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This university [Oregon State] has a strong liberal presence. You might remember that The Insurgent student newspaper at the U of O (in Eugene, 40 minutes away) printed pornographic drawing of Jesus Christ about a year ago. This was lauded by some here at OSU. The university has a very strong gay presence (with pride week, featuring "lube olympics" and other vile events). Despite the secularism and liberalism, the Catholic students here are pretty cool.
Well, some friends of mine got the idea to "Saint bomb" campus. Using chalk, hundreds of Catholic Saint names were written all over campus last week. This was done during perhaps the busiest week of spring term. Many events took place this week on the Quad. The Genocide Awareness Project came to the quad, drawing a large number of people. The "Snow in the Quad" (put on by the Protestant apparel designer CIVIL) came to set up the next day. The Relay for Life event happened at night on the quad, which meant hundreds of students were walking by Saint names nonstop all night long. We also used chalk to advertise Mass times. Lots of exposure for the Church!
Here are two videos documenting this event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yaAM5IpLqU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amsW6p13ofE
The Newman Center had a booth set up inside the Memorial Union building with a "Find your Saint" computer set up. Some non-Catholics came by to find their Saints. Other Catholics who haven't been to Church for a while saw their confirmation Saint name on the ground. Other Catholics got a lot of joy to see the names and to see Christ's presence in a tangible form on campus. And some others were annoyed at the audacity of these students.
We are trying to get more exposure to this project, so if you'd like to link to this video, please do! We'd like to see others get this idea, and maybe do it at their campus, to remind wayward Catholics of their roots and to show a strong presence of Faith! The response we've gotten from people around the community has been amazing, and the priests loved it!
One more thing to note... we got permission from the Memorial Union (the student union on campus) as well as the Church before doing this. Tip O' The Hat to Amy at Open Book
Well, kids, there are a lot of sidewalks at the U of MN and a lot of other secular and dissident colleges around here. Ask for "Railroad Chalk" when you contact your office supply store! It comes in yellow and white only. 1.5" thick and much cheaper than artists' chalk.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting this on your blog. I'm the one you see in the videos.
About the Chalk:
My friends actually made the chalk, I think using plaster of Paris. It stuck down on the concrete very firmly. It rains often here, so it wasn't stuck down forever, but if it is dry where you live, and you make your own super industrial strength chalk like we did, you can expect it to stay down for up to two weeks, or until it rains, and then some. There is still chalk down in areas of campus here that don't get wet from the rain, even fragments left where it does rain. Any chalk will work. It's a bit funny, because some people came by to write negative comments in their own chalk, but their chalk would rub off after a day, while ours was on until it rained. We had about 50 pounds of chalk before we started and used most of it. Plus, you only need three dedicated people, but the more the merrier.
We really would love to see this take place at another campus. If you can get this going at U of MN, I hope you can video tape it and put it on youtube like we did. That would be awesome, and you could help inspire other campuses to follow suit.
If you'd like to know anything more about this project, email me at:
vogenbga --(at)-- engr.orst.edu
Thanks,
Garrett Vogenbeck
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