Photos vary, dating from August 2023 to December 2024.
I’m on winter break and cleared out the backlog of articles, so to kill some more free time here’s another post. I was originally going to sandwich this one into Knowlton’s entry, but after mulling over how much yapping I plan on doing in that one, I figured I should at least attempt to make it more readable and air out all my thoughts on this subject separately without worrying about length. This will be a more “meta” post, where I write more than I have photos. (Stay tuned for more of these in the future, but much of my website’s entries will still be photo-dominated.)
Knowlton Hall’s graffiti was one of those things I kind of took for granted until it was gone. I never really considered it worth taking pictures of, beyond the odd quirky ones I found entertaining, and as a result I can count on one hand the amount of photos I have of the graffiti before its removal. The whole issue has become a gigantic debacle within the Knowlton administration and community, something I find very odd considering that this is the same school that wants to teach you to break the rules and think outside the box. Since this website is in no way affiliated with Ohio State or Knowlton, I can tell things exactly how they are, without worrying about the overreach of the faculty.
History
Since the very nature of graffiti is taboo and underground, there’s no “John Herrick write-up” documenting the history of Knowlton’s stairwells. I’m using Knowlton’s student magazine One:Twelve as a source for a lot of the history, but some of it is also anecdotal, based on my notes from Mack Scogin Merrill Elam’s Baumer lecture and the school’s panel discussions about this topic. Therefore, take all of this information with a grain of salt, and I welcome corrections in the comments.
Graffiti in the Knowlton stairwells goes back many years, probably back to the building’s opening in 2004. The messaging varied, sometimes being motivational, playful, or even just for expression’s sake. One:Twelve’s article has some examples of the lighter graffiti at the beginning. My photos include the kind I found to be funny or interesting:
A poem (brightened):
“I don’t need luck”... this one made a reappearance on the later butcher paper:
Underside of the stairs, pre-removal:
My personal favorite…this one kept me going during my long Knowlton nights:
One:Twelve mentions the racist and antisemitic graffiti found in Hitchcock Hall in 2022, which was sort of a precursor, but the real catalyst to Knowlton’s graffiti removal was the pro-Palestinian messages that began to appear after October 2023. At first, only the messages that affirmed Palestine were painted over (in this harsh orange paint):
(One:Twelve)
After new pro-Palestinian graffiti was written over the orange paint, Knowlton’s then-director sent an email to the students in December 2023, stating that all of the graffiti would be removed and security cameras would be installed in the stairwells. This was met with harsh backlash by students, which was generally blown off by administration. It was made painfully clear that though student expression was allowed and encouraged, the stairwells would no longer be the place to do so.
Things quieted down after the initial uproar, but students were still planning an outlet. Knowlton Society, the school’s newest student organization, was founded as a direct response to the graffiti removal in spring 2024. Their president sought to reclaim that lost method of student expression in a more organized manner, as opposed to the disordered backlash that was occurring previously.
The wiring for the cameras before their installation.
The discussion roared right back into the spotlight after Mack Scogin Merrill Elam’s Baumer lecture. I was in attendance and took notes. A One:Twelve writer asked them: “...what were your original intentions for the stairwells?” Scogin simply replied, “To put things on them.” The listeners erupted with applause. Another student involved with Knowlton Society asked a more blunt question, along the lines of “What are your thoughts on the restriction of Knowlton’s intended usage [balconies] and the surveillance of student activity?” Scogin and Elam affirmed the previous statement, and encouraged the students to fight back and that the urge to write on walls is natural, appearing in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece. Naturally everyone was pleased but the administration, and as I looked over I saw lots of shaking heads and facepalming in the peanut gallery. I guess it didn’t occur to them that the two old farts needed to be programmed not to badmouth Knowlton’s administration, but these were the same people basically getting on their knees for Scogin and Elam prior to the beginning of the lecture. You’re bringing in the architects who designed Knowlton Hall of all places, how did you think they were going to respond?
An immediate response to the lecture was butcher paper taped up to the stairwells within the next few days, which featured many of the previous messages. I myself put up a quote from Mack Scogin and flipped the nearby camera the bird after, which was rather cathartic. Two of these posters stood, the earlier one lasting about a week and the later one two weeks. Apparently, the trumped-up reasoning for their removal is that it’s a “fire hazard”... located inside concrete stairwells, which are literally designed to be the fireproof parts of a building. (Knowlton is also framed in concrete and steel, not wood. Seriously, you’re trying to tell the architecture majors that a single sheet of paper is a fire hazard?)
