Outside Topic Stanford encampment

Outside Topic Stanford encampment - Printable Version

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Stanford encampment - BostonCard - 06-05-2024

I'm just going to post this without editorializing because of the delicate nature of this debate:

https://www.kqed.org/news/11989050/pro-palestinian-stanford-protesters-detained-after-occupying-presidents-office

Protesters occupied the President's office and were arrested. Stanford dismantled the encampment.

BC

RE: Stanford encampment - BobK - 06-05-2024

Made me realize Levin isn’t president yet

RE: Stanford encampment - dabigv13 - 06-05-2024

Here's the NY Times on this incident

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/us/stanford-protest-israel-gaza.html

Quote:Wednesday is the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Stanford. A security guard stationed on the Main Quad warned students who were bicycling or walking to their last classes of the academic year that they would see disturbing graffiti. The spray-painted slogans included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death 2 Israehell."

.....

A gathering of students, several of them wearing kaffiyehs, watched the dismantling. Students there said the university administration had acted in a cowardly fashion by not warning them that the camp would be removed or telling them how they could retrieve their belongings. None of the students agreed to be quoted by name.

Last bit got a chuckle out of me.

Anyone know how they clean paint off the sandstone buildings of the quad? That's gotta be tough

RE: Stanford encampment - Maple Leaf - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 03:52 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Here's the NY Times on this incident

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/us/stanford-protest-israel-gaza.html

Quote:Wednesday is the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Stanford. A security guard stationed on the Main Quad warned students who were bicycling or walking to their last classes of the academic year that they would see disturbing graffiti. The spray-painted slogans included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death 2 Israehell."

.....

A gathering of students, several of them wearing kaffiyehs, watched the dismantling. Students there said the university administration had acted in a cowardly fashion by not warning them that the camp would be removed or telling them how they could retrieve their belongings. None of the students agreed to be quoted by name.

Last bit got a chuckle out of me.

Anyone know how they clean paint off the sandstone buildings of the quad? That's gotta be tough

There are anti-graffiti coatings (clear liquids) that have been used on concrete, concrete block and other types of masonry units for years which aid in the removal of paints. Not sure if there are such coatings fr sandstone and other types of stone.

RE: Stanford encampment - Goose - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 03:52 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Here's the NY Times on this incident

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/us/stanford-protest-israel-gaza.html

Quote:Wednesday is the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Stanford. A security guard stationed on the Main Quad warned students who were bicycling or walking to their last classes of the academic year that they would see disturbing graffiti. The spray-painted slogans included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death 2 Israehell."

.....

A gathering of students, several of them wearing kaffiyehs, watched the dismantling. Students there said the university administration had acted in a cowardly fashion by not warning them that the camp would be removed or telling them how they could retrieve their belongings. None of the students agreed to be quoted by name.

Last bit got a chuckle out of me.

Anyone know how they clean paint off the sandstone buildings of the quad? That's gotta be tough

Not all that difficult. Sandblast it. Back from 1968 through 1972 the Stanford maintenance folks got quite good at that. Lots of practice. They actually had more problems with some of the concrete. Of course painted concrete has to be repainted and the "patched area" doesn't blend in well.

RE: Stanford encampment - 82lsju - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 04:56 PM)Goose Wrote:
(06-05-2024, 03:52 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Here's the NY Times on this incident

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/us/stanford-protest-israel-gaza.html

Quote:Wednesday is the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Stanford. A security guard stationed on the Main Quad warned students who were bicycling or walking to their last classes of the academic year that they would see disturbing graffiti. The spray-painted slogans included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death 2 Israehell."

.....

A gathering of students, several of them wearing kaffiyehs, watched the dismantling. Students there said the university administration had acted in a cowardly fashion by not warning them that the camp would be removed or telling them how they could retrieve their belongings. None of the students agreed to be quoted by name.

Last bit got a chuckle out of me.

Anyone know how they clean paint off the sandstone buildings of the quad? That's gotta be tough
Not all that difficult. Sandblast it. Back from 1968 through 1972 the Stanford maintenance folks got quite good at that. Lots of practice. They actually had more problems with some of the concrete. Of course painted concrete has to be repainted and the "patched area" doesn't blend in well.

or perhaps they used chalk like they did during the "36 Strong" protest and graffiti in 2021

Quote:While the spraying occurred, Holterman confirmed with one of the athletes spraying the building that they were using chalk, but he didn’t see anyone try to stop the athletes. He and other athletes were in the car riding away from the rally when they became “more frustrated” and decided to come back to help.

https://stanforddaily.com/2021/04/26/stanford-athletes-spray-slogans-on-building-10-after-36-sports-strong-rally/

RE: Stanford encampment - jacket3ree - 06-05-2024

I can opine, with plenty of editorializing, about cleaning graffiti from deeply textured surfaces because this is a daily thing in our practice.

