While many of us at Skidmore may have noticed a shortage of Dhall cups over the last week or so, no one could have guessed what the Committee for Artistic Activism, a new club made up of an eager group of sophomores and juniors, was planning.
Late Friday night, the group spent several hours in the Atrium of Murray-Atkins Dining Hall, constructing a nine-and-a-ha lf foot tall statue of Bernie Sanders entirely out of the Dining Hall’s famous red and clear cups. The face, a hyper realistic likeness of the senator, was made out of peanut butter packets that had been emptied and molded.
"It took us probably six hours to put it all together," said Bruce Sheckles '17, the group's president. "It took us weeks to collect everything, though. We don't believe in food waste, so we had to eat all of the peanut butter ourselves. These things don't just happen overnight."
"Plus, like, his wrinkles were hard and there were a bunch," commented Katie Golucky '18, the group's head designer.
This painstaking effort is even more impressive considering the administration asked them to take the statue down after learning that the students were building it without approval from the college, a mere thirty minutes after the statue's completion.
In their statement to the Skidmore News, Sheckles and Golucky said that the statue served a dual mission, spreading awareness of their group as well as showing student support for Senator Sanders.
When asked if they would all be voting for Bernie in April, all six members of the group stated that they would if they were registered to vote.