As a petition to end the chalking ban rises past 670 signatures, students on campus are beginning to wonder whether the “chalking revolution” is nigh or just a passing fad. Is the uprising of chalking an expression of our freedoms, or a sign that we have nothing better to do? Students have taken different positions in this debate.
For many reasons, the issue of chalking at Wesleyan has once again come to the forefront. First of all, the spring season is more hospitable to chalking. In addition, two new leaders have come on to the chalking front. Michelle Garcia ’10 and Adam Jacobs ’10 are responsible for the new petition in favor of chalking. But the biggest fuel to the flames is probably the upcoming arrival of a new University president, Michael Roth.
“The petition got something like 470 signatures the first day,” said Xue Sun ’08, one of the co-creators of the Facebook group ‘Keep Wesleyan Weird.’ “The change of guard has gotten everybody’s hopes up. I think that the absolute best first step Michael Roth can do when he comes into office would be to end the ban on chalking.”
Still, at a point of such great potential change, some think that students have better things to do with their time.
“I think the ban on chalking is really no big deal, and the people who seem to think it should be a basic right are blowing everything out of proportion,” said Jesse Farnham ’08. Farnham is the creator of the ‘Anti-‘Keep Wesleyan Weird” Facebook group.
Even the name “chalking revolution” is received with some hesitation.
“The chalking revolution is kind of a sensationalist way of putting it, isn’t it?” Sun said.
The petitioners beg to differ.
“I personally think that the chalking is actually a very major issue with a lot of principles behind it, and with a huge number of benefits,” Jacobs said. “Personally, I think this is semantics, whatever. I can see some issues people may have with it, but I personally believe it’s a revolution, when people’s thinking gets changed, that’s a revolution to me.”
While Garcia and Jacobs consider themselves spearheads of the “revolution,” they deny that there is any hierarchy to the movement. People even disagree about who is really behind it.
“I can’t confidently say what group is responsible for the ‘revolution,’ but my guess is that it’s a group of people who have been here for a while and therefore feel that the hippie culture here isn’t as prevalent as it used to be,” Farnham said. “This ‘revolution’ may be their way of fighting the change.”
Others pointed to the significant number of underclassmen involved in the movement.
“It’s interesting that freshmen are the ones spearheading it,” Sun said. “Weren’t they, like, 15 when chalking was banned?”
Jacobs and Garcia said that chalking is both an important means of catharsis for students and a form of self-assertion.
“There’s people out here that feel like, sometimes I feel it too, feeling sequestered into the private life,” Jacobs said. “[Chalking] is a way of saying, ‘No! This is who I am!’ I think chalking is a very important medium for that.”
“Putting it out in chalk for anyone to see, anyone to respond to, it builds a sense of community,” Garcia said. “It builds a sense of communication that I think is unique.”
Farnham suggested looking at the issue from the University’s viewpoint.
“First of all, the buildings and sidewalks on campus are owned by the University, not by the students,” Farnham said. “If the people in charge of Wesleyan don’t want chalk on their property, then the students should respect that.”
A frequent response to the issue of chalking is that students can use posters instead. Garcia believes that posters and chalkings are two different kinds of communication.
“It’s so very stationary,” Garcia said. “You read posters, they stand there, they’re not mobile, they’re not dynamic, they’re not active.”
She then referred to chalking outside of Weshop that said, “I feel alone, do you?” to which someone had written in response, “YES.”
Jacobs and Garcia are aware of criticism of chalking, and invite discussion on the topic. They plan to have a panel called “Talking Chalk” during WesFest, and potentially another at a later date, with panelists from both sides of the issue.
Jacobs admits that what is actually being written in the chalk can be problematic.
“There’s been a lot of discussion on the issue of regulating it,” he said. “The tricky business is when you get into that ambiguous area and want to figure out how to negotiate it.”
Jacobs and Garcia were also recently made aware of the extra work put into removing chalk on campus.
“We are trying to set up a meeting with workers to try to figure out their cares and opinions on this,” Jacobs said.
He pointed out that if chalking were allowed, no one would have to clean it up.
Farnham suggested that students try to keep things in perspective.
“The ‘hippies’ here protest so many unimportant issues that they risk being tuned out completely, especially since the school has more important problems than the chalking ban,” he said. “If the hippies think this school is really so bad, I ask that they spend some time at one of the many frat-ruled, alcohol-worshiping, collar-popped, rich, preppy schools nearby.”
Talking Chalk will take place on April 21 from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in PAC 004. Jacobs and Garcia are also accepting loose change donations for their cause in box 4420 in Davenport, which will be used to buy and give out chalk.
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