Just days after writing the famous “Mean Girls” catch-phrase “You go Glen Coco” with sticky notes on their dorm room window, three SF State roommates were shocked to find out their window art struck a chord with students, topping out at 187 likes on an SF State Facebook page.
These dorm window displays have created a forum where students can communicate and strengthen the bonds forged in on-campus housing.
From the first night when the three roommates — Emma Lindberg, Veronica Macias and Michelle Withrow — put up the “Mean Girls” phrase, they recalled hearing people yell up to their window, often repeating the phrase or variations such as, “You go Village C” and saw multiple people stopping to take pictures.
“We didn’t ever think it would get that much of a response,” said Lindberg, a 20-year-old political science major. “I think it (window art) adds life to the dorms. It makes it not so serious.”
Another set of residents in The Village at Centennial Square has already changed their art three times this semester after experiencing a new way to meet peers across the way.
Angel Suarez, a 17-year-old undeclared freshman, was visiting his friends’ dorm when he noticed that the window across the way put up a reaction to their sticky note design.
“We were setting up Mario (on the window) when people in another window wrote ‘Hey,’” Suarez said. Suarez’s friends wrote “hello” back, and after further dialogue, headed over to the dorm that was interacting with them across the way.
“For us it’s mainly a way to communicate,” said 18-year-old marine biology major Rachel Weinberg, who lives in the dorm that invited Suarez’s group to come over. “I think window art is community building.”
Weinberg said that some of her peers on campus recognized through conversation that her dorm had the Pac-Man window.
“It’s kind of a way to meet people even though it’s kind of roundabout,” Weinberg said.
Not all window art is as innocent. One window depicts a figure defecating while others have suggestive phrases such as “Let’s get nasty” and “Touch me.”
“Some people, you pass their rooms and you just think they are really raunchy,” said freshman and apparel design major Alex Lumbang, whose room has a sticky note image of a mooninite from the Adult Swim cartoon “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”
Russell Crespen, president of the residential housing office, said that as far as he knows, there are no restrictions to having window art on campus. He enjoys it when students put sticky note art on their windows.
“There are some cases of window art that I think are really cool and I see people smile when they get the references.”
Since posting their “Mean Girls” quote, Lindberg, Macias and Withrow established a connection with some upstairs neighbors, who put “so fetch” on their own window.
Although the neighbors don’t really know each other, 19-year-old resident Hanna Wolff said that they have since established a connection.
“We have no idea who the people are downstairs, but it has kind of brought us together,” Wolff said.
Lindberg, Macias and Withrow have already changed their window art to a phrase from the HBO series “Girls” and have two sticky notes full of further ideas.
“There’s a definite pressure to keep it up now,” Withrow said
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