Here is a poster I found posted above the community trash bins in a Graham lounge.
Source: Me
First things first, please look at the image to the right and read the caption above it. What is your initial, gut reaction to this poster? Notice it was made by Santa Clara’s Housing Office.
Personally, I was shocked by it at first. It is extremely sassy and passive-aggressive. Not that it is bad to be sassy or passive-aggressive but I don’t expect those adjectives in association with the Housing Office. Yes, that’s right, this is a gif posted by an authority on campus. You didn’t expect that did you?
They clearly are trying to appeal to students by using our “language” of gifs. They use their knowledge of their target audience (students at SCU) to craft a rhetorically effective message. They know that images are a way to catch people’s eyes, especially our generation’s eyes. After all, we do spend a lot of time engaging with images ( e.g. Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram).
Perhaps, you enjoy this employment of gifs and applaud their success. But my opinion differs. Though I believe that this was a great example of the use of rhetorical context, it just didn’t click with me. I think my issue was that it is very passive-aggressive. I would rather just be told “please, don’t put you trash in the community trash”. If that can be crafted into a slightly less annoying gif, that would be optimal. Don’t get me wrong, I love sass and a little passive-aggressive behavior can be funny, but it just hit me in the wrong way.
Why didn’t their attempt to connect with their student audience not work on me? They used their rhetorical knowledge to grab my attention, but I knew exactly what they were doing. If they hadn’t had the banner that labeled it a product of the Housing Office would I have reacted differently?
Other then my negative reaction to the poster as a whole I also reacted by wondering “Why would this be posted now?” Had the dorms been having problems with this recently? Is trash mistreatment plaguing our school? Somehow, I doubt that. But there must be a problem if the Housing Office is deciding to put up posters in lounges. Have your community trash bins been filled with personal trash recently? Mine haven’t, but maybe I don’t look at them closely enough.
Well, if this is a problem in Graham, is it a problem in other dorms? And, if so, are these posted in dorms other than Graham? If you have seen this or similar poster by the Housing Office feel free to comment. Or just comment how you responded to this poster initially.