Why calcium sulfate (street name: chalk) is a menace to society

It all makes sense now. Thank God for university presidents who see the light of reason amidst brightly colored flowers and clouds of propaganda.

Stephen Colbert explains why chalking is a gateway crime

Chalking Party!

Are you already interested in chalking, or curious about what it entails? If so, then meet up in front of the Campus Center at 11 AM on Saturday, April 21 to see what all of the fuss is about! We will be distributing chalk and writing messages across campus until one, which is just before “Talking Chalk,” a panel held in PAC 004 on everything from the history of chalking on Wesleyan’s campus to current issues surrounding it. Come ready to discuss whatever’s on your mind about chalking!

Date: Saturday, April 21st
Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Place: Beginning in front of the Campus Center, then across campus

Chalking Protest Song

Steve Sunu '08 has written a protest song all about chalking as a part of his Social Movements final.

You can download it here.

Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!

Everyone knows that talk is cheap
But so is chalk for our freedom to keep
They want to take away our forms of expression
So keep chalking away, don’t use no aggression!

Chalk on the streets!
Use Chalk a lot!
Chalk on the sidewalks!
Chalk outside of Weshop!
Chalk about zombies!
Chalk your own name!
Use color to express yourself!
Expression’s not insane!

Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!

So keep on chalking while you still can
Use your creativity and stick it to the man
Stick it to those expression quashers
By making them erase it with their power washers!

Chalk outside your dorms!
Don’t save it for later!
Chalk outside of Deke!
Chalk outside of Beta!
Chalk that it’s your birthday
Chalk about Darfur
Chalk about an event
Chalk your own allure

Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!
Less talk! More Chalk!

Finally, Another Chalker Masturbation Manifesto...

So there's like a shit ton of wespeaks in the Argus this week about chalking and activism and identity and revolution and disney lyrics. Great, I say. Who the fuck doesn't love the Argus full of Wespeaks?

And while if you asked me personally my opinion on the whole matter of chalking (hell, if you asked me my opinion on fucking toast), I'd talk your ear off, the one thing I'm homing in on in particular tonight is I guess the whole why we bother.

Mike Pernick '10 writes in his column this week:

Going out and spray painting in the tunnels is a great way to show that you care about your what's happening in your life. The campaign to bring back chalking is a wonderful expression of free speech within the Wesleyan community. Every day there are countless examples of people who are concerned about their environment. Yet few here at Wesleyan seem to truly care about the fate of our nation. Sure, many individuals spend time talking about how much they hate Bush and they despise Republican policies, yet what have they done about it? Ask yourself the key question, "What have I done to fight against dangerous conservative policies in America?"

And I think this is on the minds of many at Wesleyan who don't really understand where the chalking and the butt tunnels are fitting into this grand activist vision we all have for Wesleyan.

And to be fair, at first glance, it doesn't seem to fit. They seem like highly insular forms of resistance that have no bearing on the outside world whatsoever. And granted, a lot of the shit we do at Wesleyan is pretty much just angry masturbation because, well, Wesleyan is one of the toughest colleges in the country and god forbid we let off some steam now and then.

Regardless, the theme I'm hitting on is that a lot of chalkers here do not chalk just for the sake of chalking. They do not chalk simply for the experience of expressing themselves. Yes, as Bennet has said over and over again, we have tons of venues for expressing ourselves. But as I argued before, chalking is about building a community. It's about constructing a home for ourselves and a claiming some sense of communal identity.

Wesleyan as an institution does not really build social cohesion. We as a school do not have an institutional memory that binds us all together as Wesleyan students. We cannot all appropriate traditions and ideas from the school's past and really rally around them. And so when Wesleyan tries to take away some of the very few traditions that remain--say chalking or tunnel graffiti--it serves to again, alienate us and separate us into individualized factions that cannot build a socially cohesive campus.

And there are a ton of other factors that play into this (like GRS, the disperse locations of student housing, the lack of campus-wide events, fucking Facebook, iPods, cellphones etc, etc), so I'm not just saying that chalking is the only thing to get pissed off about here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wesleyan used to be known as an activist campus. It really doesn't carry that reputation anymore and I don't think it's because Wesleyan students are lazy. I don't think it's because they don't care. But I do think that it's because in order to build campus-wide support for any issue, you must first overcome the utterly insane degree of alienation that we experience every day as students.

I've heard this alienation described mostly as awkwardness (as if awkwardness is somehow a more palatable word for it). With few notable exceptions, I think students at Wesleyan feel extremely awkward breaking ranks with their comfort circle and engaging anyone for any reason--from hooking up, to dating, to friend-making, to petition writing, to eating dinner with strangers...whatever. I think you get my drift.

So in sum, I think by protecting chalking, we are taking a step in the right direction. We are creating a community and we are saying fuck the awkwardness. Who the hell needs it?

