Follwing a portraiture chalk project and guest post by Ross Levin ’15, our five-part retrospective on the Chalking Moratorium wraps up. One Friday morning in October, I trekked across campus to Dean Mike Whaley’s office to talk about a chalking controversy that took place about a decade ago. The previous weekend, two students had gotten into […]
“I’m not sure I would have been able to have that kind of rapid acceptance of myself as I did if I hadn’t had that community-driven chalking experience.” Shortly after posting the most recent installment in Wesleying’s multipart retrospective on the Chalking Moratorium, an interview with Claire Potter, I read an essay by Dan Abromowitz, […]
The Tenured Radical reflects on Bennet’s moratorium, student activism, and the meaning of chalking today. Wesleying’s multi-part retrospective on the 2002 chalking moratorium continues with a faculty perspective: a conversation with Claire Potter, Professor of History and American Studies at Wesleyan from 1991–2011. In the wake of President Bennet’s moratorium announcement in October, 2002, Wesleyan […]
“The ultimate goal wasn’t to be able to chalk. It was to exhibit control over their environment.” Ten years ago this autumn, President Doug Bennet ’59 sent out an all-campus email and banned chalking at Wesleyan for good. When I set out to mark the tenth anniversary of that Moratorium, I only meant to reflect […]
Ten years ago, Doug Bennet ’59 declared war on chalk. In a multi-post series, we’re looking back. On October 3, 2002, President Douglas J. Bennet ’59 sent an email to Wesleyan students, faculty, and administrators. It contained 335 words, but the message was brief: the chalking on campus, much of it sexually explicit, had gone […]
If Tour de Franzia happens outside of Fisk Hall on a Friday afternoon and only about five people show up, does it make a sound? (And can you still get slapped with six judicial points?) Continuing its brief but noble history of stirring the pot, the mysteriously run @WesUnity Twitter (which drew eyeballs when it announced last […]
Almost eleven years ago, President Bennet banned the process on Wesleyan’s campus known as “chalking.” Almost immediately, students tried to pressure the administration into lifting the ban to no avail, mostly by recommending that people just chalk anyway (and maybe also by bringing a flood of chalking violations to the SJB) and arguing that the chalking ban […]
