Editors note: The accompanying art with this story was altered by the writer. It is not meant to offend anyone pictured.
Having almost completely forgotten that this week is Spring 2005 class registration time, I scurried into the campus post office on Thursday to grab a free class schedule guide filled with yet another semesters worth of surprises.
The class schedule book is like a great big bag of secrets, the kinds of classes to be offered only alluded to until then – the time one sees all of the answers to their next semesters questions and concerns piled high atop a long insta-fold table near where sororities normally distribute candy to the needy college student.
If I had any worries about what special topics classes were to be offered next semester, I could only be happy that I had the new Schedule of Classes book safely in my little brown hands, each page turned slowly that I may contemplate what joys or woes my next crop of classes could hold for me in 2005. Hmm, ENGL 3128-001 Pacific Rim Literature. Sounds interesting.
Another well kept secret about the Schedule of Classes book also happens to be the first thing that we see as soon as we grab one from the top of the pile – the cover imagery. Former student of graphic design and nerd that I am, much of my excitement about the upcoming semester has to do with the anxious wait for new imagery to represent the semester that is soon to be. The inclusion of photos showing the jubilant faces of graduating students in cap and gown is a brilliant choice for cover art, as it gives students hope for the near or oh-so-distant future. This is you walking to class. This can be you … graduating.
Not only do these carefully designed covers show a wide range of students, they exist as historical accounts of contemporary college life, letting the student body know what a part of its student body looks like, if they didn’t already know of course. I have many a time sat on a grassy knoll and read aloud from books with all of my multicultural friends. In blue jeans and ETSU sweatshirts we learn from one another, and we know we are the future of the world. OK, not really. Only in my ETSU Schedule of Classes cover page dreams.
It is interesting to note that even though I have held these idealistic views of college in my head for so long, I continue to deface the faces of secondary education. Yep, that’s me the “bad guy.” The same one that Scarface drunkenly described himself as after having made a scene in a fancy restaurant.
I am confessing. I have smeared the sweet visages of our scholastic youth with black ink for as long as I can remember. The problem really started when I was a freshman in high school, a fresh-faced Topper, whose only reaction to the first day of school was to graffiti the cover of my own student handbook.
Maywa Montenegro looks peaceful in a bindi, extra eyelashes and black lipliner, but with the rest of the gang, I stuffed my inhibitions in my locker and went at it with a black pen.
There was no hope for the SGA President Whitney Bailey, seated in the foreground. She ended up with only two teeth, a crop of greasy black hair, a dog collar and a large Enrique Iglesias mole.
This realization of a long-term habit has come about as a result of seeing the cover of our latest Schedule of Classes book, devoid of any students on the cover. It made me think of myself and my terrible tendency to embellish the faces of the innocent for my own sick pleasure. It felt strange to me to see the jumbles of text – cloned typographic identities of our alma mater – but no students.
I felt the need to see students so that I could artistically imagine them with mustaches and marks of the beast on their foreheads.
As far as artistic creativity is concerned, blackening out teeth is the easiest thing to do, rating its difficulty on a scale of one to 10 most likely a two.
Although it was a very bad thing to do, my masterpiece of student handbook graffiti is the cross-dressing Hitler look, rated an eight on the difficulty scale, scoring extra points for a unique approach and careful consideration to detail. That was brilliant. No offense to the guy in cargo shorts and sneakers, whoever you are. I am sure you are a really great person.
I have dedicated a large chunk of my undergraduate education to art. I am an artist, yet the exposure of this kind of doodling may very well leave me scorned and loathed in the department of art and design, without any friends, dirty, beaten up and huddling in a corner with only the rough end of a broken paintbrush to protect me.
Aside from my inability to “stop” when I have both an ink pen and free publication with random images of students on the cover, the art I make is for good, not evil. I simply can’t imagine anyone understanding why I would draw someone a piggy nose when in reality they have a normal nose, or why I would give a pretty girl tufts of chest hair, or a college undergrad lacy black skivvies.
I have consistently done this type of mustache art in an automatic fashion, without thinking about it.
Somewhere in my subconscious modestly dressed young men wear lingerie and don Hitler mustaches. Young women that smile and reveal their pearly whites are missing two or three teeth, and unladylike words and thoughts of the clean cut student in print are seamlessly articulated in speech bubbles, courtesy of yours truly.
So, “What do you really think of your ETSU peers?” one might ask. Well, I think that they are great people – nice, good-natured ladies and gents undeserving of extra facial hair and underpants over their clothes.
I don’t know what the future of ETSU publications will bring, but women’s underwear has no place on the cover of the Schedule of Classes book. I’m also pretty sure most ETSU students have all of their teeth.
It is with this confession that I apologize to the highest ranking members of the SGA at Science Hill High School 1996-97, and to those on the cover of ETSU’s Schedule of Classes, the young man in the lingerie in particular.
I’ve been a bad, bad girl.

Author