugh. Now, we are just thinking about what to do next,” Thurman said.

Many subjects of the pictures and messages are tied to current events, ranging from the presidential race to Harambe, the gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo in May.

Olivia Hare, a second-year in psychology, living one floor below Cahall and his roommates, said she is not sure not sure how this North Campus phenomenon began. However, that did not stop her and her roommates from posting “Ducks Out 4 Harambe” on their window.

“(My roommate and I) are both from Cincinnati,” Hare said. “It was just kind of a trend. It’s a big phenomenon right now. I mean, you can’t go wrong with Harambe and Afroduck.”

Hare also said they did not want to post the explicit version of the popular meme on their window because they wanted to be careful not to offend people or get in trouble. Some students have been told to take down potentially offensive messages by hall officials.

Dave Isaacs, spokesman for the Office of Student Life, likes that students are having fun in their new dorms, but wants them to remain respectful.

“I am continually impressed by the creativity of Ohio State students,” Isaacs said. “Although, we do hope that our students use this unique feature to highlight messages that are positive and not offensive or in poor taste.”