Dartmouth senior art majors and a wide range of administrators and faculty members met last night to try to understand how Friday's devastating vandalism of the art department's studio affected its targets -- as people, students and artists.
The evening was marked by the students' widespread belief that the only person or people who could have committed the vandalism were those within the department, and, more than that, those with an understanding of art.
The placement of clay pieces in the sculpture studio tool room, the fact that the vandal knew minute details of where studio art majors' work was kept, the way he or she appears to have entered the studio and the choice of using yellow paint -- the color that the sculpture department uses to mark its equipment -- to mark the work all contributed to this feeling.
"It was the expression of someone close to us, by an artist," said studio art senior major Laura Tepper '02. "A profound act was committed. It was not vandalism as such. Vandalism does not do it justice."
During the meeting, students struggled to express how the vandalism has affected them. Some did not speak. Many emphasized the idea that it was not the loss of their individual works that affected them most.
The idea that the vandalism came from within the department -- and so in some ways the act may have come from a "systemic" problem, as one student put it -- contributed to students' confusion about how to react.
Quang Truong '01, a studio art intern, compared the vandalism to a medical condition, saying "A certain extreme element of ourselves came under duress, and something snapped ... It's not something you can pick up weapons against. How do you fix an aneurysm?"
Some students seemed to feel they could almost even identify with the vandal.
"This is an internal thing -- something we can all relate to as artists and as people," Lauren Reichenbach '02 said. "In a way, it's like you did it."
Senior art major Anna Macdonald '02 said she could relate to becoming "too used to expressing yourself in art. It's important to verbalize, too."
Reichenbach pointed out that Dartmouth students deal with an unhealthy amount of stress, often without giving it much thought.
Truong mentioned that he had felt tension within the department earlier this year. Several individuals mentioned a lack of space in the studio buildings as a possible contributing factor.
"The way I see it, it kind of makes sense," Matt Jones '02 said of the vandalism. He added, "But no rational mind would have done it."
Some studio art senior majors expressed interest in making a piece of artwork as a group.
After the meeting, a group of senior art majors expressed frustration with the administration's response. Specifically, they felt administrators had overemphasized the amount or material value of the work lost and were too focused on students putting the incident behind them and returning to work.
During the meeting, Safety and Security Sergeant Lauren Cummings '72 said that the investigation, which is now under the control of the Hanover Police Department, was "making strong progress."
He said that police had found "good fingerprints" all over the crime scene, including on the clay pieces in the tool room.
Also, Cummings said investigators' discovery of photographs in waste receptacles led him to suspect that some of the work that was missing from the studio was thrown away and not stolen. He has sealed off a dumpster that he hopes may contain more student work, and will search it later this week.
Cummings also detailed increased security measures for the studio. A Safety and Security officer has been posted indefinitely to guard the studio at night,locks and door combinations have been changed, and Safety and Security patrols of the area will increase in the future.
Other administrators offered various forms of support, from counseling services to help rearranging work loads in other courses.
Senior art majors were going to be assessed by this week as part of their evaluation. This has been cancelled, according to department chair Colleen Randall. There will be a studio art major show in the spring.
