On Wednesday (October 25th) Dean Mike Whaley sent an email to the entire student body concerning the recent history of chalking on the Wesleyan campus. I wish to take issue with the position from which Dean Mike was writing as well as present another more complex history.
By suggesting that because “none of the current undergraduate population was here” when the ban was instituted we therefore do not understand the situation, Whaley dismisses not only any continuity of interaction among past, present, and future Wesleyan students, but continuity of issues—the fact that the same old shit goes on year after year, and some of us in fact notice. He elevates himself to the position of bearer of institutional memory, one who, being the writer of The Story, is graciously sharing it with the students. The administration uses the transience of the student body to shift the issues to ones they find more comfortable, and their effectiveness becomes evident in recent campus activism regarding chalking. I am thrilled by any murmurings I hear, any glimmers of pastel decoration I see on the sidewalk. At the same time, I am concerned that the administration has been too effective in redirecting some of the issues.
The story they tell is that chalking got out of hand and that there is no way to monitor it; since it is not a form of “civilized discourse,” is not “sophisticated” enough, and makes our campus look “unkempt,” it must simply be banned. Recent Wespeaks suggesting that we could find a way, as a community, to develop standards for chalking reflect that many students on campus believe that there were (obviously) “unacceptable” chalkings and if we could just find a way to prevent those, we could have chalking again. But who decides what is unacceptable? Bennet’s email carefully avoids the real issues, issues that are explored on student-made website documenting the history of the chalking ban from the first moratorium (www.wesleyan.edu/hermes/chalking). The moratorium was instituted, suspiciously, after two events: National Coming Out Day 2002 and increased chalkings by students of color. Bennet never explains why the sexually-explicit (and they were queer) chalkings he references were “threatening.” He did not want to enact a “speech code,” so he erased the option of speech at all.
On this campus, we have not figured out how to talk about hate; how to talk about the problems of racism and heterosexism and classism A major criticism of chalking is that it is not a form of good sustainable dialogue about these issues. But no one is asking it to be; it is a space for these issues to be acknowledged, for the lack of discussion to be announced and expressed, for dialogue to be stimulated. What is the administration doing to promote this kind of dialogue? What alternatives have they suggested? Sending periodic emails about how hate crimes will not be tolerated? The administration’s response to these problems as expressed through chalking has been simply to muzzle everyone. Is silence the answer? If college is where we come to learn about confronting power, what are the implications of that response? Why does the administration send emails about racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic chalkings, but not racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic Wespeaks?
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