Upon entering the Redondo Union High School’s campus on Monday, it was clear there was a rat problem.
Armed with stencils and spray-paint, somebody snuck onto the campus sometime on Sunday, March 11, and painted rats crawling over the walls of the campus.
The rats, armed with bolt cutters, guns and ladders, were depicted in Banksy-like fashion, making mischief and coming out of spray painted holes in the walls. A triangle symbol was also painted with black under “Seahawk Pride” signs all over campus.
“I’m not an artist,” one loud red painted wall said, “I’m a typographical terrorist.”
Nicole Wesley, the principal of RUHS immediately called the police and maintenance staff began covering the black, green and red paint with campus-neutral colors.
“I’m not sure what message they were trying to send other than defacing school property and forcing us to spend money and resources cleaning it up,” Wesley said.
That morning, Wesley spoke to the school over the intercom and asked the students to work with administration to find the person responsible for the vandalism.
“We’re very proud of our campus,” said Wesley. “We just spent $98 million renovating it. It is going to take a community effort to keep it clean and protected and I hope students are just as outraged as we are.”
According to administration, there are a few leads as to who is responsible for the images. Sergeant Sean Freeman of the RBPD said that police are looking at school surveillance footage and they were able to recover gloves that were left behind. When found, Wesley stressed that they will be “prosecuted to the fullest.”
Students quickly snapped pictures on their phones and cameras of the estimated 40 tags before they were painted over..
“Typography is text… And copied banksy… No reason to take pics of such a retarded kids ideas of rebellion,” one person wrote on Facebook, responding to a question about photos of the images. Another student wrote “I love graffiti,” while others ‘liked’ the post.
Students commented to the principal and other teachers about the artistic nature of the graffiti. Some thought it “looked artistic,” while others thought that although it was negative to deface the school, at least it wasn’t derogatory.
“It wasn’t graffiti that one would immediately imagine,” said Wesley. “Not like tagging graffiti. They just had a field day doing it all over campus.”
By the end of Monday, most of the rats had been erased and any sign of mischief was gone.
“At the end of the day it could have been worse as to what they spray painted,” said Wesley. “But I did explain that it does take time, labor resources and money to clean it up. I would much rather spend money on [the students] directly.”
Officials are asking anyone with information about the vandalism to contact Officer Steve Sabosky at 310-379-2477 ext. 2492.
