Hilal Nakiboglu: Chalking away a right?

Last Friday, a group of Wesleyan University students wanted to capture their administration's attention.

So they decided to attack the trustees with paper airplanes.

From a balcony adjoining the posh Olin Smith Reading Room, these students launched folded paper carrying messages in defense of their right to chalk campus sidewalks. The trustees, participating in an awards ceremony at the time, were surprised and, predictably, less than pleased.

Chalking has become something of a tradition at Wesleyan and is practiced for purposes that, unlike at Penn, regularly go beyond event advertising. The campus community there uses its sidewalks to announce, denounce and dialogue. Many gay students, for instance, use multi-colored chalk to help them publicly declare their sexual orientation. Scratchings like "dyke" or "Where the [expletive] are Asian-American Studies?" abound. The chalk is free, and provided in abundance through Wesleyan's student assembly.

Last month, however, all this changed abruptly as University President Doug Bennet declared a campus-wide, indefinite moratorium on all public chalking.

Since the prohibition, Bennet's decision has become a target for widespread criticism. The student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, attacks him almost daily. Recently, even The New York Times visited this Connecticut campus to feature Bennet and the turmoil in his midst.

Wesleyan, a university that Mother Jones magazine labels "the most activist campus in the country" prides itself on providing safe spaces for all to express themselves. Yet, when this right to voice began showing signs of abuse recently, administrators acted to confine those spaces. Wesleyan was forced to look the larger public in the eye with chalk duster and hose sheepishly in hand.

Hearing about this, I was inclined initially to be critical of Bennet's decision. Clearly, restriction of expression couldn't be a good thing on any campus. Wasn't the whole idea behind free speech having the chance to voice opinion, especially if of some shared importance and controversy?

If I were a Wesleyan student reading a comment disagreeable to me, I'd simply use my right to chalk in response. Wasn't that the appeal, the beauty of open discourse? Of democracy?

Well... perhaps.

Being able to speak in public without fear of persecution is a gift. But it is a gift that comes with a hefty price tag to the giver. If offered within the context of certain campus climates, it suffers at the hands of students who at best don't appreciate it and at worse use it to spread hatred.

Such misuse was the case last spring at the University of Colorado in Boulder. During Holocaust Awareness Week, the campus awoke one morning to anti-Semitic messages graffitied on key University concrete. Officials there have since devised a "chalking policy" that, once implemented, will likely restrict such messaging substantially.

Similar disturbances have afflicted many schools across the nation, forcing administrators at Swarthmore and Williams colleges, among others, to respond. President Bennet's university seems, then, to be the latest victim of a disturbing trend toward student intolerance.

What has happened at Wesleyan is not to be seen as a force against legitimate free speech. Rather, given the tenor of many comments made, it is simply an action taken in hopes of preventing expressions of hostility, violence and hatred from taking over a campus.

After all, how "useful" can public opinion be if expressed with bigoted or sexist narrow antagonism?

Martin Luther King wrote extensively of tolerance as being a "potent instrument for social and collective transformation," even saying that an authentic acceptance of others is really the "only morally and practically sound method" to help the marginalized, oppressed and unheard. If the students at Wesleyan are eager to speak up and fight for their brand of social justice, they would be well advised to alter their approach and language.

Differences in opinion across a campus are healthy and needed. But voicing those opinions in a manner that is crude and belligerent is diminishing to the said cause and those arguing it.

Chalking offers student groups a cheap, fun way to address a large audience. It is a shame if the right to do this is taken away. But taken away it must be if it leads to aggressive, dangerous disrespect of fellow campus community members. The students at Wesleyan and beyond might take away some valuable lessons from Penn's teach-in last Tuesday addressing possible attacks on Iraq.

Clearly, important campus conversations can be had without resorting to paper airplane throwing and the use of racist expletives.

Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.

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