Controversial chalkings showed up once again this week. On April 18, University students woke to find more controversial statements scribbled on their sidewalks, timed for the last of the Days on the Lawn events. Parents and prospective students might have seen racially charged and transphobic messages while touring Grounds.
How did the institution respond? Swiftly and seriously. A joint statement from University administrators appeared online the next day to roundly criticize the acts. But organizations like the Queer Student Union and the Black Student Alliance answered the culprits by chalking messages of their own to reinforce diversity and equality for everyone at the University. The Cavalier Daily also covered the issue at length, and the paper’s editorial board lauded the community’s collective actions. The “quick rebuke of the chalkings,” they wrote, “was entirely appropriate.”
Much like the pro-Trump chalk talk some weeks ago, this incident brings the freedom of speech on college campuses into a new light. There are lots of questions without real answers. Can students anonymously write whatever they feel without facing the consequences? Rather than trying to engage with provocative voices, should we censor them and their demeaning words? Must we promote proactive, discursive speech instead in order to sustain the University’s “community of trust”?
We might look toward other schools for comparison, as many of them have faced similar outbursts of controversy. For most, there seem to be a set of “values” that contradict the spitefulness of pro-Trump, anti-diversity messages. And for outlets such as The Cavalier Daily, promoting them seems prim and proper. The environment of “trust, mutual respect and diversity” at the University makes it a unique space where communication must fit these tenets. Yet these anonymous chalkers bypass them. They use their right to freely speak in a manner meant to provoke rather than discuss race and gender here.
Though The Cavalier Daily has followed this story with steady coverage, I’m left wanting something more. Combating racism and transphobia is admirable and necessary in today’s society. But should we be engaging these perspectives further, even if the culprits mean to only incite our worst feelings? Can’t we attempt at critical conversations about why they exist, and what can be done to make sure they do not rear their ugly heads?
These kinds of messengers, of course, hunger for emotional responses. Their objective is to anger their targets from a distance. The QSU and the BSA quickly answered these with words of love and acceptance. They have reinforced the University’s values of “trust, mutual respect and diversity” with aplomb. But how else can we talk about these? Besides the battlegrounds that the University’s sidewalks and bricks have become, where else can we hold them?
The Cavalier Daily is in a prime position to promote discourse on the subject, and I’d like it to trend in that direction. If it means an uptick in guest columns from myriad critics, then so be it. But such coverage should not be a weekly phenomenon. It must not merely believe that “this week’s messages were unquestionably condemnable.” Rather, it should question them for their origins, not for their contents.
Sasan Mousavi is the Public Editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com or on Twitter at @CDPublicEditor.
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