Multiple BU Buildings Defaced over Hong Kong Protests

Graffiti on the CAS building spells out "Free Hong Kong"

Graffiti, like this on the College of Arts & Sciences, was scrawled on seven campus locations last week. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

Campus & Facilities

Multiple BU Buildings Defaced over Hong Kong Protests

University police seek public’s help in finding vandals

November 19, 2019
44
Twitter Facebook

After vandals defaced seven University addresses last week with messages supporting Hong Kong’s democracy protesters, the Boston University Police Department (BUPD) is asking for the public’s help in identifying those who did it. Cleaning off the paint could run to “many tens of thousands of dollars,” says Tom Daley, associate vice president for facilities management and operations.“The graffiti was of a ‘free Hong Kong’ nature,” referencing months of protests over increasing Chinese control that have rocked the Far East city, Daley says. Of the seven addresses vandalized (some BU buildings have multiple addresses), six of them were on the 700 block of Commonwealth Avenue, near the BU Bridge, including the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Law. The seventh site was BU Hillel on Bay State Road. (The damaged addresses: 700 Comm Ave, 705 Comm Ave, 725 Comm Ave, 728 Comm Ave, 735 Comm Ave, 765 Comm Ave, and 213 Bay State Rd.)

  • Graffiti on the exterior of Florence and Chafetz Hillel House, 213 Bay State Rd. reading "Save the Uyghurs"
  • A photo of graffiti reading "Liberate Hong Kong" on the exterior of Warren Towers
  • Graffiti on the exterior of Florence and Chafetz Hillel House, 213 Bay State Rd. reading "Tiananmen Square 2.0 in Hong Kong"

The reason removing the graffiti will be so costly is that the exteriors of some of the buildings are porous, absorbing the paint into the finish and requiring mechanical refinishing to remove the graffiti, Daley says.

“All incidents seem to have occurred between 2 and 4 am” on Friday, November 15, says Kelly Nee, chief of the BUPD. She requests anyone with information about the graffiti to contact her department. Anyone wishing to remain anonymous can call 617-353-6515 or text to the number 847411, which on a traditional phone pad is TIP411. Enter the keyword “BU,” then a space, then the message. Once this is done, you will no longer have to type “BU” for each message you send.

Explore Related Topics:

  • Share this story
  • 44 Comments Add

Share

Multiple BU Buildings Defaced over Hong Kong Protests

Share

  • Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 44 comments on Multiple BU Buildings Defaced over Hong Kong Protests

  2. No violence! Social responsibility! Civilization! Please!

    I embraced different values, opinions, political understandings, but some of your protests both in HK and the rest of the world are far beyond the original purposes. Are these what you called “peaceful, reasonable and nonviolent”?

    Reply
    Link

  3. They should learn from the protests against Ben Shapiro last week if they really want to express their demands properly. Sneaking into the campus at midnight and defacing public property were such disgraceful and cowardly actions.

    Reply
    Link

    1. I agree that the protests last week against Ben Shapiro were respectful and done in a great fashion, but I’m not sure that this is all too cowardly. They wanted to bring attention to some truly terrible things that are happening in Hong Kong and China, and now people are talking about it. People are in concentration camps in China, that’s what is disgraceful.

      Reply
      Link

  5. This is obviously unacceptable because it’s not only humiliating those protesters who express their demands in rational ways, but also hurting the feelings of the students and faculty of BU by disfeaturing these buildings intentionally.

    Reply
    Link

  7. This is obviously unacceptable because it’s not only humiliating those protesters who express their demands in rational ways but also hurting the feelings of the students and faculty in this college by damaging those buildings intentionally. I don’t see any sense of responsibility from those actions.

    Reply
    Link

  8. I don’t think someone eagerly wants to be heard would do such things.

    I believe most protesters are going on streets to put out a message.

    However, some extremists have misled this campaign and turned it into a playground for their long suppressed inner beasts! Please let the true voice of people stands out!

