Four out of the six missing banners for the Asian Week events have been returned since their disappearance earlier this month.
Zaynah Rahman '05, co-president of the Asian Student Association (ASA) who helped publicize Asian Week, noticed two banners were missing on the weekend before Asian Week. These banners included the large, white banner that hung in front of the Smith Union entrance as well as a smaller banner in the hallway of Smith.
A few days later, she noticed that two other banners were missing.
"We were extremely upset at the incident, because the ASA members who worked on these banners spent a great amount of time and effort into making the banners. The fact that these banners disappeared a day or two after we put them up was ridiculous and unfair," Rahman said.
First-year Janet Chan, who helped set up and clean up several events, also expressed discontentment with the incident.
"I was shocked that the signs were missing. At first, when the two signs were missing, I just thought that they fell and someone placed them aside. However, that was not the case. As the signs continued to disappear, I grew more upset. Many of the ASA members had put a lot of hard work and effort into making these banners," Chan said.
Although ASA did not know who was responsible for taking the banners, Rahman suggested that the banners could have been taken by intoxicated students who attended the Reel Big Fish concert.
Rahman '05 and Keerthi Sugumaran '06 reported the incident to Director of Smith Union and Student Activities Burgie Howard.
"We did not contact Security about this, because two years ago the same incident occurred?three of our Asian Week banners were stolen?and Burgie sent an email to the campus, which helped get all of our banners back to ASA," Rahman said.
Howard emailed the campus and asked anyone who took or found the banners to return them to the Smith Union Info Desk.
"My message to the campus was simply to support their efforts, and hopefully help them get the banners returned," Howard said.
Two banners were returned after Howard sent out the email. One banner was returned anonymously to the Smith Union Info Desk and another one by members of a Bowdoin sports team, according to Rahman.
"It's disturbing to find that there are students on this campus that have no consideration for other students' hard work. Our organization is not the only one that experienced an incident like this. According to Burgie, a couple of Reel Big Fish posters were stolen a few days before the concert," said Rahman.