13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |Post-election graffiti not welcome at Purdue

Post-election graffiti not welcome at Purdue

David MacAnally/Eyewitness News

West Lafayette - On the Purdue campus an old tree slowly drops it's fall colors revealing Nature's palette. But it took paint to remove something ugly here. Something that got the University president to drop a letter to her campus.

Jeanne Norberg of Purdue News Service says "some of the content of the graffiti is not something we want on our campus at all."

The graffiti appeared on the tree and on some campus sidewalks election night and again Wednesday night.

It's tradition for students to paint messages on the tree. But on the other side of the tree it's obvious where the university covered up the offensive message with blue paint.

One student who saw the message said "It had male genitals on there and it said f... Obama."

Purdue President France Cordova's letter calls it "reprehensible and wholly out of character with Purdue's long tradition of fellowship and mutual respect."

On sidewalks too, chalked graffiti washed away by Purdue and the rain. Most of that was NOT political. Norberg says "Some of it was beyond offensive and some of it was just lewd. Some of it it is hard to know what the intent or the meaning was."

But when it comes to the message painted on the tree, one student said, "I couldn't really believe that happened at Purdue.  It didn't seem like something that would really happen here."

Another had these thoughts: "I thought it was disrespectful and just ignorant and shouldn't have been up there."

We asked one man if he was offended and he said "No. People will have their opinions and some are more ignorant than others."

Jeanne Norberg says "We value free speech as an academic community but at the same time we respect each other."