CSUN’s Tagging Course Leaves the Wrong Mark

* I was appalled to learn (“Teacher Tagging at CSUN Seminar,” July 24) that “tagging” is being taught at CSUN as a visual arts project.

Tagging costs me a minimum of $1,200 per year for a graffiti removal service.

Teacher Barbara Kerwin says: “The role of graffiti is historically significant. . . . Man marks his territory. . . . Caveman marked his walls too.”

My territory is my territory, and I don’t appreciate--as a taxpayer--this art form being taught at a state university using my tax dollars. Aren’t we supposed to be a tad more civilized than animals? So why do we have to mark our territory?

On one hand, we’re supposed to be teaching young children not to “tag,” and when caught they are punished. On the other hand, we are teaching teachers how to do it so they can teach young people.

I suggest we take another look at how taxpayers’ money is being spent in schools and that CSUN revamp its California Arts Project curriculum.

ELMYRA LAM

Northridge

* On a recent Sunday, as I drove on the San Diego Freeway, I came across four five-ton trucks, a 50-foot hydraulic boom man-lift and workmen repainting all of the freeway sign crossing five lanes. They had been covered with graffiti a few days before.

Since the caveman marked his walls, we have evolved with laws and property rights. Your writer Susan Byrnes, many in our school system, the criminals who destroy property with graffiti and the editors of the Los Angeles Times, in my opinion, have not.

ROBERT E. MAIN

Chatsworth