Sunday April 17, 2016 anyone driving up the hill to Gustavus would have been able to see clearly that something was off as the main entrance sign had been spray painted with what appeared to be red hearts and smiley faces. By noon much of the campus became aware not only of the damage to the sign, but to vandalism on much of the Gustavus property as disseminated through the social media group Overheard at Gustavus.

The vandalism was widespread with spray paint damaging the main entrance sign on the Hill, North Hall, Lund Center, the Jackson Campus Center, Rundstrom Hall, Schaefer Fine Arts Center, and Pittman Hall. A Campus Safety Officer first noticed the vandalism at 7am on Sunday morning, and Physical Plant Director Warren Wunderlich was informed of it first things Monday morning.

In addition to the vandalism this weekend there were two vehicle incidents. Some students reported someone doing donuts in the grass behind the SouthWest Apartments Friday night, and reckless driving Saturday Night.

“There were two different incidents involving vehicles.  One on Friday night, one on Saturday.  The one on Friday involved a student that cut a corner and hit the curb.  The one on Saturday involved a non-student driving on the grass near the College Street entrance,” Director of Campus Safety Carol Brewer said.

Just while things don’t seem as crazy as they appear, vandalism and this kind of behaviour isn’t all that unusual for this time of year.

“In my experience, we tend to see more of it in the spring when the weather starts to get nicer,” Brewer said.

Many students found the vandalism immature and a nuisance, noting that it would take days to remove, cost money to remove, and defaced and degraded the beautiful campus. The last point of particular woe with the prevalence of high school students visiting campus this time of year.

“We haven’t totaled up the time spent yet, but I suspect that this episode will run in the $400 to $600 range,” Wunderlich said.

Wunderlich informed me that in his twenty-four years of experience here vandalism hasn’t been a major problem, although he does believe there has been more damage from spray paint the past two year than the twenty years prior to that .

“Prior to the past two years, I would estimate that we have had an average of one spray paint “tag” per year,” Wunderlich said.

As to how the cost of this kind of damage is handled, it falls well under the deductible amount of the school’s insurance and thus falls into Physical Plant’s budget although they don’t have specific budget line for vandalism. With damage being relatively small, Campus Safety also has notified police but no report has been filed.

“It is in our protocol to involve the police if property damage is valued at $500 or greater or if we have an identified suspect,” Brewer said.

Many students wonder if the vandalism was caused by a peer at the College or a non-student, but Campus Safety doesn’t have enough information to identify either way.

And while a widespread tagging like this only cost $400-$600 to repair, these kinds of incidents add up over time.

“Last year, there were 35 instances that incurred about $4000 in repairs.  This year, through March, there have been 26 instances incurring about $1700 in repairs.  In both totals, a incidence like this last one would be counted just once, even though there were multiple “tags”, or locations,” Wunderlich said.