The formerly colorful, graffitti-adorned walls of the KB-Larrabee tunnel have been coated in a thin layer of white paint. Evidence of the art is still peeking through, as well as on the floor and ceiling. Photo by Amy DeGenaro.
The celebrated graffiti KB-Larrabee tunnel is no more. While the tunnel itself still stands, the spirit that made it such a unique and cool place has been sucked out; it is a shell of its former self, a whitewashed, soulless hallway and nothing else.
When I found out the years of intricate graffiti that decorated the otherwise grim walls were smeared over with a coat of ugly white paint, rage coursed through my veins. How could someone do that without informing a single person about it? Did it occur to those whitewashing the tunnel that they were systematically destroying a piece of Connecticut College history? Would they even care if students spoke out against whitewashing the tunnel?
I lived in KB my freshman and junior years. Aside from having Coffee Grounds on the first floor and being conveniently located across from Cro and a Frisbee throw away from Harris, the KB-Larrabee Tunnel was one of the coolest things about the dorm. It was a mysterious space, a sort of punk time capsule and art gallery all at once.
While I never spray-painted anything down there myself, I always admired the quirky stencils, the more intricate pieces and everything in between (my personal favorite was the stencil of Kermit the Frog holding a pistol in his hand). The tunnel was such an outlier from the rest of campus: an anarchic display of student expression with not a hint of administrative input. It was a student-run space in every sense of the word.
Who would have the audacity to reverse-Jackson Pollack this space, as if it would be perfectly fine to simply do away with the artwork of the tunnel and transform it into a plain white passage with no hint of personality? I’ve been hearing scores of rumors swishing around campus about who the culprits might be. The administration is obviously the first to come to mind; in one swift motion, without telling a soul, they bum-rushed the tunnel and whitewashed it shoddily in an effort to suppress freedom of expression. Maybe there is some building code that requires connecting corridors to be as boring as humanly possible. Maybe yet another coffee shop is being built down there.
But it doesn’t add up. The whitewash job was so poorly done that it couldn’t have been the administration that spearheaded this— anyone who has seen their response to bathroom graffiti knows that they are thorough as can be when they want to eliminate doodles. Although I would have secretly loved this to be the answer (I actually had another article written lambasting the administration), it doesn’t seem to be the right one. I feel that the school would have been more transparent about the situation and at least given a heads up via email saying, “Don’t walk down there, we’re making this school even whiter on November 11” or detailing a list of reasons why they must whitewash the tunnel in order to comply with something or another.
I’m leaning more toward the theory that it was students, sadly enough. If this is the case, I am seriously concerned for this college. This action baffles me and my peers, and only proves more to us that this school is slowly losing its originality and becoming a pretty uninspired place all together. If you have to prove something by destroying somebody else’s artwork, at least amputate a limb off of the eyesore crouching outside of Blaustein.
But it doesn’t matter who committed the act; it’s been done and cannot be undone. What’s important is that the KB-Larrabee tunnel was one of the few things that made Conn feel like it wasn’t just an L.L. Bean catalogue shoot in New London, and now it’s tainted permanently. Its location and aesthetic said, “There is an underground at this place! Express yourself and let your mind wander with a can of spray-paint and go fucking nuts!” It represented no-holds-barred experimentation and freedom, what should be two cornerstones of a place that considers itself a distinguished liberal arts college. It was diverse, colorful, fun and inspirational. Now it’s a whitewashed wall— a perfect metaphor for what is happening to Connecticut College.
I will hug and protect the graffiti room in Abbey House tighter than ever now that I know that citadels for expression are under fire on this campus. I will mourn the loss of the years of artwork that were destroyed with inconsiderate brush strokes of white paint. I can only hope that artists will descend down to the tunnel and repopulate the walls with eye-catching graffiti and gun-toting Kermits soon enough. •
Ethan,
As a senior at Conn, I too have had a fond connection with the tunnel as an underground space that is strictly by the students for the students. That is why I have in fact the opposite reaction to this white washing, but for the same reasons you love the tunnel.
That graffiti, as you noted, is years old, maybe even decades. We don’t know who made most of it or why, and a lot of the finer pieces that were there (such as the caterpillar and the penguins) had been further defaced. Most of the graffiti, in my memory, was often just crude phrases and not actual art, which is fine for what it is but does nothing for the current students at Conn who didn’t write “eat a dick” on the wall.
The white washing gives us as students the opportunity to get a fresh start and make our own mark on the campus in a space that is a more acceptable space to make street art than, say, the front of harris or on a dorm. I urge you, instead of bemoaning what has been done, to take the opportunity to make your own mark down in the tunnel for generations to see, and know that YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING YOU WANT.
