Administration to crackdown on posters and chalk messages

The chalk messages scrawled across the SIUC pavements advertising everything from keg parties to the Women's Rugby club will now come with a penalty, University officials said Monday. The chancellor's office, in conjunction with both the Student Development Office and Physical Plant, will begin to strictly enforce a policy that requires student organizations that use the campus as their canvas to clean up their messes.

Since the completion of the new pedestrian overpass by Brush Towers in September, the bridge has been plastered with flyers. The posters leave behind a sticky residue, which is hard to remove, from both tape and spray glue, administrators said. Cathy Hagler, executive director of administration, said it costs $60 a day just to remove the signs off of Plexiglas on the overpass, a cost that does not reflect lifting tape marks and glue deposit as well as cleaning other areas of campus.

"It takes time to clean that off and that takes away from what we should be spending money on," Hagler said. According to University policy, posters, flyers, signs or other materials should not be posted, nailed, taped or stapled to any interior or exterior including windows or doors of University buildings, light posts, sidewalks, telephone poles, trees, trash bins or overpasses.

Hagler said the Physical Plant will also now take down all flyers that are not removed in a timely manner and log the names of the organizations or entities that put them up. Then, at the beginning of every month, the organization will be billed from Hagler's office for the price of the cleanup. Scott Pike, superintendent of building maintenance, said the Physical Plant spends up to two hours a day sometimes cleaning just the overpass. He said his crew, some of whom are paid $30 an hour, is bogged down with some of the poster cleanup work.

Pike said there has not been chalk on the sidewalks this semester, but wiping away chalk requires a power washer. The equipment takes large amounts of energy to use and drains a lot of water, he said Hagler said students should use the areas they have specifically marked for posting, like bulletin boards in hallways and the concrete structures in front of Faner Hall and near the Life Science II Building.

The policy was created more than a decade ago to combat sloppy posting, but enforcement has been lax. Katie Sermersheim, the Undergraduate Student Government and the Inter-greek adviser, said in the eight years she has been at SIUC, students have never been taken to task for their actions. However, she said, now students will pay for their messy behavior. "Obviously, somebody has to pay for the clean up," Sermersheim said. "People know they shouldn't be doing it."

Chancellor Walter Wendler said the posters that have engulfed the newly fitted glass on the overpass creates the image of a sloppy campus. "It looks terrible already," Wendler said. "We are trying not to have to waste any more money."