“On today's date at approximately 1:35 PM a male in dark clothing was observed digging in the dumpster behind DePaul Center. He walks away, returns digs in the dumpster, at which time flames begin to rise up. Anyone with information please contact the Chicago police.”
The public safety emails from DePaul campus security are never about anything normal. A few months ago, an arsonist was loose on campus— perhaps it wasn’t just one person, but multiple fires being started in one month seemed as though it was coming from the same person with a particular interest in the subject. I should start this piece by saying that I didn’t find the arsonist. I found the person who, in any typical superhero film, would be considered their enemy: the campus Spiderman.
He’s not a vigliante. He doesn't even wear a mask. He’s a student who, when not in class, dances around the bounds of our two by six city block campus. I met with the campus Spider-man in the library. It was snowing on the quad that day, so we sat in an alcove in the hall. In a word, the architecture of that building is “vaulting,” it’s not out of character for the building contractors for the largest Catholic University in the United States to try to emulate the on-campus church (I wonder if I can opt-out of paying for its upkeep with tuition. There are so many things to opt-out of for the religious and none for atheists).
Dylan: It was a way for me to sort of get out of my comfort zone and improve my social confidence and overall just make others happy because that’s something that genuinely makes me happy. And I knew it was something when the first week, when this guy randomly comes up to me and is like “Hey I want to take a picture with you.”
As he spoke, the acoustics of the hallway carried his voice such that it filled the whole place. It wasn’t the best environment for recording because of the echo, but as the sound filled the room, it was like his alter ego was present with us. It was oddly cinematic, like he was an actual superhero and not just a student in a suit. He didn’t have powers, but he had a presence.
Dylan: Like hey, like I wanna make people happy because I’m feeling really bad, and maybe out of this it’ll, you know, make my day kind of thing. And it did.
Being the largest Catholic University in the United States, DePaul features likenesses of priests all over campus: Father John Joseph Egan stands outside the dining hall with arms outstretched if you feel charitable enough to give him any of your leftovers (though it wouldn’t be much good without an antacid to go with it). There’s a multi-story mural depicting St. Vincent DePaul on the side of a dorm room— I would hate to be in the dorm that his massive eyes see into. But the inherent link to religion doesn’t have much meaning to me as someone who didn’t grow up in church. In a way, this is a lot more relatable.
Dylan: Who better than a bunch of college students who are struggling to figure out what they want to do in life on top of just like… regular mental health issues that everybody goes through?
“...And what is it to be young in years and suddenly wakened to the anguish, the urgency of life? [...] It is humiliation with every slip of the tongue, and torturing oneself for yesterday’s… [...] It is a withdrawal of feeling towards all childhood idols…it is lying…and resentment, and then hate. It is the emergence of cynicism, a probing of every thought and action” Susan Sontag, July 29th, 1948
Susan Sontag wrote that in one of the journals she kept during her time at UC Berkeley. It’s an encapsulation of the angst that comes with entering adulthood. Alongside worries about things like job prospects, and building a future, and getting set on fire by the campus arsonist, there’s this anxiety directed internally at how to present yourself to the world. The suit is what identifies him, but it’s the thing he has the least in common with from the source material (he can’t shoot webs with his hands). Now I present: the origin story.
Dylan: So at a pretty early age I was really into Spiderman and it’s never really left me— I’ve sort of waned from it more— specifically Peter Parker and Spiderman in general has been a really influential figure in my own personality and just how I interact with people because I’m someone who’s been bullied from an age, who loved science, who took pictures… and oddly enough I sort of starters fitting into this character accidentally but I really looked up to him because as— the whole reason Stan Lee created that character is because it was someone everyone could relate to.
Stuart: He’s like, what I was raised on. Like aside from the jokes about the “With great power comes great responsibility,” like at his core Spiderman is a good person who always tries to do the right thing and that’s sort of the value I was raised on so.. And that’s like one of the first movies I saw and it really resonated with me as a kid and it just stuck with me as I grew up.
Enter another character: not a villain, not a sidekick, but coincidentally, I have a friend who also owns a Spiderman suit.
Stuart: I have a Spiderman suit so I—it’s funny actually. It started as a joke (fade out).
