Intensifying the debate over “whitewashing” at the University, snow was reported falling on campus last week. The alleged flurries appeared on several walkways and other surfaces of color during the Thanksgiving vacation, creating an unpleasant surprise for some students returning after the holiday.
“I expect this kind of thing at home in Alaska with my frigid right-wing relatives,” said Wanda Fjordenson ’08. “I like to think of Wesleyan as a warm space, but it seems that those days are gone.”
In addition to bleaching trees, cars, and buildings, the snow covered some of the University’s few remaining chalkings. After it melted, it became icily clear that the damage was irreparable. A message preemptively protesting the transformation of the student body into an elite “snowbility” dripped down High Street, inexplicably forming the words “Zach Goldstein ’05.”
“Apparently, those colors do run” said the message’s author, who refused to be identified for this article. “Next time I’ll try [writing in] earth tones.”
Some of the University’s most practiced activists hastily organized a snow-focused task force called Students Hate On Villainous Educational Leaders, or SHOVEL. The group does not yet identify with adjectives or nouns that might be used to describe it, but it has already lived up to its acronym by clearing paths and lawns with equipment including, when necessary, blowtorches.
Summer Fall ’06, one of SHOVEL’s founders, said the group will continue to fight for the visibility of campus objects. The task force aims to encourage more of these objects to speak for themselves, but thus far has had difficulty reaching out.
“We objectify objects,” Fall said. “We treat things like things. I would hate us too, like this silently screaming chair I’m sitting on.”
With winter threatening to arrive, SHOVEL hopes to receive enough WSA funding to buy more blowtorches. The group has also fostered a shaky partnership with HEAT UP, the pro-global warming voice on campus.
Some administrators have expressed confusion about the emerging organizations, citing scientific speculation that snow is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
“When Zeus gets playful, sometimes snow just happens,” said Dean of Weather Sunni DeLite. “There are also little-understood meteorological patterns that may cause the stuff. It’s not something the Administration can take a stand on.”
But the Administration already has taken a stand, Summer Fall argues. Why, she asks, is last year’s whitewashed campus advertised prominently on the University’s website?
“I don’t see any pictures of meteorites raining down on North College,” Fall noted pointedly, referencing another example of “nature.”
Unlike some controversial campus issues, however, the snow issue has stirred up a blizzard of discourse among students as well as between students and administrators. A small but increasingly vocal minority of the student body has suggested uses for snow ranging from cooling down overheated woodframe houses to numbing the poor. Some have even claimed that snow could be fun, if for instance it was collected in huge containers and then spread evenly over Foss Hill. What will happen next seems unclear even to the student activists, who also acknowledge the huge expenditure to a school already in budget trouble.
“Sadly, this isn’t Amherst,” said Wistful Freshman ’09. “They might have the endowment to afford giant bins, but we don’t. I don’t really care though. I’m from California.”
If the problematic weather continues, ResLife warns that Outhouse will be renamed Inhouse and students will be barred from protesting in tents.
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