Midafternoon on Tuesday, Amy Grace Sihler, a junior at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, was catching up on homework with some friends in the Lang courtyard when they were distracted by a rattling sound. “All of a sudden I spot this vagabond over yonder in the courtyard,” Sihler said.
Someone was spray painting graffiti on the northside wall of the Lang courtyard. The unidentified student painted “free thugz” then scribbled their way down the wall finishing their tag. Gil Ferguson, a senior at Lang, described it as a “haphazard squiggly line.”
Meg Rowan, another senior at Lang, thought that the student was painting a mural and was sanctioned to do so.
Damian Fox, a witness and junior at Lang, approached the security desk in the 11th Street Building. Security spoke with the alleged vandalizer and Helena Nordstrom, a senior at Lang, overheard the suspect ask, “am I in trouble?” The security guard responded, “that is not up to me.” Nordstrom said that the two spoke for roughly ten minutes before the student retrieved their belongings.
Amy Malsin, Assistant Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, described the school as being “disappointed” by the vandalism and stated, “The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards has been informed of the incident.”
Passersby told The New School Free Press that they felt sorry for the people responsible for cleaning up the mess and tried thinking of ways to clean up the graffiti themselves.
“Someone has to be extremely obtuse not to realize the repercussions of their actions…that a janitor is going to have to come here after hours… and scrub it,” Sihler said. “It’s a waste of people’s time.”
This is a developing story. The Free Press will update this article as we obtain more information.