*UPDATED:* Group of UCLA students vandalizes USC with blue and gold paint, most of campus cleaned up
Clean-up crews wash away blue and gold paint thrown on three flag poles on Exposition Boulevard at the USC campus early Friday morning.
By Sonali Kohli
Dec. 3, 2010 6:41 a.m.
Cleaning crews were able to remove most of the water-based paint from bikes and the surrounding grounds.
Correction: In a previous version of this article’s headline, vandalize was misspelled.
A group of UCLA students wrote “UCLA” on the turf of the USC Cromwell track early this morning using bottles filled with eight gallons of blue and gold acrylic paint.
The students also said they threw about four gallons of blue and gold paint onto a long row of bike racks with about 300 bicycles and another four gallons on three flag poles on Exposition Boulevard that USC students pass by and kick as part of a tradition on their way to football games. They then drove down fraternity row, throwing the leftover paint out the windows along the road.
The students used a water-based paint that is easy to wash with water and soap.
[Updated at 12:17 p.m. Friday: USC crews discovered the paint at about 4:30 a.m. and were cleaning it within half an hour with high-pressure steam cleaners, said USC Department of Public Safety Captain David Carlisle.
Carlisle said at about 11:30 a.m. that most of the paint on campus had been removed.
The USC Department of Public Safety will investigate the incident and have to pass it on to LAPD detectives because it is reported as a vandalism, he said.
“We are in their jurisdiction, but we understand it’s a prank,” Carlisle said.]
USC Department of Public Safety said around 6 a.m. that it had not yet received any suspicious reports and would be sending officers out to check.
The group of 15 friends who planned and executed the prank were all women. The students were unable to raise money for a larger-scale prank and said this was plan B.
The students said UCLA has not pulled many pranks on its rival recently. This was meant as payback for the red and yellow paint found splattered on the Bruin statue last year and the dye found in three UCLA fountains this week, although neither of these incidents were linked directly to USC students.
“It was revenge. “¦ We decided to take it into our own hands,” one of the students said.
The student said she and her friends will be at the UCLA–USC football matchup Saturday to support their team that they confidently feel has the ability to win.
“No matter the outcome on Saturday, we’ll always have Bruin pride, and we’re always going to back up our Bruins,” she said.
