TCNJ

20 The College of New Jersey Magazine THESE HALLOWED HALLS " MAY 1980, 6TH FLOOR WOLFE. A mural had been started, most likely by a hallmate who didn't return after the first semester. Our RA told us the mural had to be completed. We knew we had zero art talent, so we just painted a quote from Konstantin Josef Jireček: 'We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.'" — Lisa Diamante Petrino '84 (in the middle) For close to half a century, student-painted murals in campus residence halls have turned blank cinderblock walls into often colorful snapshots of life and times at the college. While the tradition is most celebrated in the towers of Travers/Wolfe, where almost every inch of wall space in each of the 10-story buildings has been touched by student art, student expression has spilled into other residence halls, too. We recently took a walk down those halls and stumbled upon movies seen on VHS tapes, a bunch of bananas, and someone's oddly specific inside joke from 1999. And while trends (and the buildings themselves) may come and go, the tradition holds: leaving your mark on the residence hall walls is a rite of passage that hasn't gone out of style. WORDS EMiLY W. DODD MURAL PHOTOS ANTHONY DEPRiMO TCNJ's walls talk, and they tell stories of student life: the enduring friendships, love, loss, and cultural consumption.

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