Doesn’t it always? He bought the suit in high school, for his prom:
Stuart: So what I did is I used money that I would’ve used to get a nice prom suit and instead purchased a Spiderman suit and wore just under, like, dress clothes. Like halfway through prom, I went in the bathroom, took off the suit and came out as Spiderman and it was really fun. So that’s why I own a Spiderman suit, I might’ve done it eventually anyway…
“Arson at 1 E. Jackson DPC Plaza
A Stack of delivered newspapers was set on fire by an unknown person in the DPC PLAZA, causing damage to the door at 6:20 am on 12/7/2021.”
Our friend is back. The arsonist is the latest of a few particularly interesting characters public safety has had to warn students about: a fully tattooed man who spat at women outside of a Whole Foods, the fake acid dealer who would hold students at knifepoint (if he was smarter, he would’ve chosen the quintessential rich kid’s drug: cocaine), and perhaps the most dangerous: the student who tried to join ISIS. There’s a statistic like “in their lifetime a person will walk past eleven murderers on average,” I wonder what the number is for ISIS hopefuls. I’ve already passed one.
“On march 20, 2022 at approximately 12:10 a.m. an attempted robbery occurred at 854 W. Belden. A student was approached by a male wearing a black mask and black clothing. The offender asked the victim to surrender his property. The victim refused and the offender punched him. The offender fled the scene and the victim refused medical attention.”
What’s most interesting about this incident is the costume. The key to successfully committing crimes is not looking like you’re going to commit a crime. And this crime is categorically unsuccessful, the victim remained in possession of all of their things. The punch wasn’t hard enough to warrant any medical attention— it’s an assault and battery charge on a technicality. But it’s important enough to be notified about, in part because of the mask. A bad mugger can be turned into something much more dangerous with just the right garb. There’s a line about that in a Batman film:
Bane: “They didn’t know who I was until I put on the mask.”
And that sensibility can be captured succinctly from the other end:
Stuart: “Hey I look like Spiderman, that's cool.”
Dylan: I typically run without the mask. Like, I keep it on me in case people want to take pictures…
People do take pictures, and I was surprised to learn that at first. I feel like the purpose of documenting a meeting with Spiderman would be lost with the knowledge that it’s just another person.
Dylan: This is just another guy, right? This is just a person running around in a suit. This is somebody who is like you, a college student going through it, struggling, getting, like— trying to figure out what the next a thousand words he’s gonna write on another essay is.
But maybe that’s the reason for doing it— that despite the mundanity of his “normalness,” there’s something hopeful and exciting about the escapism of it all (perhaps that’s why Marvel movies make so much money). The presence of a superhero implies the presence of something bad they exist to protect the public from. But maybe it’s not a tangible villain, it’s monotony. It certainly shook me from my routine when I decided to track him down. I’m glad I did.
Dylan: I became this better, fuller version of myself. When I go out there I don’t really put on a personality, it’s just me and I get a lot of weird looks when I walk by, and I’m just like “Hey if you don’t like that then okay, whatever, it’s not that I don’t like you. It’s just— cool— great.”
“To love one’s body and use it well, that’s primary… I can do that, I know, for I am freed now.” Susan Sontag, May 24th, 1949
All of this is not to say that I expect him to literally fight the crime on our campus. And maybe I’m reading into it too far, but there’s something to be said for having this symbol of hope. Even if it is “just another guy.”
Dylan: Like I said I grew up from a background that was just— I was bullied a lot, I was harassed for being different, I felt like an outsider all the time… So when I come into a community and I’m being one hundred percent me by literally putting on a suit and just running and dancing around for fun, um… it tells me that I’m doing okay.
“I have, in some part, been given permission to live—Everything begins from now—I am reborn.” Susan Sontag, May 31st, 1949
“The Subject of the earlier Arson Safety alert was found by a Public Safety officer outside the building, Chicago Police were called and he is in custody.”
This audio documentary wouldn’t be possible without the people who were gracious enough to lend their thoughts and voices to this project. I want to extend thanks to Dylan Lawrence, Stuart Williams, Mia Trubelja, and Logan Muñoz.
Image credit to The Depaulia and @dpuspiderman on Instagram.
I also had some pieces published this month:
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