And you can do this without chalking. Make a new friend tomorrow. Talk to someone completely different. Stop pulling out your cellphone every fucking five minutes and finally look your classmates in the eye and smile when you pass them by.

But for Pete's sake, get out there and engage with the rest of this school.

Engagement is a form of activism, perhaps even the strongest. Perhaps it's not protesting against a war and it certainly won't end up in any newspaper, but I think part of what made Wesleyan so weird in the first place was a solid refusal on the part of the student body to accept alienation, to accept the awkwardness.

By allowing the administration to take shots at whatever institutions we have left to build this community, we are making it easier for them to push over the next generation of Wesleyan students. The more alienated we become, the harder it is to fight for old Wesleyan. We are being weakened and by perpetuating this sense of awkwardness we are complicit in the whole process.

Chalking won't fix the problem but I'm sure it'll help.

(I'd like to direct you all at this time to Zach Strassburger '06's awesome wespeak today about chalking and its effects on community.)

Keep Wesleyan Weird

From this facebook group:

There comes a point where enough is enough.

When the administration outlawed chalking, an understandable uproar went through the campus. This uproar, however, was not nearly loud enough, and that transgression has been imposed upon us for far too long.

When the administration required Eclectic's parties to be held in Mocon a collective groan of disapproval was heard on campus. Can we let them ruin our already limited nightlife by housing parties in a cafeteria?

Now the administration has just had the Butt's tunnels painted over. All of the beautiful colors and forms on the walls have been replaced by white and black paint.

Now, with Middletown's recently added ordinance, the administration is allowing police onto our campus. Can we let them take away the very atmosphere we love?

Bring back chalking.

Bring back Eclectic parties.

Bring back tagging.

Get police off private property.

Even if you don't agree with chalking, the party scene, tagging in the tunnels, or the new police presence I urge you to join this group. This is clearly not the end of their attempt to strip the entire campus of culture.

I want wespeaks and I want them now. ON IT, BITCHES.

Edit: Anonymous commenter, you made my day:

"Fuck Wespeaks. I'm buying a spraycan and a crowbar first chance I get. It won't be pretty paint, but this is not the school I wanted to go to. I'll take it back."

Uh-oh

Freshman sees chalking. Freshman misunderstands chalking. Freshman rants about it on facebook (and also doesn't realize that usaisamonster is a band name). Has the traditional spitfire that is the Argus Wespeak section been relegated to the Notes feature? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

Edit: It's been deleted, but the ACB has a copy.

Chalking

Chalking was beautiful. I remember back in the day when I was a wee pre-frosh, chalking was still legal and all over campus. Some of it was inspiring. Some of it was glorious. And granted, some of it was crude and disgusting. But nonetheless, all of it was colorful, loud and beautiful.

Then later that year, Bennet banned all chalking. During my wesfest, you couldn't tell. The sidewalks were still a warbled mess of pastel chalk, criticizing the president for the ban.

Every morning, the chalk would be powerwashed away.

But I remember my first night at Wesfest, walking from event to event with my eyes down soaking in everything everyone had written. It was a headtrip, quite frankly, in the state I was in, but what a headtrip.

Meanwhile, students have tried again and again to get the ban reversed, but I wonder if it's even worth it. With the advent of the ACB, I'm less convinced we have all that much beauty in us. We seem hell-bent on staying in our rooms, attacking each other rather and posting about masturbation than building the kind of community that would appreciate the potential of chalking.

This is of course, my own personal opinion. Chalking played a huge part in why I chose this school because it demonstrated the diversity of opinion and personality of the student body. Their ideas, their wants, their needs in a way that was accessible to everyone. There was something magical about walking around each night and reading a whole new campus of thoughts scribbled on sidewalks.

It's something I'd like to see again but it's something I'm weary about at the same time in the wake of the ACB.

For more on Chalking:

• Bennet Needs to Permit Chalk by Jacob Goldin '07
• Bennet Upholds Chalk Ban By Laura Goldblatt '06
• Chalking Ban Over by Ben Morse '04 and Abe Lateiner '04
• Remember You Can Still Chalk by Andrew Aprile '06
• Talk in Chalk Again by Evan Simko-Bednarski '07
  

Graffiti

Since the recent Gay Soldiers: A Fetish Gone Too Far stencils seen around campus have provoked the wrath of Maria Cruz-Saco, how about a new kind of graffiti? Like...cleaning the grime off of shit?



NPR says:

A British street artist known as Moose creates graffiti by cleaning dirt from sidewalks and tunnels -- sometimes for money when the images are used as advertising. But some authorities call it vandalism.

Boo, authorities. Granted, Wes doesn't have that many places with that much caked-on crap, but I'd imagine that the technique could be utilized to interesting results in frat bathrooms.