A Peek Into the Secret World of Masterman Grafitti

However, this time, new graffiti markings are popping up all over the school at an accelerated rate. Many of these new tags offer some variant of “ayohi.” There are at least seventeen such instances throughout the school, mostly in the stairwells, with a few in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. And that’s not including all of the other tags with different messages.

Most of the graffiti says “ayohi.” There is one deviant tag that says “ayohi m8,” but the meaning is the same. Some think that the artist was “just in a silly mood” while others think they “wanted to start some controversy.” These tags could also be a greeting or a form of self-expression.

Although they all say the same thing, they’re not identical. Some are bubble-lettered while others are thin, like printed letters. The thin tags often have two vertical lines in them, like eyes; some of the "o’s" even have a halo or a crown. The differences between these art styles might suggest that there could be more than one perpetrator. This begs the main question: Who did it? Mr. Gilken, the high school dean, is wondering the same thing.

“It’s been hard. We’re asking everyone to keep an eye out and pay attention to what’s happening in the halls around them… As far as we can tell, we have 4 or 5 people who are regularly tagging the same thing. I think at this point we know one of them, based on the locations and what we got from a teacher. It pops up a lot in the bathrooms and in the hallways. At first I was sure it was a middle schooler, but now the only one that I know is a high schooler.”

The administration has been trying its best to catch the artist(s) and minimize damage. One part of this effort is the cleaning and/or repainting of the defaced walls. However, this isn’t going as quickly as some had hoped. “There are specific paint colors and types that you have to use on every wall… so we have to get that info from the district before we paint it over and maintenance is in the process of doing that.”

Unfortunately, this can’t happen immediately, but once it does, the walls will be painted over when graffiti goes up. “What we’re trying to do is get a system where, somebody on staff is regularly ready to do the painting so that as soon as it goes up, we can paint over it immediately; ideally that’s the best mitigation strategy.” The plan is to make sure that graffiti never lingers on the walls so that it doesn’t detract from the school experience. Mr. Gilken explains why graffiti is a problem: “The line between art and graffiti is very blurry… personally… I don’t mind it in some venues, but this is our school, and… we all work really hard every day to make this as productive an educational experience as possible. In some ways, the tagging on the walls… it takes away from that. Here it’s something that we can’t tolerate; we can’t have that.” To the culprit(s), he says “Just… Please stop.”

Anonymous Interview: