Bwog Staff Writer Theo Sandler arrived on campus one fateful day to face… themself and their friend, but as a really big poster. 

Imagine you’re me. You come to campus, eager for your last first day of class. Bittersweet, to be sure, but exciting nonetheless—it’s senior year, after all! There are large posters lining the walkway through the middle of campus, installed over the summer due to the work being done on Altschul Hall. You’ve got a few extra minutes before class, so you pause to take in the new surroundings, which include student photos, statistics about STEM on campus, and quotations from Barnard alumnae, including Zora Neale Hurston and Maria Hinojosa. You recognize some of the people in the photos and continue to scan them as you pass through. Most of the pictures are large images of campus with many people, each somewhat blurred and none particularly in focus.

Then you see it. A photograph of two people planting. A huge, 8-foot tall version of yourself, hunched over to pat the sprout into the ground. Next to you in the picture is your friend, sitting cross-legged, digging a new hole for their own plant. 

I feel somewhat blessed by the fact that my face is not in full view, since I’m leaning over. I am one of the least photogenic people I know. There’s no chance I wasn’t making some sort of a weird face. Furthermore, I have a very different haircut from when this picture was taken (about a year ago). My friend was not afforded the same level of anonymity—they face the camera at a slight angle. 

I pause to note that neither of us was warned that upon arriving on campus we would be faced with a (much) larger-than-life photo of ourselves. This is made even funnier by the fact that when I was a child, my mom would never sign the waivers for schools, summer camps, or recreational activities to use me in promotional material. My family is generally pretty private and introverted, but sometimes situations arise that force you out of your comfort zone. Oh well. 

These posters will likely remain on campus at least for the next two years, potentially a longer period of time than either myself or my friend will be students on campus. This poster has already posed devastating challenges to my life as a student. Upon leaving one of my first classes, a few of my classmates and I continued to walk through campus. Fifty feet before we reached The Poster I began to spiral. Would they notice? Should I sigh and shrug, jokingly, upon passing the poster? Would they not notice, and my drawing attention to the poster make me seem weird, overly invested, or conceited? I ultimately decided not to mention it, and it appeared they didn’t notice that we were passing by a double-sized copy of the person to whom they were speaking. Or they didn’t want to mention it. Either way, I felt I’d escaped. At least for the time being.

Another misery of recent times is that in order to avoid walking past the poster, I ended up taking a slightly longer route to class. So, if any of my professors are reading this, if I’m late for class, blame the poster. 

I recognize that in writing this, I am drawing new attention to The Poster. However, I think this situation is very funny (as did my friends, and Bwog), so here you all are. An article about my misfortunes. 

RIP Altschul via Bwarchives