Goose is correct. Blast. Better yet than sand.....dry ice. It works like a charm, does not harm the substrate, and there is no secondary mess to clean up after. About as environmentally friendly as it gets, and you can rave at the same time.

It's a blast!

This has been an evolution, based on lots of experience and conversations with the pros who clean graffiti.

The cheapest solution is to continuously paint over it. But with nicer surfaces like split face or ground face concrete masonry, weathered steel, or stone, this isn't an option. We then turned to anti-graffiti coatings. I hated them. They made the nice surface look waxy and awful, and they are a single use product. They are intended to prevent a strong bond between the paint and substrate, but come right off when cleaned, along with the graffiti. The product needs to be reapplied, but after any time in UV there is no way to make it uniform with surrounding surfaces and it looks even more godawful than after first applied. The clincher was one of our client's maintenance super who previously worked for Caltrans getting graffiti off of highway signs. He said anti-graffiti coatings simply made their job exponentially harder. Worse than useless. Got it.

Sandblasting is how we prepare substrates to receive new coatings. It removes everything. SSPC-6 is commercial blast cleaning or you can dial it to SSPC-10 for near white blast cleaning. I don't think SSPC goes to 11, but I'll check it out. We recently completed six miles of seawall with 100 years worth of sacrificial steel for corrosion. The raw steel surface will behave better than a painted one, particularly where buried. But people will tag anything and there are thousands of square feet of accessible canvas. Ultimately we went with dry ice blasting, because it is acceptable in environmentally sensitive areas and wow, does it work.

RE: Stanford encampment - qwerty49 - 06-05-2024

Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

RE: Stanford encampment - old spanish trail - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 07:12 PM)qwerty49 Wrote: Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

Pretty funny.

Mudhead - Mudhead - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 04:56 PM)Goose Wrote:
(06-05-2024, 03:52 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Here's the NY Times on this incident

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/us/stanford-protest-israel-gaza.html

Quote:Wednesday is the final day of classes for the spring quarter at Stanford. A security guard stationed on the Main Quad warned students who were bicycling or walking to their last classes of the academic year that they would see disturbing graffiti. The spray-painted slogans included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death 2 Israehell."

.....

A gathering of students, several of them wearing kaffiyehs, watched the dismantling. Students there said the university administration had acted in a cowardly fashion by not warning them that the camp would be removed or telling them how they could retrieve their belongings. None of the students agreed to be quoted by name.

Last bit got a chuckle out of me.

Anyone know how they clean paint off the sandstone buildings of the quad? That's gotta be tough
Not all that difficult. Sandblast it. Back from 1968 through 1972 the Stanford maintenance folks got quite good at that. Lots of practice. They actually had more problems with some of the concrete. Of course painted concrete has to be repainted and the "patched area" doesn't blend in well.

Regardless of one politics you have to be pleased that someone finally said physically seizing another space and defacing buildings is wrong and those who choose to do so should cease to be Stanford students. Hooray for common sense

RE: Mudhead - Goose - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 07:57 PM)Mudhead Wrote: Regardless of one politics you have to be pleased that someone finally said physically seizing another space and defacing buildings is wrong and those who choose to do so should cease to be Stanford students. Hooray for common sense

I totally agree with you. However, it always amazes me how many people don't agree this is the case.

Having observed up close and personnel lots of student demonstrations and considered the history of many, many more, I believe that whenever an "encampment" or something similar occurs it is not going to end well no matter how "non-violent" the people occupying the site are or claim to be. If demonstrators keep moving they may turn into a mob, but they may also disperse and go home. When they take adverse possession they all remain together. This requires a continuous police presence to ensure there is no clash with opposition forces and to ensure the demonstrators do not become a disruptive mob. The police are almost always outnumbered and are therefore on edge. The demonstrators are surrounded and contained. Dispersing isn't easy and you have to cross a police line to do it.

The demonstrators are often listening to like-minded speakers that are trying to get attention. It only takes a few poorly chosen words to create a mob. Even if that doesn't happen the demonstrators quickly find out that staying in the encampment is uncomfortable and inconvenient. They get testy. Understandably, they don't like interacting with the police and an adversarial relationship inevitably develops. People gathered in a large group also develop a sense of anonymity. They can throw rocks and shout offensive slogans and nobody will know. Oftentimes a few people go too far and provoke the police to arrest them. The all hell breaks out. A million ways this can happen and eventually it will. There are also usually a few crazy folks in the crowd that just want to "raise cain". Often they arrive after the occupation has already started for just that purpose.

