College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Monty Duke
Adrian Gurban
Galen Keep
Shawn Robinson

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The social and ethical importance of our project was simple. We wanted to clean up an area that is known for it heavy graffiti, and at the same time inform the public about the graffiti problem in the area.

Society as a whole frowns on the idea of graffiti. Positive steps have been taken by the community and city council to prevent graffiti activity from spreading. The city has a graffiti control hotline where all calls are private and anonymous. The area that we decided to clean up was here a local high school and the graffiti really affected the overall appearance of the school. Socially the importance of the project was huge. We helped beautify a city and challenged people to deal with this increasing problem head on.

People are faced with ethical dilemmas everyday. Some people choice to break the law and some learn to live by it (but we have just learned to live with it). Ethically, every person that choices to graffiti makes that choice on there own, and if caught they are held responsible. By taking a pro-active approach toward this problem we are showing the community that they have a choice and that the right ethical choice would be not to graffiti. Graffiti does nothing to improve the environment or the community, it only defaces public property and shows a lack of respect for authority. Every surface that is covered in graffiti serve a purpose in a community, and its not to be a canvas for illegal painting. By covering the graffiti, we have improved the overall look of the area and also change the attitude of a lot of people in the community. This clean up day was not done for a reward, the actual process of clean and helping improve a community was all the reward we needed.

Once we had decided to do a graffiti clean-up for our social change project, the first thing we did was to contact the graffiti control program director to learn more about the process of organizing a paint-out. Bennie Womack, head of the graffiti control department, was helpful in this area. At this time we also requested a location and the materials for the paint-out. When Bennie contacted us and gave is a paint-out site, in Chula Vista behind Montgomery High School, we drove out to see it. The site was a bridge of which the support walls, stretching 200 feet long and about 30 feet high, were covered in several layers of graffiti.

After setting the date and site for the project, we contacted a graphic design student who donated her services by designing a flyer to promote the paint-out and get volunteers. Once the design of the flyer was finished, we called around to local copy centers seeking a donation for printing and cutting of 500 flyers. When we had a good idea of the number of volunteers who were going to be at the paint-out, we set out to solicit food donations from local businesses to feed our volunteers. After many phone calls, Submarina donated a 20-serving sandwich platter and Pizza Port donated three pizzas for our volunteers.

The day of the event we drove to the city yard to pick up the paint and supplies. They gave us 20 paint rollers, 20 extender polls, 3 buckets, and 10 gallons of paint. Between 9:30 –10am our volunteered arrived and we painted for about 4 hours. We painted a total of six support walls underneath the bridge before we ran out of paint.

The overwhelming benefit was to actually be there and paint over the graffiti.