Tag Archives: chalk

FEATURED
More Chalking Drama: Mystical 7 Members Chalked on Church Street, Scribbled Out by Mystical 7 Members

Because we haven’t posted enough chalking-related updates from the past few weeks, an anonymous tipster writes in to let you know about an amusing (or frightening, depending on who you are) happening on Church Street late last week:

I have a tip for Wesleying but would like to remain anonymous.  Earlier today someone wrote the names of the Mystical 7 — a Wesleyan student secret society — out in chalk on the sidewalk on Church St near Olin.  Later in the day, a bunch of the people whose names had been written were seen standing over the writing, looking fairly panicked, and then after that someone crossed the names out with more chalk.  Here’s a photo of the names crossed out.  FUCK SOCIAL HIERARCHY!!!!

According to one Wesleying staffer, “It’s intact in at least two places right now (beginning of CFA path and College Row near Zelnick).”

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Photos: “Chalk de Franzia” Lands on Wesleyan Sidewalks

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 month that Tour de Franzia was being disciplined more severely than some instances of sexual assault or misconduct) made a Facebook event on Thursday called “Tour de Franzia”:

Culling its cover photo from Wesleying’s Decade Without Chalking series, the event wasn’t quite as it seemed.

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EVENT
A Hallway Play

Hallway Play

Oh man. Cameron Couch ’13 wrote a play and it’s fucking weird. Here’s why you should come see it!

Does the name Cheryl resonate with you, perhaps make you happy? What about discussions about sex with old men? Gongs? Whatever your response (remember that Wesleyan is a judgement-free zone), come check out A Hallway Play, an experimental piece about miscommunication and the ubiquity of life’s mishaps. Yes, it does partially take place in a hallway. Yes, it will be awesome.

Starring:
Sarah Burkett ’14
Megan Cash ’14
Lu Corporan ’13
Sandy Durosier ’13
Justin Greene ’16
Laura Hess ’16
Marianna Ilagan ’15
Leah Khambata ’14
Ross Levin ’15
Afi Tettey-Fio ’13

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A Decade Without Chalking, Part Five: An Interview with Dean Mike Whaley

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 a physical confrontation with President Roth for chalking on Wyllys Avenue during Homecoming. A few hours after chatting with Dean Whaley, I took part in a massive legal chalk-in on Church Street sidewalks as midday traffic cruised by. Dave Meyer strolled by and tried to confiscate the chalk. We explained that the sidewalks are Middletown property. He continued on his way.

Institutional history has a funny way of working in cycles, and Dean Whaley, who arrived at Wes in 1997 and was Dean of Students in 2002, probably knows this better than anyone. Surprisingly, Whaley told me that he loved the queer chalking when he first arrived at Wesleyan. He also mentioned that President Bennet specifically reached out to him, an openly queer administrator, for advice. But unlike the former students I interviewed, Whaley framed the conflict primarily in terms of a hostile work environment. “The problem was, OK, you don’t like the ban, we get that,” Whaley said of the protestors. “But how do we resolve this hostile work environment?”

Was the answer to adopt some vague notion of “community standards”? Or geographic boundaries for chalking? Or an end to the anonymity? Or ought the Wesleyan community realize, as Professor Potter argued, that “no one has the right not to be offended”?

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FEATURED
Spotted: Portraits Made of Chalk

Who’s the defiant art teacher who has been assigning students to complete their midterm portraiture project in chalkings around campus? Reveal yourself in the comments. Take a bow.

One of these was spotted on the steps near the entrance to PAC. Another was spotted on the pavement near the cemetery at the top of Foss. Not sure where the third was photographed. Not sure who the culprit is. Not sure who the subjects are. Not sure of anything. Open to explanations in the comments section.

Are there more around campus? Tell us.

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A Decade Without Chalking, Part Four: An Interview with Nicholas Myers ’05

“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, a friend of a friend (dare I say friend?) who goes to Princeton. Abromowitz’s piece is titled “Physical Princeton,” and reading it I realized more vividly than before that campus debates over free speech, public space, and personal expression on university property extend well beyond Wesleyan’s borders.

Not that there’s ever been much of a chalking culture at Princeton. Abromowitz can only recall a few instances, but they stuck with him long after their whitewashing. The practice has been labelled vandalism. “But chalk isn’t vandalism,” Abromowitz responds. “It’s the very mildest attempt at staking out a bit of temporal space for yourself outside of closed doors at an institution that cannot survive as such if you pass through it like anything more violent than a breeze. A university that rejects even that gesture is one that would very much like for its students not to really exist, one that operates essentially mechanically, as a series of abstract investments and returns, rather than a space unto itself.”

