Angelina WagnerTrampled plants, a broken spotlight, painted profanity and hammerhead-sized holes defaced the sign at the corner of Eagle and King of Prussia Roads, the unfortunate focus of vandals on Saturday, Sept. 13.
“I got a call around 7:45 from Public Safety,” Howard Holden, the director of facilities, said. “I went over myself and cleaned off the graffiti.”
Holden speculated that the vandals used some kind of sharp metal object, like a hammer or an ax.
“I think it’s ridiculous that people are so immature that they think that vandalism is a funny prank,” Laura Cover, a senior elementary education and resident assistant, said.
“There are three possibilities of who it was: a student from another college, a disgruntled student from here at Cabrini, or a disgruntled former employee of the college,” Charlie Schaffner, the director of Public Safety, said. “Certainly, I don’t have that kind of clairvoyance to tell me which one of those three it might be. We certainly will investigate all possibilities.”
Eastern University is having a similar problem with its sign, according to Schaffner. The letters on all three of its signs keep disappearing. Schaffner is working in conjunction with Eastern’s Public Safety to find the vandals.
This is not the first time a Cabrini sign has been brutalized. Similar markings were left twice in April 2003 on the sign, and the sign at the entrance on King of Prussia Road was doused with gray paint in March 2003.
“They’ve attacked the sign by using paint, putting profanity on it also by chipping the faces of the stone surfaces with some kind of hard metal object,” Schaffner said.
“They always smash the light that illuminates the sign so they can do whatever they’re doing in the dark,” Holden said.
A company was contracted to fill in the holes the limestone caused by the last series of vandalism. They finished in August.
“We just spent $6,000 this summer to repair the damage from the previous assault,” Holden said. He went on to say that the cost to replace the sign would have been more than $15,000. Howard has contacted the same company about repairing the sign again. They may not be able to resurrect the sign if damage has been done to areas that have already been repaired.
“We don’t know what it’s about. Hopefully it’s not a rivalry thing. It’s an awful expensive one if it is. Whoever’s causing the damage we hope they just get over it because it’s a huge waste of resources. It’s really, really foolish that anyone would go to that extreme. It’s vicious,” Holden said.
