I am convinced that the Argus front page article, (particularly with the quotations given by President Bennet,) illuminates that President Bennet has not only re-visited the very recent (hi)story of chalking at Wesleyan in a particularly flawed fashion, but also (more alarmingly) selectively left out (hi)stories that could help us better approach the current debate on chalking. Chalking, in its various manifestations—I will come back to this very important point—has successfully attempted to question what is indeed deemed as “natural” and “weird,” what is indeed naturalized and normalized as “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” Prior to its institutionally initiated, marginally resisted, yet nonetheless discursively maintained illegalization on campus, chalking in most of its manifestations successfully attempted to question the epistemological and embodied “naturalization” of heterosexuality—which is “nothing special” according to Jeff Pike’s wespeak.
Unlike Jeff Pike, I think “straight pride” (1) already surrounds us, and (2) does not need to have its banners “tolerated.” Jeff, I kindly ask you in particular to revisit the last sentence and fully grasp the argument it encapsulates. And I am still doing this in the most respectful way I can, although you, Jeff, might want to employ your “we are all equal, we are all hurt, we are all sinners” rhetoric to further demonize and criminalize sexualities other than yours. Heterosexuality, as exemplified in Pike’s wespeak, still dominates as the normative regime of sexuality and gendered embodiments of masculinity and femininity (and not of sexualities, or genders) in my daily life. In my reality. In my so-called “Wesleyan bubble.” And I would like to highlight: chalking had been a critical tool to confront and render visible the often taken for granted, or in other words naturalized, dominance of otherwise unmarked und unquestioned “straight pride.” Jeff, could I kindly ask you again to read the previous sentence? Thanks for all the grace you so generously shared with us with your passing commentary on “taking back.” Let me put it in more accessible terms: You cannot take something back that is already assumed to be yours.
In my (hi)stories, chalking was a critical tool in other words, along with the kiss-ins at the Admissions Office, and performances like that of QueerLeaders during Homecoming 2001, or its overlap with Take Back the Night to question norms and the powerfully singular “nature” of sexualities, genders and beyond. Let me open a parenthesis here and recover for some of us who might otherwise never know and for others who have chosen not to remember a forgotten (hi)story: (QueerLeaders were a group of queer-identified students who got on the Andrus Field during the Homecoming game in 2001 and performed a queer cheer performance for the audiences. And chalkings had hinted at their unscheduled performance coming). The “and beyond” in the previous sentence is not a later patched add-on. It indeed brings me to President Bennet’s quote in response to three acts of chalking that appeared on campus:
“None of us can tolerate a campus with homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-black slogans,” Bennet said. “It’s nothing fun or elevating or worthy of Wesleyan, so we are not going to go back to it” (Argus, October 20).
President Bennet, please let me kindly ask you at this juncture, should we then understand ripping down the rainbow banners from Olin as a tolerable act of “straight pride” or a clear example of homophobia, since in any case you did not condemn the act as homophobic? How about writing a Wespeak to congratulate it? And I am also curious to what is this “it” that “we are not going to go back to”? Is this “it” the homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-black chalking that has been monolithically just like “it” and hence was banned? And the people who have not been exposed to the acts of chalking prior to its illegalization should understand “its” history (and not various (hi)stories of “it”) as such? Should we understand from your quote that chalking was banned, because “it” was merely “nothing fun or elevating”? Was chalking banned, because “it” again in your alarming words was nothing “worthy of Wesleyan”? How could you—in your institutionally supported and powerfully operative position—unproblematically reduce the diversity of (hi)stories that have maintained chalking as a critical political tool and a claimed-right for various groups of people? Various groups of people that more than often included those beyond the Wesleyan queers and the queer allies! What does this “it” do to those chalkings that questioned norms that operated in discriminatory regimes of sexuality, gender and gendered bodies? How could you erase “their” overwhelmingly critical missions? (I do not say “all,” because I do not intend to erase that there have been also individuals who attacked chalking and contradicted “it” with its own tools in the past or now: by chalking against its attempt to question normative discriminatory regimes, and by chalking to insert racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic acts of hatred that disseminated epistemological and embodied violence.)
These acts of violence I will continue to condemn, confront and actively fight against, along with you, President Bennet. I will do so, however, not at the expense of other (hi)stories of chalking that were set out to do precisely the opposite of communicating hatred and violence: to question norms around (mostly, but not limited to) sexualities, genders and gendered bodies. Resurrected chalking on the other hand, exemplifies chalking about “the right to chalk” in very creative ways. (Everyone who have been chalking, Chalk on, chalk along!) These are two different historical moments that your “it” runs at the risk of collapsing into one in an alarmingly monolithic and teleological fashion.
President Bennet, as a recent Alumni and a current graduate student, would you suggest that I should rather go to a Homecoming WESeminar entitled “Lost and Found Wesleyan” to recover these (hi)stories? How about those recent (hi)stories that have not been identified—not even as lost, but rather simply erased? I am afraid a mere act of compliance with such an act lwould indeed be against the newly named “art and science of education” that I received at Wesleyan as an undergraduate. Or should I understand “it” as a newly formulated part of the “art and science of education” which I came back to claim this year as a graduate student? President Bennet, instead, I would like to respond with my (hi)stories, because your most present quote of “it” has conveniently erased and/or forgotten “them” at an expense that I could not afford not to question.
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