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In an unprecedented move to maintain the Faunce House steps "hipster-free," the University voted Monday four-to-one to ban the sitting on, hanging around, smoking near, or leaning retro bikes against the Faunce House steps by any person exhibiting styles associated with the hipster subculture. Included in this group are also ironic retros, indie rockers, and anyone who, as the University memo states, "knows what the hell post-modernism actually means."
University Provost David Kertzer hoped the ban would decrease the presence of fake leather jackets, small pink backpacks, Buddy Holly-style glasses, Converse shoes, and fixed-gear bicycles around the Faunce steps area in order to preserve the University's colonial aesthetic. Kertzer added that the move was also motivated by Facilities Management's complaints of half-smoked American Spirit cigarettes found strewn across the steps.
Reactions to the news came amidst reports of overnight vandalism to the Modern Culture and Media Building on Thayer Street, where, at around 2:00 a.m., an unidentified man wearing aviator sunglasses and a red hoodie beneath his pea coat supposedly used a black Sharpie to draw quotation marks around the word "modern" on the building's official Brown University sign. University officials and the Department of Public Safety believe the ironic tagging incident is connected to the University's hipster ban.
"These are the types of behaviors we anticipated from this group," remarked Dean of Campus Life Bernard Segel.
"Graffiti semiotics, the term used to describe these types of esoteric vandalism, is a common tool this group uses to resist University policies."
President Simmons was away during the vote, but issued strong remarks supporting the hipster ban and condemning the vandalism, asserting that the
administration "will not tolerate such acts that portray the University as the other, with a capital O."
Junior Caleb Young '07.5, a double concentrator in Modern Culture and Media and Art Semiotics, was quick to blame what he called "Malthusian post-structuralist demagoguery" for giving momentum to the Faunce steps hipster ban.
Hipsters across campus shared Young's sentiment today. Shortly after the ban came into effect early Tuesday morning, a small group of hipsters began to assemble in front of University Hall. Many shouted dirty epithets, including "the signifier is dead." The group then proceeded to the Faunce House steps where they staged a sit-in on the steps, the first official violation of the new ban and the University's non-academic code. DPS officers were soon called to the scene to subdue and remove more than thirty hipsters who refused to leave.
Margaret Shone '08, one of the hipsters participating in the protest, was especially appalled by the University's harsh new policies. "These steps formed my reality, they showed me how to walk and dress and think, so I could be different from everyone else," remarked Shone as she undid her black and white Palestinian solidarity keffiyeh that she recently purchased from Urban Outfitters. "Where else can I drag on a Parliament while displaying my revolutionary apparel?"