Even if none of the above events occurs eventually the people in the encampment realize that their actions are not having the intended effect. Seldom do the "powers that be" rapidly "give in" on all the "demands". The pressure to "up the ante" becomes strong. The fact that the demonstrators have gotten away with their actions so far reinforces the idea that their actions will have no consequences, no matter what they might be. At least some of the demonstrators inevitably lose patience and decide to "take more direct" action. Eventually somebody does something that causes the "powers that be" to say "enough" and order the police to act. From my experience this is almost inevitable. Cases where this did not happen usually have some exceptional event that caused the demonstration to break up.

RE: Stanford encampment - lex24 - 06-05-2024

At the risk of being “political “ I find it rather disturbing that with slogans such as “pigs taste best dead “ the big discussion here is on how to get graffiti off sandstone.

RE: Stanford encampment - needle - 06-05-2024

(06-05-2024, 09:30 PM)lex24 Wrote: At the risk of being “political “ I find it rather disturbing that with slogans such as “pigs taste best dead “ the big discussion here is on how to get graffiti off sandstone.

The Stanford students involved in planning/occupying Saller's office were quick to disavow the graffiti, fwiw.

RE: Stanford encampment - dabigv13 - 06-05-2024

Sorry to disturb you but I actually learned something about cleaning paint off sandstone.

I can't really get worked up about the dumb rhetoric of some idiot kids, but I'm sure there are better venues than The Cardboard if that's what your interested in.

RE: Stanford encampment - Goose - 06-06-2024

(06-05-2024, 07:00 PM)jacket3ree Wrote: I can opine, with plenty of editorializing, about cleaning graffiti from deeply textured surfaces because this is a daily thing in our practice.

Goose is correct. Blast. Better yet than sand.....dry ice. It works like a charm, does not harm the substrate, and there is no secondary mess to clean up after. About as environmentally friendly as it gets, and you can rave at the same time.

This has been an evolution, based on lots of experience and conversations with the pros who clean graffiti.

The cheapest solution is to continuously paint over it. But with nicer surfaces like split face or ground face concrete masonry, weathered steel, or stone, this isn't an option. We then turned to anti-graffiti coatings. I hated them. They made the nice surface look waxy and awful, and they are a single use product. They are intended to prevent a strong bond between the paint and substrate, but come right off when cleaned, along with the graffiti. The product needs to be reapplied, but after any time in UV there is no way to make it uniform with surrounding surfaces and it looks even more godawful than after first applied. The clincher was one of our client's maintenance super who previously worked for Caltrans getting graffiti off of highway signs. He said anti-graffiti coatings simply made their job exponentially harder. Worse than useless. Got it.

Sandblasting is how we prepare substrates to receive new coatings. It removes everything. SSPC-6 is commercial blast cleaning or you can dial it to SSPC-10 for near white blast cleaning. I don't think SSPC goes to 11, but I'll check it out. We recently completed six miles of seawall with 100 years worth of sacrificial steel for corrosion. The raw steel surface will behave better than a painted one, particularly where buried. But people will tag anything and there are thousands of square feet of accessible canvas. Ultimately we went with dry ice blasting, because it is acceptable in environmentally sensitive areas and wow, does it work.

Thank you very much for this post! It is always great to get the info from somebody who is "in the business" and actually knows. I was unaware that dry-ice blasting actually existed. Not having water and sand as a "residue" is obviously a very big benefit of the process. In both sandblasting and dry-ice blasting appropriate equipment is required to do the job. I would guess that the dry-ice equipment is a bit more complex than for sand but not by anywhere near enough to outweigh its advantages. Your statement "wow does it work" indicates there is no downside in using it. Very cool! (I had to do it:-)

RE: Stanford encampment - lex24 - 06-06-2024

(06-05-2024, 11:04 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Sorry to disturb you but I actually learned something about cleaning paint off sandstone.

I can't really get worked up about the dumb rhetoric of some idiot kids, but I'm sure there are better venues than The Cardboard if that's what your interested in.

Fair enough.

I will say that I think this is a bit more than just the “dumb rhetoric of some idiot kids”. But I will say nothing further. I agree, message board in general and the Cardboard specifically are not the place for any actual discussion.

