At the annual Hugo Black Lecture last week, Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony Romero told President Bennet that chalking should be reinstated. It was a significant moment—but not an original one. Last year, Lee Bollinger was asking the same question of President Bennet at the same lecture series. With another WSA-approved chalking proposal sitting on Bennet’s desk (which he has subsequently rejected) and a strongly worded Hartford Courant editorial denouncing the ban, what more do we need to convince him?
Banning chalking hurts the campus community by prohibiting one of the most visible forms of communication. It strips the campus of what has become an empowering—though often controversial—experiment in public discourse (so much so that Wesleyan has attracted the attention of both National Public Radio and the New York Times).
Bennett’s sweeping ban on chalking is deeply problematic. First, it unfairly limits a medium of speech, erasing campus announcements along with the sexual expletives. Second, while the ban was sold as being content neutral, the implications it carries certainly are not. Chalking has traditionally been a venue in which students, especially members of the queer community, have been able to express themselves. The policy is anything but content neutral. Just because chalking is unpopular with the Administration does not mean that it can be erased.
For all of the liberal ideals that Wesleyan markets itself on, such a policy is anathema. Granted, we are at a private university, ever increasingly subject to the whim of the Administration, but the question is not whether Bennet could institute such a policy, but whether he should.
That said, chalking is not without its problems. When chalk on the ground becomes a directed, personal attack on faculty or staff, a whole other set of issues comes into play. This is not the time or place, however, for such a debate. Bennet’s ban leaves no room for debate, no forum for discussion. Before the shape of the chalking policy can be decided, a space has to be created in which that dialogue can take place.
The new chalking policy, if there is one, will need to be formulated after long and deliberate discussion, with input from students and faculty alike. Like all forms of speech on campus, to exist chalking must be respectful and considerate to the larger Wesleyan community. It is the student’s responsibility to be cognizant of the context they live in. However, first it is Bennet’s responsibility to restore full freedom of speech to the students.
Leave a Reply