Sightings of infamous orange club crawl advertisements on campus this month have sparked concerns over UBC’s policies on visual pollution and event promotion.
Neon orange posters and flyers promoting the Halloween club crawl even by Student Tours have been sighted practically everywhere on campus, including the interior and exterior of campus buildings, lecture halls, notice boards, the bus loop and even inside residences.
Posters on campus might seem a normal thing — but to some students, these orange advertisements are a declaration of war.
An informal competition has been introduced on the school’s subreddit, r/UBC, to see who can collect the most posters.
One Reddit user posted a photo of their collection of 41 posters they had torn down across campus. On a different thread, students have posted about seeing Club Crawl advertisements written on chalkboards, notices left on desks and flyers littered on the ground.
Students have expressed concern about the environmental impact of printing so many posters and how the mass marketing of the Club Crawl has put smaller UBC-affiliated organizations at a disadvantage for event promotion.
“They plaster campus with their ads,” complained one user. “It's a huge waste of resources, annoying, and ultimately bad aesthetics.”
Leaving them be
Despite evident student enthusiasm, UBC said it hadn’t heard any complaints about the posters and warns students to not take them down.
Under Policy 120, “notices, posters, bills, or like materials will not be attached to building exteriors.”
Promotional material may be posted on notice boards, but is prohibited from being attached to trees, poles, signs, vehicles parked on campus grounds and fixtures where it is a potential safety hazard.
Organizations and businesses that are not affiliated with UBC must obtain written permission from the VP of the department or in whose area they would like to promote — otherwise, they risk being served with fees for removing the materials.
UBC recently began removing the posters in the bus loop and attached to the exterior of the Buchanan buildings.
But despite the protests of UBC students on Reddit, Managing Director of Building Operations Greg Scott said that UBC has not received formal complaints regarding the Club Crawl posters this year.
“I did a walk through campus and didn’t see any posters that were up in inappropriate places,” said Scott.
According to Scott, the responsibility of removing inappropriately placed posters should be left to the Building Operations staff and that “students should not be taking them down.”
Students and staff are encouraged to email or tweet Building Operations if they spot promotional material in prohibited areas before taking action on their own.