After many preventable delays, work begins this week on the Fred’s University Opioid Deaths Monument. Fred’s University had hoped to acquire an existing monument, the Lift The Label Opioid Memorial, which consists of a wall built out of 4,200 pill bottles, at a low price and pocket the extra money they had received from the Sicker family Revenue Pharma Opioid Settlement for the project. But when that deal fell through, Fred’s U decided to “insource” the design to the Architecture Department.
Members of the Psychology Department objected to early versions of their design, which featured an enormous structure shaped like a bottle of Revenue Pharma’s Roxycodone, complete with an internal spiral staircase and viewing platform. Psychologists argued that the fun monument might be seen to glamorize pill use and even promote it to children through the “toyetic” style. The project was scrapped. A collaboration was finally agreed on that included both the Architecture Department, the Psychology Department, and a focus group of high school students from nearby Public School Zero.
The Public School Zero students suggested that the monument should be reoriented to evoke death, instead of focusing on pills. With their input, the final design has both Disney elements and a video game vibe. Using an exercise devised by the Psychology Department, the high schoolers contributed both their visualizations of death and also their feelings related to the impact of opioids in their own community.
The details remain shrouded in secrecy and will only gradually be released in a series of TikTok stories. But construction crews could be seen at work in what students affectionately call The Badlands, in the sunless northern area of the campus that is home to a recently remediated Superfund site. While the toxic waste from a long-ago University-owned chemical factory has been removed, the workers can be seen to be wearing protective gear as they begin construction on the Lake of Tears and install the Grim Reaper statue that will overhang the site.
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