With love,
Benjamin
Benjamin- The tunnel has always been changing. Artists have continually painted over things they deemed petty or in poor taste. You were free to paint over “crude phrases” as you saw fit.
But to white wash the entire hall is to demonstrate a disdain for the entire concept. Sure, students will start again, but it will be years before the hall recovers its character.
Maybe someone should ask the administration why…. but now that would be fact finding something that this “newspaper” doesn’t have a history of
First note, to “John”: this is an opinion piece, and as such has no ideological requirement to do any “fact-finding,” and while your distaste for the quote-unquote “newspaper” in question may have bearings, I can’t help but feel that this article is a poor place to start in voicing them. Try the meetings! They’re open to all, and presumably still held around 10 in the College Voice office on Mondays. Or try a news article.
Second note: Mr. Harfenist, I agree wholeheartedly with your outrage. While Conn provides many fine outlets for creativity, and I relished many of them during my matriculation, I think it’s “rull shitty” of “whoever” whitewashed the tunnel. Its metaphoric relevance to trends of on-campus artistic stifling is so obvious that I wouldn’t use it in a romance novel. Whether student or institution, the culprit seems to have the idea that nothing is preferable to something, with a blind eye turned to the rather clear opportunity for improvement of a space via direct action. Rather than start with something already established and move it toward a more desirable goal, or otherwise engage with the ongoing conversation, whoever whitewashed the tunnel chose to obliterate everything that had come before her or himself.
If the act was administrative, it smacks of the same urges that purge our website’s ad copy of anything definitive, instead opting for a supremely bland take on our school that paints it as “pretty good, with sports.” If the actor was instead a student, then I am reminded of the prevalent attitudes which I loathed in my time on campus, which said, “What there is here isn’t interesting enough for me; I’d rather do nothing.” In either case, the agent responsible for whitewashing this corridor is kin with the noncommittal, nonparticipating segments of Conn’s culture that would rather be widely unobjectionable than at all interesting.
I feel insulted in the same way I felt on SAC when our highest attended events were JamKat dances, or as I sat in class and heard four kids speak. It feels like a large part of the student body would rather have nothing to ignore than to participate at all, even if their participation was criticism. The blandification of Conn is one of the school’s biggest drawbacks: every outgoing student with a great idea has to face a gigantic wall of disinterest. I can see why someone might not like what someone else is doing, but to turn off rather than to engage is an impulse that cuts deep into what makes Conn a desirable place to be. This whitewashing is just symptomatic, the tunnel the latest victim in a half-hearted war of blah against character.
Amen Crimer!!!
Amen, indeed. I feel you on all counts, Andrew.
I’d also like to just add a little tail to what Benjamin said above.
The graffiti had not been there for decades. The tunnel was whitewashed the year before I got to Conn (in 2007). I know because I was one of the first to “vandalize” it after an older student told me, with controlled anger, that the tunnel had been radiant and colorful and great mere months earlier. We went down with some cans and paint pens and I thought it was super cool and edgy and garden state (an adjective I’m coining right now whose meaning will become apparent in a clause or two) of me to write the words to the chorus of the Smiths’ “There Is a Light and It Never Goes Out.” Within a few weeks, the word “never” had been crossed out (which is hilarious). Within a year, the whole message was covered by a really cool tag.
Anyway, the point is, things are always changing down there. The tunnel is painted over roughly every five years (a claim I’m making based on the fact that there were five years between the last paint-over and this one). What you paint won’t be around for generations, so I don’t think it’s really worth it to nag about obscenities when they’ll probably be obscured by something else in a matter of months.
the graffiti will always change, but organically, so why paint it over? the artists who spend time working in that tiny, hot, little stifled space… their art deserves to be replaced with other art, not with whiteness. it’s insulting the way some pieces are almost visible still through the shitty paint job. as ethan and andrew said, it’s less about the loss of art itself than what the whitewash represents. if i could sum it up in one word, it would be “unnecessary”.
p.s. somewhere out there, morrissey is silently weeping.
I have 25 years of discog to prove that Morrissey has never cried silently. If the dude’s upset, you’re gonna hear about it.
i was referring to your misquotation of the song. :-)
I take full responsibility. What I wrote was, “There is a light and it never goes out,” which is different from the title of the song, which is “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Legend has it that the original words in the outro were, “There’s a light in your eyes and it never goes out,” giving apparent ammunition to those who suppose the song was written about Johnny Marr. I hope that tidbit makes up for my flagrant disregard for lyrical exactitude.
#otv