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Setting A ToneThe campuses established tones, which served as backdrops. Both Boarding and Suburban High Schools had a certain institutional, though attractive, sterility. This was contrasted at Boarding High by colorful student-made murals inside and outside the Academic and Fine Arts Buildings. Some less professional murals—resembling graffiti—were on the lunch area shelter, indicating senior class officers and assorted images. See Illustration 4 for examples. A sculpture of a Native American man in the entrance was colorless but graceful, and with the murals and recent landscaping, it demonstrated a concern with aesthetics and an availability of resources that was absent at the other schools. The windows of the art classroom further contributed color and an artistic flare, though the relative impermanence of these displays was evident and its less professional arrangement was a contrast. In all the art, the identity of the school’s population was portrayed and celebrated at a material level. The dormitories and manicured campus, however, contributed to the sense of ideological conflict. The dorms were equally, if not more, institutional as compared to the newer buildings of the “school,” but they also showed less concern for aesthetics or presenting Native cultures. I only saw into the inside of the dormitories through a video project that was not obtained for analysis, but there seemed to be a bareness inside as well as outside. The sidewalks, paved patios, flower beds, and regularly mowed grass was in sharp contrast to Native cultures, Wicket (see Table B1) commenting that he had never seen so much concrete. The history of the school and efforts to aid Native students was subtly embodied in these inconsistencies and in the dominance of the institution. The conflict between assimilating the youth to facilitate their “success” and preserving Native cultures by nurturing it in their youth was embodied in the material environment, but an institutional order dominated. Suburban High, on the other hand, offered a regularity in the rows of brick buildings that indicated no conflict. At Suburban High, only the auditorium was painted—high above the entrance—with the words and image of the school mascot. The irregularity of the trees, the larger areas separating the administrative building, auditorium, and gymnasium from the classrooms, and the occasional diagonal walkway softened the effect, but a largely sterile professionalism dominated. Student-made signs, advertising sales or student elections, were rare in the public areas. A plaque indicated that one square between buildings was the “senior quad,” but this also showed no sign of the students to which it referred, appearing more like a memorial than a functional place. Students were not materially represented. Urban High presented neither regularity nor a specific conflict. It embodied its history in the irregularity of its buildings and a deficiency of land so common in urban schools. Different parts of the campus reflected different priorities, and some parts simply seemed to have been forgotten. The big buildings in front had fresh coats of paint and flowers growing round them, for example, while buildings toward the back were dirty and surrounded by cracked pavement. Moreover, the problems of the community were reflected in the campus. All the schools had someone posted at the entrance most of the time (though no metal detectors), but only at Urban High was the fence an honest deterant to climbers, and the police had a constant presence only at Urban High. But Urban High was also the only school to show material resistance to the official ideology: The “Girls” above one restroom had been crossed out and replaced with “women,” and a sign that warned about crimes such as graffiti was appropriately decorated with graffiti. The murals at Urban High were a mixture of professional ones with school slogans—including mascots, the encouragement of learning, and a “wall of history” with famous alumni—and the contributions of past mural classes, showing student participation in the quality of the art work but reflecting official ideologies in attention to issues such as smoking cessation and staying in school. These murals tended to not attract the attention of passerbys, not did they appear in videos as more than background. However, there regularly were handmade signs about current events: a luau, a pizza party, student elections, and club meetings. And as already noted, the campus always has students in it; there was a life to the campus that was rare at the other two schools. Thus an institutional message was communicated in the material environment at Urban High—one that noted its history and aims—but it was weakened by decay and a livelier presence of students. And the institutional dominance faded away as one moved farther from the administrative building. The ethnic and class identities of students were remarked upon on the school website and were materially represented in temporary displays. The greatest conflict was in the effort by an anonymous institution to control activity: It was embodied in the fences that served to hold students in, direct their movement, and separate the school from the community. The resistance was generally subtle, observable in graffiti and the ever present student body, but it was constant. The material environments of the three schools, then, reflected official ideologies to different extents: The Boarding High campus embodied the conflict in official ideologies that supported Native American identities but continued assimilation practices. Suburban High embodied an institutionalized professionalism. Urban High embodied a general effort to control activity, including its uneven attempts to lessen the appearance of poverty and suppress elicit activity, but it was materially contested. |
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