They're there every year — dozens of makeshift graffiti signs spaced five to ten metres apart on both sides of the road leading to UBC. They serve no real marketing purpose (they're equivalent to spam marketing), are highly distracting to drivers due to their frequency, feature what I can only imagine is marginally racist symbolism (what's with the bananas?) and get easily knocked over and turned into road debris by mildly strong winds.
They’re distracting and that alone is plain unacceptable for anything placed along a high-speed road with intersections. When they were knocked over and ended up on the road last year, they became debris which many drivers had to swerve to avoid lest they rip the bumpers off their super-low cars.
The signs don’t even say anything beyond “Join CVC.” Is the Chinese Varsity Club so ignorant to genuinely believe it's fine and dandy to sacrifice road users' safety (and patience) just to get across the notion that you should join their club? Apparently this club is so big that they can get away with clumping hard-to-read, confusing and otherwise pointless signs along the same stretch of road (Just in case I missed the first one... and the second one... and the third one... and the fourth...).
I thought I'd graduated high school already where even this type of marketing is limited to maybe two banners and almost never on medians on high-speed public roadways. If posting signage across bridges over freeways is highly regulated and requires permits, this should too.
Since I have originally written this letter, the signs have subsequently been taken down along Southwest Marine Drive out of respect for the area, according to the CVC. Nevertheless, I am choosing to publish this regardless in hopes that it would influence future CVC leadership to avoid similar situations in the future as this is not the first time they have taken their signs down along the highway.
Will Zhang is a fourth-year student studying commerce.
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