Controversial propaganda posters representing Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC)’s Office of Residential Life as a totalitarian state led the Res Life office to temporarily remove overnight guest visitation at the dormitories, according to Jenifer Campbell.

Campbell, director of Residential Life at FCLC, said that there was a series of three posters posted, but she only described two of them. One poster said, “Res Life is watching you,” playing off the Big Brother theme. Another showed Darth Vader with the words “We’re Watching,” and the Office of Residential Life printed below it. These posters were strategically placed around the building, but not on the main floor where security cameras are heavily equipped.

On Sept. 16, a Resident Assistant (RA) on duty was doing routine rounds on the floor when the flyers were first discovered posted around the dormitories in McMahon Hall. The different posters were immediately taken down and the RA contacted the Resident Director. From there, security took the report and notified Res Life about this incident, which prompted Res Life to also take away overnight passes the weekend of Sept. 17-18. “Visitation is a privilege, not a right,” Campbell said.

Keith Eldredge, dean of students at FCLC, said that he was “definitely surprised” upon hearing about this situation, and said, “In some ways I consider this a minor act of vandalism. This type of behavior doesn’t happen at this campus very often, and I try not to be judgmental, but I am surprised and discouraged.”

In addition, Eldredge said that it is always easier to put an opinion out, especially on the Internet and in blogs, while remaining anonymous. He said that he prefers these individuals step up and speak about their issues because, “rarely do you get the same hostility through the phone.”

Campbell said that the removal of the overnight passes for the weekend was a strategy for the office to find out more information from others who may have leads. She said, “Sometimes when other rights get taken away, we find out information from folks about the incident.”

Eldredge also said, “We wanted to put an appropriate level of pressure on the whole so that [the vandals] can recognize that their action affects other people.”

However, some students believed that taking away everyone’s common privileges is not effective.

“When we are not treated like adults, we won’t really want to act like adults,” Daniel Rooney, FCLC ’12, said. “I don’t know what the best way to handle this situation would be, but I don’t think punishing the whole student body is the right thing either.”

Rooney said that he first saw the posters on the 12th floor of McMahon Hall. “I don’t think a freshman would come all the way up to the higher floors just to send out this message.”

He said that he was not surprised by the posters, but rather his initial reaction was that it was funny. “I think everyone who dorms at this school probably encountered some kind of trouble with Res Life. A lot of people get aggravated by them so there would be a lot of suspects.”

Tyler Wilson, FCLC’ 12, also felt the posters were funny. “They were a little bit overwrought in terms of correlating Nazism and Res Life faculty,” Wilson said. He also said that he doesn’t think the posters are wrong because “they’re not hurting anyone.” In regards to the removal of overnight passes, he said, “Why punish everyone for something one or a small group of people did? It’s not that serious.”

As of Sept. 29, Campbell said that they are still working on the case. Res Life has evidence leading to a responsible party, but the identity has not been released.

“We try to have conversations with students about rules associated to the building and we are open to having these conversations to anyone with concerns,” Campbell said.

Eldredge concluded, “Clearly we’re not doing an effective job. So we need to work on finding out what else we need to do when students need help.” He said that, in the future, he would like feedback from Residence Halls Association (RHA) so that they can help improve the communication and exploration of grievances.