    Reply
    Link

  9. “A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realization of its desire”. – Gustave Le Bon

    The acts of those so-called “protesters” just show their ignorance at its finest.Actions will eventually lead to consequences, and they will inevitably reap what they have sown, most likely in a not so positive way.

    While the world is currently focusing on urgent matters such as climate change, we should not ignore the detrimental emerging culture of ‘whining rather than acting’ , especially from the “Snowflake Generation”. The HK youth over the past few months have set perfect examples – attention seeking and easily offended with confirmation bias when it comes to fact-checking.

    History keeps repeating itself, and we are certainly doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again, but I am truly disappointed and tired of all these recent nonsense around the world.

    Nuff said.

    Reply
    Link

      2. Really? Is it that hard for you to accept the truth or are you just willing to live in your own reality? Imagine commonwealth avenue being roadblocked, all the T stations being vandalized, and BU being built into a fortress.

        Reply
        Link

  11. These buildings have decades of history, and you put your ugly graffiti on it and make some permanent damage. This behavior is not acceptable. I don’t care about whether the Chinese government will end the one country two systems or not, IT IS NOT OUR BUSINESS. Thank you very much.

    Reply
    Link

    1. While I agree that graffiti is rarely the right thing to do, it’s very narrow-minded not to consider Hong Kong “our business.” It is very much the business of the those who attend an institute of learning and higher education to think about and talk about what is happening in Hong Kong, or anywhere else where we can learn from injustice and misuse of power. Check yourself.

      Reply
      Link

  13. BU should not clean the graffiti, as it represents core American value of freedom of speech and democracy!
    Of course it’s our peaceful HK pro-democracy protesters that did it, but why do you need to identify who did it? We have the right to be stay anonymous and covered with masks!

    Reply
    Link

    1. It’s called vandalism (let along those graffiti being ugly af). Just remember campus buildings are not your YouTube/Twitter comment section. Do your poster stuff, call your governor, or donate to whomever you support instead. If Chinese kids decide to graffiti pro-China statement saying it is freedom of speech and they are going to be EASILY outnumbering anyone of you in this ‘game.’

      Reply
      Link

      1. In HK, most civilians can only express their anger on the internet for this kind of action. Because you may be beaten, set fire and killed by the “protestors” if they are not rioters. They argue for democracy and freedom, but hate any different voice. It was actually a much lighter action in Boston University, and BU can condemn this action. The protestors occupied and destroyed the PolyU because PolyU principal did not condemn police enough. Protestors wanted to hijack other voices to support them. Another reason is because PolyU is nearby the tunnel to HK island. “Protestors” blocked the highway to keep civilians from going to HK island. It is not surprised they tried to attract attention like this way at BU.

        Reply
        Link

    2. You don’t have the right to commit vandalism. There is no honor in such an act, since Boston University isn’t siding against the people of Hong Kong. This was a crime, it caused very expensive damage *against an innocent party*, and those who committed it should be forced to make restitution.

      Reply
      Link

  14. Although the delivery of this message may have been irresponsible, many Hong Kongers or people from the area have been living in desperation for months now. They probably defaced the walls in another act of desperation to ensure there are people who hear, see, and sympathize with their cause. It is truly horrible what is happening in Hong Kong and the western nations must stand with Hong Kongers in their fight for democracy against a Communist foe. The United States has waged war on Communism for 70+ years now and there is no reason we should stop when the need for our intervention and help is so clear and warranted.

    Reply
    Link

    1. Of course, lots of people in this world live in desperation. But this does not give them the right to commit vandalism. The New York African Americans say that they are desperate about police brutality. They have every right to post online or write on a blackboard. But this does not mean that they have the right to commit vandalism on the buildings of NYU or Columbia University. The same logic applies to the Hong Kongers.

