Plastered across a set of Seaver Hall lockers, a six-foot tall photo of actor Nicholas Cage’s face turned the heads of students and teachers alike Thursday, Jan. 10. The Seaver Locker Decoration Committee had struck again.
William Lee ’14 heads the informal group of students who decorate a section of the lockers in the bottom floor of Seaver across from the Foreign Language office.
It started when Lee wanted to decorate his friend’s locker for his birthday, but decided to be more creative than simply covering it with wrapping paper or balloons.
“We put a bunch of K-Pop [Korean Pop] stars on his locker, in a way that a lot of girls have theirs with a bunch of muscular men,” Lee said.
Lee and his friends decided to take their locker decorations to the next level, creating a Facebook group called the “Seaver Locker Decoration Committee” where they could submit ideas for future projects. The group, which was originally open to the public, grew quickly and now has over 50 members. Further entries are “only by invite,” he said. To form the picture of Cage’s face, members of the committee taped together nearly 50 sheets of paper, receiving mixed reactions from passersbys.
“Our fellow students usually like it,” Lee said, “but occasionally a few are offended by what we put up.”
Teachers asked Lee to take down the photo of Cage Thursday, citing lawsuits filed against Cage by the Internal Revenue Service and his 2011 arrest for domestic abuse.
“You’re allowed to decorate lockers, but you can’t draw on the locker itself and it can’t be something inappropriate on the locker,” Assistant to the Head of Upper School Michelle Bracken said. “If somebody finds something inappropriate or if a kid was offended, I’d hope we’d handle it and use it as a learning experience.”
Friday morning, the lockers were bare except for a piece of paper with, in a reference to “The Great Gatsby,” the words “The Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.” The Committee plans to work with Prefect Council to decorate Seaver in honor of the upcoming Whiteout dance.