Knowlton Society concurrently encouraged the marking of other surfaces across Knowlton, including the glass windows and walls outside the stairwells. This art lasted a little longer, about three weeks to a month, until it was likewise removed after the administration caught wind of the dry-erase markers being left out for anyone to write things.
One:Twelve put up posters with links for their article, which had the “THIS WALL IS NOT FOR ARTWORK.” text on it and empty space for people to write beneath. Some of these posters are still on the walls, even in the stairwells, but Knowlton’s staff is not fond of them. Right now, this is the only method of expression reminiscent of graffiti that is available to students, and it will likely not remain that way for long.
The current position of the administration is that the stairwells will remain barren and monitored, and students must find a way to express themselves elsewhere that is impermanent (so that anything undesirable can be removed) and relatively clandestine (so that the area can be avoided during tours of the building for prospective students/rich donors).
My Thoughts
Regarding the graffiti’s existence, since that may sound outlandish to non-Knowlton students, I have heard anecdotally that Harvard’s architecture building famously has graffiti in its stairwells as well. Since architecture is a discipline based on precedent, there is one for this situation as well.
The entire reason the stairwell graffiti was removed was that people started writing pro-Palestinian messages, and that conflicted with Ohio State’s financial interests, so it was removed.
There is nothing more to it.
You may have noticed that I am using the terms “pro-Palestinian” and “affirming Palestine,” because that was exactly what this graffiti said. It was not antisemitic, like the earlier Hitchcock Hall graffiti, because criticizing the actions of the state of Israel and Zionism is not an act of antisemitism. It is about defending the victims of genocide and opening the eyes of the general public to the atrocities that are being committed there. The moment I saw the first “FREE GAZA” message in the stairwell, I knew it would be a matter of time before it all came down.
As you should be familiar by now, Ohio State receives a lot of its money from interests that support the state of Israel, and in so doing condones (and arguably enables) the genocide that Israel is actively committing. The heavy strides that the college is taking to suppress any criticism of this activity is very telling of where its priorities lie. For example, having snipers on top of the Union during a pro-Palestinian protest earlier this year. And this is nothing new.
Within Knowlton itself, I am very disappointed with the way that the situation is being handled. Administration continues to condescend to its students and will not budge on restoring the student voice that has been lost. Knowlton’s professors are generally in agreement with the students, but the higher-ups above them are the ones who make the decisions. It is very clear that student expression will no longer be allowed, unless it is through a method that the administration can monitor, alter, or expunge as they please.
The constant surveillance in the stairwells is Orwellian. There is something so defeating about being conspicuously watched every time one ascends or descends the stairs; that the urge to quell this graffiti is much more important to the university than personal freedom and existing as someone who isn’t just a cog in the capitalist machine. (Although Knowlton does encourage designing in the minimalist, Corbusian language of architecture, so maybe that’s not too far out of character.) Ohio State has around 4000 cameras on its campus, but many of these are placed in areas that are generally out of public view (e.g. atop buildings), and as a result this feeling only persists within Knowlton’s stairs. Additionally, a lot of female students are bringing up the fact that they still feel unsafe at night or when they are alone in the building; and there are still no cameras in studio spaces, where rampant theft and safety issues occur. Ohio State is also well-known for its poor safety, but I’m happy to see that we’re funneling the department’s money to where it really matters!
It’s hard not to take a defeatist attitude towards the situation, because I think most people know full well that nothing is going to change, and Knowlton and Ohio State are set in their ways when it comes to this issue. This was painfully obvious to me during the panel discussion the administration held a few weeks back about the graffiti. My fellow students and I are doing what we can to try and fight this, but at present things look pretty bleak.
I think this will be a post I come back to and edit if more information comes out, the situation changes, or just adding more thoughts of mine as they come to mind. I also welcome any constructive comments below. Thanks for reading.
Sources:
https://onetwelveksa.substack.com/p/retelling-the-history-of-knowltons
https://library.osu.edu/site/dissent/
https://dps.osu.edu/news/2023/04/04/news-increased-surveillance-helps-solve-campus-crimes