      Reply
      Link

  15. Perhaps we, as a university inspired by MLK’s legacy, can focus more on what is going on in the ongoing protests, and BU’s response, before bringing up the perennial problem of immature vandals. These petty actions seem to be aimed at buildings housing BU departments and institutions which are percieved to have hypocritical stances on the moral aspects of the protests; we clearly need to raise the level of understanding and not prioritize fingerpointing.

    Reply
    Link

  16. Why would a protester sympathizer draw that flower from Hong Kong SAR flag? Isn’t that pro-Beijing? And how is this civil unrest comparable to the truly horrible Tiananmen? I’m really confused. Hope the person who did the graffiti is not confused as I am.

    Reply
    Link

  18. As an aside to the main topic of this article, I was SHOCKED to see a Boston University administrator use the absolutely outdated term “Far East” to describe the metropolitan city that is Hong Kong. As professors John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, professors of East Asian Studies at Harvard University, state,

    “When Europeans traveled far to the east to reach Cathay, Japan and the Indies, they naturally gave those distant regions the general name ‘Far East.’ Americans who reached China, Japan and Southeast Asia by sail and steam across the Pacific could, with equal logic, have called that area the ‘Far West.’ For the people who live in that part of the world, however, it is neither ‘East’ nor ‘West’ and certainly not ‘Far.’ A more generally acceptable term for the area is ‘East Asia,’ which is geographically more precise and does not imply the outdated notion that Europe is the center of the civilized world.”

    I’m curious if this administrator purposefully used the term “Far East” to further denigrate the Hong Kong protest cause, and even if not, I hope it is brought to the attention of the administrator that this is antiquated and not accepted or welcome.

    Reply
    Link

  20. Hong Kong students are fighting for freedom. All these have been done in Hong Kong as well, and a little graffiti is not some kind of crime compared to what the dictatorship is capable of. Don’t you guys even follow the news on what’s happening in Hong Kong PolyU??? Why would you, BU, side with the evil Chinese and want to identify those who are fighting for a free society?!

    Reply
    Link

    1. They are fighting for freedom by conducting vandalism? I agree that they have done this in Hongkong as well, but I don’t see this as a compelling argument for “they did this to fighting for a free society”. If stopping people from doing illegal graffiti on university’s building makes BU side with “evil Chinese”, I feel sorry for your education. Btw I do follow the news and I learned that they killed an innocent 70-year-old cleaner recently.

      Reply
      Link

  22. Such a typical false flag tactic frequently employed by Chinese communist party apparatus. What the Chinese communist party operatives would do is to instigate hatred by graffiti like this and try to influence public opinions on the Hong Kong freedom movements. Similar tactics have been employed many times both inside and outside of chin by the party.

    Check out the fonts they painted in, typical way of writing letters by the Chinese. Don’t ask me how I would know. I have lived in China for 20 years and knew every bit of their dirty sneaky tactics to manipulate public opinions. Don’t be naive BUer and don’t be manipulated into the Chinese communist party’s totalitarian smear campaigns.

    Reply
    Link

  23. Freedom is never an absolute term. With freedom comes restrictions and vice versa. I disagree with your political view but I respect your right to freely express it.

    No government is absolutely right or evil. Was hating the Chinese government for not being to say whatever we want when I was young and extreme. Yet gradually with the understanding of more eastern and western history, media, news, and other countries’ political systems and economics, I couldn’t think of a better system than the current communism system we have in mainland China.

    Democracy is never the ‘silver bullet’. No judgment as history will justify.

    Reply
    Link

  26. Each of these buildings is an important piece of BU’s history. To an alumni, they mean something much more. They have become part of me – my memory.

    My heart hurts to see these building walls suffer possibly permanent damages.

    What hurts me more are some of the commentors here who agree on such behavior. How would you feel if someone graffiti all over your house in the name of freedom of speech?

    Laws and orders are foundations of any civilization. History had shown us numerous times the consequences of lawlessness, and sadly history will repeat itself if such behaviors are allowed and even encouraged.

    Reply
    Link

Post a comment.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest from BU Today