RE: Stanford encampment - CowboyIndian - 06-06-2024

(06-05-2024, 07:12 PM)qwerty49 Wrote: Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

Qwerty....our classmate and my dormmate, the late, great Ernie Milburn performed that epic feat. He also used to roam the attics of the Quad and climbed to the top of MemChu, rappelling down to the interior and playing "Chest Fever" on the mighty Wurlitzer, which got him busted. Ernie was killed in the summer of '68 while free-climbing Half Dome (I believe it was...but someplace in Yosemite).

(06-06-2024, 01:24 PM)CowboyIndian Wrote:
(06-05-2024, 07:12 PM)qwerty49 Wrote: Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

Qwerty....our classmate and my dormmate, the late, great Ernie Milburn performed that epic feat. He also used to roam the attics of the Quad and climbed to the top of MemChu, rappelling down to the interior and playing "Chest Fever" on the mighty Wurlitzer, which got him busted. Ernie was killed in the summer of '68 while free-climbing Half Dome (I believe it was...but someplace in Yosemite).

Now, as I recall, it was El Capitan.

RE: Stanford encampment - 82lsju - 06-06-2024

(06-06-2024, 01:24 PM)CowboyIndian Wrote:
(06-05-2024, 07:12 PM)qwerty49 Wrote: Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

Qwerty....our classmate and my dormmate, the late, great Ernie Milburn performed that epic feat. He also used to roam the attics of the Quad and climbed to the top of MemChu, rappelling down to the interior and playing "Chest Fever" on the mighty Wurlitzer, which got him busted. Ernie was killed in the summer of '68 while free-climbing Half Dome (I believe it was...but someplace in Yosemite).

(06-06-2024, 01:24 PM)CowboyIndian Wrote:
(06-05-2024, 07:12 PM)qwerty49 Wrote: Back in the 68-72 era that Goose refers to there was an “incident” at Hoo Tow — some intrepid soul apparently climbed to the top one night, leaving white paint footprints on the building all the way up, and affixing a white sheet to the very top. The sheet, when flapping in the wind, looked like, well you can guess. It all stayed that way for a few days and then the university basically sandblasted the exterior and got rid of the footprints. A couple of days after that, the footprints reappeared - this time going downward.

So Hoo Tow got a double sandblasting that year.

Qwerty....our classmate and my dormmate, the late, great Ernie Milburn performed that epic feat. He also used to roam the attics of the Quad and climbed to the top of MemChu, rappelling down to the interior and playing "Chest Fever" on the mighty Wurlitzer, which got him busted. Ernie was killed in the summer of '68 while free-climbing Half Dome (I believe it was...but someplace in Yosemite).

Now, as I recall, it was El Capitan.

According to "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite", he died on the Glacier Point Apron/Goodrich Pinnacle when the nylon sling he was attached to failed and he fell ~700 feet.

RE: Stanford encampment - CowboyIndian - 06-06-2024

(06-06-2024, 01:47 PM)82lsju Wrote: According to "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite", he died on the Glacier Point Apron/Goodrich Pinnacle when the nylon sling he was attached to failed and he fell ~700 feet.

Thanks, Eric. I think we've been down this road before. I'm slipping.

RE: Stanford encampment - jacket3ree - 06-06-2024

Lex,

I probably added the most fuel to the sandstone fire, but was trying to keep it completely apolitical. Asked and (since I know how to clean sandstone) answered, simple as that. At the risk of venturing into politics, I felt, but didn't say, that cleaning the sandstone might be one of the most important things about this incident, particularly when you read about reaction to what the graffiti says. They've already covered it with something like butcher paper judging from the Page 1 article in today's paper. They defaced an engraved memorial to service members who died in service to their country. The graffiti needs to be permanently erased.

And to complete the SSPC (NACE International/Society for Protective Coatings Joint Surface Preparation Standards) loop, because I know you are all rivetted by the topic, there is indeed an SSPC - SP11. That's Bare Metal Power Tool Cleaning. Used where abrasive blast cleaning is not possible. Still down to a surface smoothness of 1 mil (25 microns). In fact, SSPC goes all the way to SP16 - which is Brush-off Blast Cleaning of Non-Ferrous Metals, which now that I see it in print again, I'm sure I've specified at least once. We just spec whatever is required per the coating manufacturers.

I have a good friend who retired as a mover. He parked his large moving van on the street in the Sunset. Tags over tags over tags. All exposed surfaces including the roof. He gave up trying to clean it. Then suddenly no more tags. He was at a job in the City and a passer by told him that he should be honored to have so and so's art work on his truck. "Huh" "Yeah, no one tags over so and so." There's a code, you know.

I mean my going for king of all paint preparation specification nerds is sort of an actual discussion, right?