Male Gentile Artwork Craze

Kayla Mancuso

It’s Family Weekend at Manhattan, family and friends are overflowing the resident halls. Now imagine going to visit your loved one and seeing male gentile artwork everywhere. This was the case on the 7^th floor of Horan Hall.

On October 16^th family members of the 7^th floor residents were shocked to see a gross display of male gentile covering the floor. There was a wide range of artwork, from penises drawn in sharpie mark on the door or the quiet room to an elaborate depiction of a penis made out of acorn name tags. 

Dorm pranks are a run of the mill kind of thing for college life, but the contexts of these pranks were unacceptable especially when Manhattan College is hosting so many guests. On top of that, most of the guests are family members of students. 

October 21^st a mandatory floor meeting was held to address the issue. Meg Donnelly, area coordinator of Horan Hall and Chrysostom held the meeting with the help of Elizabeth Gibbons who is the RD of Horan Hall. Both RA’s of the 7^th floor, Timothy Corini and Deena Sena, also assisted with the meeting.      

All the residents sat in a circle around the conductors of the meeting. The scene resembled a kindergarten class getting reprimanded for not sharing with one another. 

“I work with seven year olds all day and I don’t even have to deal with this kind of behavior from them,” exclaimed Elizabeth Gibbons who works full time as a teacher. 

RA Deena explained her morning of having to take down the acorn penis before any parent could see. “I scrambled to get them all down and by the time I got back from mass it was back up again,” says Deena.

By the end of the meeting one this was establish, if an event like this were to happen again serious consequences would be take. “I will write you up if I have to,” explained Meg Donnelly.

Gabriella DeRossi, a sophomore at Manhattan College, had both her brother and sister visit her for family weekend. Neither of them saw the display but Gabriella how she would have felt if they did: “If they did see them, I definitely would've been embarrassed by it, you would think college students would be more mature then middle schoolers, but I guess not.”

She also explained that she feels that the meeting was not as effective as planned. “People are going to do what they want to do, regardless of who tells them otherwise,” says Gabriella.

Later on in the interview, she expressed to me how she felt about the situation on a whole. “Frankly, I'm not surprised. People do stupid things that they think are funny or that will make other people laugh, but seriously, it gets tiring having to go to meetings because of immaturity, and walking by seeing vulgar and inappropriate graffiti and such displayed in our home and where our families can see,” declared Gabriella.

On the other hand, a guest that weekend just took it as a humorous event. Danielle Morrone, a junior at Minisink Valley High School, was visiting a friend for family weekend.

“I honestly thought that it was a little disturbing at first but extremely hilarious,” said Danielle.

When asked if this event tarnished her image of Manhattan College, this was her response: “No I feel as though this is a typical college atmosphere and you have to expect something of this nature to occur when visiting any college. I think it was just kids having fun and getting a good laugh. I like to be around people with a sense of humor so it did not take away from the image of the College.”