I reference this essay here because Dan Abromowitz told me to it fits well, I think, with the perspective of Nicholas Myers ’05, a Wesleyan alum who was closely involved in chalking with the queer community in 2002. Myers recalls chalking as a formative and empowering part of his queer identity. It was also a means of reclaiming space, carving a niche for himself on a campus where “queer visibility” was not an impossibility. Chalking the night before National Coming Out Day was “‘one of the most liberating experiences I have ever had,” Myers told the New York Times in 2002. “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,” Myers told me over the phone ten years later.

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A Decade Without Chalking, Part Three: An Interview with Claire Potter

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 faculty from across the disciplines spoke up to register their views. Some authored a Wespeak supporting the ban, arguing that the “free exchange of ideas . . . is not facilitated by the hostile, racist, or sexually explicit slogans” reportedly contained in chalkings. Others expressed dissent, culminating in a 44-8 faculty vote asking Bennet to overturn the moratorium. Perhaps no faculty member, though, argued for free speech as forcefully and passionately as Professor Potter.

According to the Argus, just before the vote, she spoke up at a faculty meeting on chalking:

Chair of the American Studies Program Claire Potter also spoke at length to the faculty. She cited the Constitution and Bill of Rights as upholding free speech and said the 1st Amendment of the Constitution also holds true for obscenity.

“No one has the right not to be offended,” Potter said. [ . . . ] Addressing some of the comments from faculty members who viewed the chalkings as an inept way of expressing themselves and talk of helping students better express their views, Potter asserted that it is not the faculty’s place to interfere with student expression.

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A Decade Without Chalking, Part Two: An Interview with Matthew M ’05

“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 on a heated and surreal episode in Wesleyan’s activist history and share the story behind a once-treasured campus medium that stills pops up every now and then.

Then this happened. And this. And this. And this Homecoming banner drop (which bears stark similarity to events described in the following interview). All of a sudden, chalking was in the news again.

Wait. What?

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. What follows is an unexpectedly timely conversation with our first interview subject, Matthew M. ’05, who not only passionately fought the chalking moratorium, but went so far as to hack into President Bennet’s email and inform the Wesleyan community that the Moratorium was over. (Spoiler: It wasn’t.) According to Matthew, the chalking controversy wasn’t just about chalk. It was about widespread discontent over “fewer and fewer outlets for organized student autonomy”—a sentiment that brewed well past the fall of ’02 and culminated with over 250 students trapping President Bennet in his office in December, 2004. (No, really. Ask your older sister about it!)

The full interview is past the jump (it’s a long one), and the introductory post is here. Since he openly admits to perpetrating email fraud, Matthew asked me to withhold his last name. Our chalking Westrospective will continue later this week with another interview reflection.

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EVENT
Massive Legal Daytime Chalk-In

Earlier today, Evan Bieder ’15 and A-Batte, the two students documented by Public Safety in last Saturday’s confrontation with President Roth over “legal chalking,” received confirmation that their actions were totally kosher and not in violation of the Code of Non-Academic Conduct. In celebration, Daniel Plafker ’15, the student who filmed (part of) the incident, invites you to chalk about the passion up and down Church Street sidewalks, with no fear of disciplinary action. Facebook event here, more info below:

Wesleyan rejoice! This Friday, a massive legal daytime chalk-in will take place on the Church Street sidewalks outside Pi Cafe at 12:30 pm. Join your community for a carnival of free-expression, resistance, and art. Demonstrate that administrative intimidation won’t silence student voices being exercised in a civil, legal manner, on public streets where chalking is not banned. Wanna protest the lack of administrative transparency, give a shout-out to that cutie in your Anthro class, oppose class discrimination in our admissions process, do a lame Banksy imitation, raise questions about our rapidly crumbling relationship with this city, get high and draw flowers? Let’s do it together! Let’s make Church Street beautiful!

This is not about any single cause or issue. This is about reclaiming the right to shape our public space democratically as a community.

Chalk will be provided. Bring it if you got it.

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FEATURED
WESTROSPECTIVE: A Decade Without Chalking, Part One

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 too far.

The practice “undermines our sense of community and impedes substantive dialogue,” Bennet wrote. Though storied, “it is not a lofty tradition.” Plus, “there are more constructive ways to communicate.” With that, the president was declaring a moratorium on the practice. Temporary, of course. But indefinite.

A decade later, chalking remains banned.

With that single memo, Bennet set in motion the controversy that would rock campus that autumn, ten years ago this month. The chalking moratorium enraged queer groups, divided faculty (spoiler: they voted 44–8 against the ban), and inspired flurries of activism all over campus. (There was even a protest at a closed Board of Trustees meeting, recounted here and here. Its details are eerily similar to the occupation last month.) It spawned more Wespeaks than probably any single controversy while I’ve been at Wes, including need-blind. And it captured the imagination of the New York Times, who sent a journalist to cover the drama in a generous feature piece.

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