For a university campus to be a welcoming space for students, staff, and visitors, it needs to be carefully maintained. A successful organization aims to preserve its legacy and reputation as a good institution, and a thoughtfully-designed and well-preserved university campus helps students feel safe in their environment.
Despite best efforts to keep campus grounds and buildings in good condition, circumstances outside of the facility management team’s control can happen. Given recent incidences of civil unrest, facilities teams need to react as quickly and efficiency as possible to any damages that may impact the buildings or grounds.
John Lesak, AIA, LEED, AP, FAPT, Principal, Vice President, and Ruth Todd, experts at Page & Turnbull, say that “public safety on college and university campuses continues to be in peril as social unrest causes millions of dollars in physical damages, canceled classes, injuries, and negative publicity.” They helped write guidelines for one U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) region about graffiti removal on historic buildings.
Facility managers need a response program designed to help expedite graffiti removal and understand when specialist treatment is needed. When organizations are responsible for cleaning graffiti off historic buildings, there is also the challenge of how to carefully remove it, without further damaging the building with potentially harmful cleaning agents. Several U.S. federal agencies have already implemented similar best practices for incidences of graffiti and other damages, which can be integrated into any campus operations. To learn more, Facility Executive spoke with Lesak about campus vandalism and graffiti removal.
Facility Executive: What were some lessons college campus leaders learned in 2024 when it comes to protecting university buildings from vandalism?
John Lesak: Civil unrest and associated vandalism need to be approached through a “Resilience Strategy.” Campuses need to be prepared to resist and quickly recover from both chronic stresses—small acts of vandalism that happen all the time—and acute shocks—large protests like the ones this spring.
Resilience strategies require dedicated resources (money/people) to prepare, implement, and maintain. Having a plan and being prepared is key, but because there is so much uncertainty regarding what an acute shock type event will be, an Adaptive Management process—one that emphasizes making rapid decisions based on accountability and explicitness—allows for changes based on observed conditions. It is a cycle of learn (train), plan, do, observe/document, learn, plan…
Striking a balance between access to public spaces, preserving iconic/historic buildings, and creating safe places for building users is hard—there are no panaceas or easy solutions.
FE: You helped write new GSA guidelines for graffiti removal on historic buildings. What was updated from the previous guidelines?
Lesak: Our work was commissioned specifically for GSA’s Western Region (Region 9). It is contributing to an active national dialog on managing graffiti. Our team will be presenting to all the regions in September.
GSA has a series of existing specifications for removing graffiti from a variety of material substrates, which underpinned our work. Our approach went beyond individual guidelines for graffiti removal, and focused on implementing institutional processes that empower building owners and managers to respond quickly and effectively to incidents of graffiti when they occur.
This involves per-building preparation to catalog the existing materials at the building and pre-testing of potential cleaning products and methods that can be used by on-site janitorial or maintenance staff in the immediate aftermath of an event. Because installation of permanent anti-graffiti coatings and/or overly aggressive removal procedures often cause as much damage to building materials as the act of vandalism—it is critical that the “generalists” undertaking rapid-response understand when that damage may start to occur and stopping to allow for a more specialized course of action.
The final steps in the process include tools for identifying when a specialist is needed for additional graffiti removal and substrate repairs, along with assessment and documentation of the removal efforts to continue to build institutional knowledge of graffiti removal practices.
FE: Is there anything else facility management teams should keep in mind when it comes to anti-vandalism measures for university campuses?
Lesak: It can’t be over emphasized that using the wrong methods to remove graffiti can cause lasting damage to buildings. Therefore, both preparation and patience are key to removing graffiti effectively without causing additional damage to the buildings.
There are no one-size fits all solutions—preventing vandalism is an on-going process, not unlike the preparing for earthquakes or hurricanes.
Understanding that institutional buildings are symbols, and therefore common targets during periods of protest or unrest, institutions can prepare so that their actions during such periods can be more resilient in their response to these events.