RIT students raise awareness about mural art through TunnelVision

Fifty years of murals in the Residence Hall tunnels reflect the values, imagination, and school pride of generations of RIT students. Two current students are making sure they aren’t forgotten.

Wilson McDade created the website, TunnelVision: RIT’s Overlooked Art Museum, with help from Kasim O’Meally, to document the artwork and uncover details for future students.

McDade’s idea for TunnelVision began last fall in the class Imag(in)ing Rochester, taught by Jessica Lieberman, chair of Humanities, Computing, and Design.

“The final project for the class was to create a map of a place or experience that might impact your community or change people’s views on a subject,” said McDade, a fifth-year computer science major from New Orleans. “TunnelVision came out of that class as an experiential map and catalog of the murals in the tunnels.”

O'Meally, a fourth-year web and mobile computing major from Rochester, and McDade documented the 250 existing murals with fresh photography and research. They pieced together information from a snapshot inventory, mural application forms, and mock-ups kept in the Center for Residence Life.

They found other clues in the RIT Archives, including a 1976 newsletter from the Residence Hall Association announcing the winners of a mural painting competition. McDade cross-referenced the names and murals and interviewed a few of the alumni.

While most of the dormitory residents are first-year students, many older students live in specialty housing or work as resident advisers. McDade spent four years living in the Computer Science House located in Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry Hall. O’Meally has worked as a resident adviser for the last two years.

Both students have walked past the murals thousands of times on their way to the Corner Store, laundry facility, or dining halls. The murals became part of the background and the mental map that helped McDade navigate the tunnels, he said.

“Sometimes the murals disappear,” McDade said. “They’re ephemeral. People will replace their mural or put up a new one overnight. It was interesting to me that there was no kind of documentation.”

TunnelVision gave him a chance to fix that problem and record the legacy students left behind.

Art in the tunnels began in 1970 as semi-sanctioned graffiti. Fine art students needed an outlet during the tense political climate and Stanley McKenzie, a former English professor and provost emeritus, suggested the tunnel walls.

Students used markers and spray paints on the plain cinder block and concrete walls. Most of the early murals were whitewashed, and only a few of the originals survive—one from 1976 and two from 1971. Now, storage and utility closets enclose two of the oldest murals. Infrastructure has grown around the murals and pipes obscure a larger-than-life flamingo and an Engineering House homage to the band, Boston. A random set of lockers also block part of a portrait of Kendrick Lamar.

McDade and O’Meally have enlisted younger students to continue their work and have started a student club called “Tunnel Visionaries.”

“Since we are both leaving soon, we are looking to other people to pick up where we leave off,” O’Meally said. “We’re tapping into the curiosity students have about the murals—How old they are and who did them—so that other students that come after them can see that there’s a long history that represents how students at the time might have felt and what the campus was like back then.”

Elizabeth Call, university archivist, supports their efforts to raise awareness about the murals. Call has proposed that RIT designate the murals in the Residence Hall tunnels and other student-made murals across campus as a “historic and culturally significant art installation.” The murals could be included in the RIT Archives’ Art on Campus collection.

“The murals offer insights into the evolving campus culture,” Call said. “By granting historic designation to select murals—pre-dating 1977 or more than 50 years old—we aim to preserve this student legacy for future generations and integrate it into the narrative of campus history.”

For more information about TunnelVision and the Tunnel Visionaries club, contact tunnelvision@csh.rit.edu.