A graduate student at the University of Arizona was arrested this week after writing on school sidewalks (and perhaps other campus property) using, oh my, chalk. Check out the story at the student daily paper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat. According to news accounts, the chalk drawings merited a 911 call to report the incident and analysis by university police officers of surveillance tape to identify the offending student (perhaps the university CSI team also dusted the student’s hands for chalk residue).
The university’s claims that the cost of washing off such chalk drawings—school officials put the tab at $1,000—and their interference with the campus’ aesthetics could arguably survive some type of First Amendment challenge (though a lot more facts are needed such as the exact language of the ordinances used to charge the student and if chalk is covered, whether the university has even handedly enforced such prohibitions on chalk drawing on its sidewalks, and why the dean of students can give permission to some individuals or groups to engage in chalk drawing if it is in fact so harmful). But the school’s actions, even if legally permissible, strike me as just really, really silly. The student made the drawings as part of an education rally to protest tuition increases and appeared to be engaging in exactly the type of political speech that campuses should embrace.
Even assuming that the university was warranted in taking action against this rogue act of chalking, calling out the university police rather than looking to other avenues of response such as the student judicial code strikes me as somewhat baffling. Surely, a public university can find better ways to use its police officers’ time than responding to a student engaging in the very kind of speech/involvement that institutions regularly seek to promote on their campuses. Even if (and this may be a pretty big if) this particular student got a little overzealous with the chalk, is this how a campus should respond to student speech, especially from an educational and student development standpoint? Hopefully, university officials will take the incident as an opportunity to reconsider appropriate institutional responses to student speech issues, and how the institution can seek to support such speech, even if it legitimately needs students to hold off on the chalk. Otherwise, I guess this means that Silly String warrants the campus SWAT team.