For one week near the end of April, a student-produced banner hung in the second-floor window of the University Center. It featured a familiar, bespectacled face staring out over Fifth Avenue, with large letters proclaiming: “Thank You Snowden.”
The banner was the work of students in Trebor Scholz’s Global Media Activism class. Robin Graven-Milne, a senior liberal arts major in the class, says the project wasn’t a class assignment, and it wasn’t even Professor Scholz’s suggestion. Rather, the idea grew organically among all the students as they learned about mass surveillance and about the concept of linkability—particularly how the government can use phone records, instant messages, debit card transactions, and other data to paint an accurate picture of a person’s day-to-day activity.
Graven-Milne says the goal was “to get people talking, even the people who don’t go to our school.” The banner was also a way to signify “our autonomy as students and our ownership of the University Center.” To that end, nobody in the class asked the New School administration for permission to hang the banner.
The students had bandied around several ideas for a political demonstration. They considered hanging posters around campus, or even decorating rooftop water towers as all-seeing eyes.
Caio Sorrentino, a Design and Tech major at Parsons, came up with the idea of using Rasterbator to create one giant image out of a collection of smaller tiles. He incorporated suggestions from the class, and votes were held for the final design. The students purchased tape and tarps and created social media accounts. Sorrentino estimates the whole project took between 15 and 20 hours from conception to completion.
The students gathered at 7 A.M. on April 27th to assemble the pieces. The banner consisted of 448 sheets of 11×8 paper, taped together in a rectangle that spanned eight of the balcony’s windows. A corresponding mission statement was hung in the hallway and circulated online. It read, in part:
Today, we must not let [Edward Snowden’s] valor be in vain. We must redouble our efforts to end unconstitutional mass surveillance that is costly and does more harm than good. It is our responsibility as Americans and as global citizens to reject such unjust practices of our government. Accordingly, we oppose the re-authorization of Section 215 of the Patriot Act as well as other bills that ensure continued and far-reaching mass surveillance.
Section 215 currently allows the government to collect phone call records of every person in the U.S. “People didn’t understand the extent of the Patriot Act until Snowden’s leaks,” said Graven-Milne.
Neither Graven-Milne or Sorrentino heard any feedback from the New School administration, however on May 2 the banner was removed. By that point, images of it had been shared many times via Twitter and Instagram, and a popular Reddit post resulted in nearly 200,000 views.
So what’s next for the banner-builders? Graven-Milne says several classmates are hashing out ideas for a student group, the goal of which would be to help people improve their digital hygiene. Caio pictures the group as a way to teach other students about online surveillance: “We want to provide an extended discussion,” he says. “The poster [was] cool. Hopefully it brought some attention to the issue.”
Inquiries about the group can be sent to gravr951@newschool.edu. And to learn more about the protest against Section 215, visit www.fight215.org.