The Vandals’ Legacy
In early 5th Century, a group of germanic invaders founded the notorious Empire of the Vandals in Northern Europe. They were wild, angry and ignorant to rules as they oppressed orthodox churches, destroyed walls of great cities, and spoiled anything beautiful and venerable on their enslaved lands. But in 534 AD, Emperor Justinianus of Rome defeated their army, eradicating and proclaiming them as dusts of oblivion. Despite being swiped off, a roman bishop in 1794 coined their inglorious honor into Europe’s vocabulary, as any ruthless destruction of artwork. This barbaric group’s legacy from then on became a fatal virus, inflicting its kiss of death from country to country.
Fast forward to the 21st Century.
The infamous “Vandalism” now a household name became a pandemic, smashing window panes, slashing tires, ransacking properties, defacing signs, etc. Whether it is an art or a crime, vandalism sabotages not just private and public properties but also a naïve soul’s dignity, living entities and epitomes of art and of history. Years pass by and it continues to crawl until it penetrated to the walls of pedestal of knowledge—the academe. In schools, the culprits pronounced into the limelight are not car smashers, window shatters or sculpture breakers but unsung frustrated artists and writers of a politically expressive generation. From the coasts of Europe, the Vandals’ legacy reached its paramount multiplying through fissions worldwide. The fissions were so fast that it landed drastically to our own turf too—to our dearest school, CSA-B.
From linguistic wraths on CRs, sweet nothings on armchairs, naughty cheats on classroom walls, phone number brigades on laboratory tables, to library books turned personalized textbooks; vandalism has been part of the CSA-B culture for years. On girls CRs, cubicle doors had become chat rooms of love notes, racy hate notes, narcissistic declarations, nasty gossips, and sarcastic comments. Boys CRs have curses and disturbing statements as well. Armchairs and walls had become venues of different contest genre from “emo” poem writing contests to song writing contests, from armchair design contests to longest cheats contests, and from i-hate-this-subject/this-subject-is-boring contests to hi-hello-I’m contests.
Laboratory and canteen tables and school benches also had become directories for mobile phone numbers, hate mails, and open letters. Library books were also victims as students tend to scribble down side-notes and some unrelated stuffs on book pages. Some students were even stubborn enough to photocopy that they would just tear book pieces. No matter how you see this known pandemic as a tiny bit or an alarming one, vandalism indeed has been lurking on our school grounds since whoever knows.
Why is “such” a hit? Well, committing something bad and illegal feels actually good right? Students often could not put their pen-loving hands away from shiny, shimmering and newly painted armchairs, doors and walls simply because their impulses seek to be acknowledged. But if freedom of expression is the only cause, why not join school organizations or be involved in school activities that would surely exercise one’s potentials and would serve as an ear for student views and voices? Or is it just plain boredom on a typical boring day on a boring subject of a boring teacher? Instead of scrabbling down nonsense on your armchair, why not make your untouched notebook of use by jotting down notes? Just curious on how it feels like doing it? Well honey, your curiosity is up to no good. Are your hands itching to respond on a pretty darn interesting statement made by nobody? How about responding on that pretty darn interesting statement made by nobody, a no-show by rubbing it off?
Our school handbook says vandalism is a serious offense. But why is it that no one gets punished? It’s simple. Thieves at night don’t get caught unless someone’s on guard. The problem is teachers are pre-occupied with their discussions during class hours that it’s easy for students to do it unnoticed. Yes. Been there. Done that. We admire teachers who are focused on teaching. But we will admire teachers more if they know how to multi-task by having both eyes on teaching and on disciplining students during class hours. How about the school’s action? One word. Repaint. But it would be much better if instead of repainting school properties to mask a layer of vandalism for the nth time, the school would post warning signs on CR doors, walls and designated places where students could at least read and realize that vandalism is actually no joke. You see, wild grasses won’t come off big time unless you pull their roots off.
This year, we are launching the school’s Golden Jubilee Celebration. It’s so good to hear that for fifty years, CSA-B has been an emblem of promoting quality Augustinian education to students and of instilling values of unity, love and virtue to every Augustinian heart. If our school holds such promise, we too should start the spark of change for our community and for ourselves. By starting from simple step of fighting vandalism and taking care of school properties we are moving forward for a big change, a big promise and a big step towards progress.
