Christina VarvisAdorning the façade of the University LRT station shelter alongside HUB is a bank of dispensers for various magazines and newspapers. Off to its side is a lonely blue box belonging to everyone’s favourite campus newspaper: The Gateway.
The box, with its plastic kicked in, graffiti-covered sides, and collection of garbage and Metros inside, is in a sad state. The once pristine altar to the joyous chronicle of student life stands desecrated. Who could do this? Who could stand to vandalize the proud blue paper rack, the unoffending and useful piece of public information?
The ground rules of a newspaper box are fairly straightforward: open the bin, take a paper and move on with your day. Nowhere in those instructions, you may notice, have I advocated the brisk driving of a solid object through the clear plexiglass window of the otherwise metal box. Some individual(s), however, has taken it upon themselves to do exactly that. For the sake of belief in the public good, let’s say this broken window was some unfortunate mistake. Perhaps someone was so enthusiastic about picking up a paper they drove their hand into the box, forgetting to lift open the door. What mistake, then, can explain away the silver tags of graffiti on top of and along the box? Has this blue box been mistaken for a public whiteboard? Is its blue top too similar to that of a garbage can that people are unable to use the proper receptacle, which sits only feet away?
All I want to ask the vandals is this: would you treat your own sweet, innocent paper dispenser the same way? Shame on you. Shame.
