No delays on the 1 train? Positively shocking!

A male Columbia student’s version of Their Eyes Were Watching God: taping googly eyes all over our divine campus. Ross “Four Eyes” Chapman noticed these hidden staples with his heightened prescription vision and decided to put a face (and fingers) to the mysterious all-black pupils. 

Where have you seen them? The lion reliefs in front of Butler? On the doors of Carman? On the faces of CCSC campaign posters? This semester, Columbia has been the subject of one student’s rampage of googly eyes. This student, who asked to be either anonymous or referred to as the “Eye Master,” has taken his huge collection of grade school art supplies to the streets and classrooms of Morningside Heights.

“It looked like a balloon,” he recounted, thinking back to when a yellow padded envelope arrived at the package center for him after spring break. The Eye Master, with the help of some floormates, purchased 4,000 18 millimeter googly eyes from China on eBay. After shipping, they cost him just one cent per eye. He opened his package and the first small bag of eyes within it, and decorated a paper recycling bin in Lerner as his very first act of googly vandalism.

The Eye Master really is an expert at what he does. As we ate in JJ’s, discussing the finer parts of plastic eyes, he was passively and easily preparing the adhesive on the back of the eyes. Two went on the wall, and another two on the condiments caddy of the table. When I went to get some Jamba Juice, I came back to see two on my laptop case and another two on the computer itself. He has a talent for subterfuge, and he uses it for art. The Eye Master was inspired when he came across a community on Reddit, r/eyebombing. According to the Subreddit, “Eyebombing is the art of sticking ‘googly eyes’ onto an inanimate object in the public sphere.” Popular posts on the page include googly-eyed tattoos, refrigerators, and famous pieces of art.

One of his favorite acts of googling came underground as he waited for a subway. Bored, he took out a couple of eyes. (He normally takes a handful of googly eyes almost every time he leaves his room). Looking for a target, he settled for a painted “116” marker along the wall and affixed the ocular pair to the number six. After he did, a little girl pointed to it and look up at her mom, saying, “Look, mom, googly eyes!” “I made that little girl’s day,” The Eye Master chimed, smiling big. He made his own day in that moment, too. And he made it again when, later in the day, he saw a picture of that very same “116” on the front page of r/eyebombing. Our small college boy made it big.

So why is he doing it? On one level, it’s fun for him. But is he also the hero Columbia needs? “There’s scientific evidence that having pictures of eyes in a place reduces crime,” The Eye Master explained. Maybe all of these googly eyes around campus will make Morningside a safer place. They could also have become the source of controversy, had The Eye Master wished to make a political point. “I wanted a big campus uprising in favor of the googly eyes. That’s what I really wanted.” That hasn’t quite happened yet. Whatever the case, he doesn’t think of what he’s doing as a bad thing. “There are different kinds of vandalism. Some of which are damaging… and some of which just add a fun little layer of positivity to the world.” So if seeing an out-of-place googly eye makes you chuckle at some point during these rough weeks, good. That’s all we could ask for.

Googly subway sign and caption via r/eyebombing