According to student witnesses, Wellesley College has experienced a huge spike in skywriting across campus this semester. “I was heading to Tower for lunch last week when I looked up to see ‘DIRTY DISHES, POM FLOOR 3’ spelled in white letters in the sky,” Molly Smith ’20 said. She added that the three “could have been a five.”
This was not the first report of such writing, which has been spotted by several students. As of publication, 12 students reported reading “LOST UMBRELLA, BLUE WITH POLKA DOTS” in the sky above Lulu.
Kelly Stevens ’19 stepped forward on Sunday to claim responsibility for the umbrella message. “I know it seems a bit extreme, but I could just tell no one was actually reading my emails,” she said.
Since the message was spotted, Stevens has sent seven emails to the entire school, one of which even included the already-graduated class of 2017. The emails led to a thread over 15 messages long, including replies of “Post in Lost and Found” and “I lost my fork!”
These replies encouraged Stevens to turn to skywriting. “With every joking reply, I knew I would never find my umbrella. Skywriting is the next frontier of communication at Wellesley!” Stevens told The Wellesley News.
Emails are becoming a less popular means of communication among Wellesley students. “Most of my friends don’t even get all those email threads; we use the digest,” Emily Todd ’18 said. “I just can’t deal with 100 or more emails a day.”
With school-wide emails on the way out, determined students like Stevens have found ever more creative solutions. “Last year, someone stole my water bottle from Clapp, and no one was responding to my emails, so I painted banners and hung them around campus,” she explained.
Based on Facebook reactions to the banners, over 70 percent of the student body saw them. “But I never got my water bottle! I think the banners were too easy to ignore,” Stevens lamented.
Undeterred, Stevens has been leading the way into the next wave of Wellesley communication, and students are noticing. “I never read those emails, but I can’t help reading the sky every time I have to walk to class,” Smith said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the message about dirty dishes in Pomeroy Hall, but the RA of Pomeroy’s third floor, Hannah Ryan ’20, noted that nearly all of the plates had mysteriously disappeared from the floor kitchen.
An anonymous source told The Wellesley News that all referendums will soon take place via skywriting as well, but this has not been confirmed.