Chalk It Up

Walk from University Hall to Johnston Gate someday and pay attention to what lies underfoot. There’s a problem with the Yard’s sidewalks. But what is it? The distressed asphalt, the knots of tourists, and the haphazard layout are all issues. Set those petty gripes aside, though: the most distressingly grave issue with our sidewalks remains their stark, shocking nudity.

Sidewalk chalk is the first weapon of student voice across the country; on many college campuses, it’s difficult to find a virgin square of asphalt. Colorful riots of amateur images, murals laid down on their side, document the vibrancy of student life. At one corner, they may advertise an upcoming event, at another, a protest, and at still another, a whimsically encoded maxim.

However, here at Harvard—the erstwhile noble bastion of institutional free speech—overprotective administrators have prohibited the use of chalk on our sidewalks. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) outlines this edict in “Regulations for Undergraduate Organizations,” noting that marking sidewalks with chalk amounts to “defacement.”

Why the hard line? Chalk is amongst the most innocuous of messengers. Unlike spray paint or ink, chalk is always laid down with impermanence in mind. It washes away easily with nothing more than water, and so the variety of New England weather ensures that no chalk message remains for much longer than a week.

Compare that to posters, which not only require a paid employee to clear away, but more often than not leave ugly traces of tape, shreds of paper, and endless staples piled upon Wigglesworth archway corkboards. What’s more, chalk is environmentally sound. It doesn’t require the reams of old-growth wood consumed by hundreds of redundant posters. Chalk—mere calcium carbonate and pigment—eventually washes away into the wastewater system harmless to the environment, whereas posters liberated by the wind clog drains and choke urban wastewater systems. In New York City, a subway safety study even found that stray posters and newspapers were a leading cause of track flooding.

Chalk is universally available in the world outside Cambridge, and cheap to boot. Students need only invest their time and skill in order to produce lavish advertisements or political arguments. It invites forms of expression that venture well beyond those of the trusty but limited poster. As a consequence, messages in chalk become more than advertisements. They are transformed into part of our physical landscape, something that manipulates the very skeleton of our campus.

As a campus filled nearly to capacity with activities and ideas, it seems only appropriate that our sidewalks should be clogged with decadent decorations advertising those wares. It would be exciting to see an opinion war fought in chalk, and it would be inspiring to see the fabric of Harvard life spread itself out across the ground. It’s senseless to choke the channel of communication for the entire Yard to a few square feet of approved poster space. We live in a country inspired by ideas that were shared on public greens and commons. Harvard Yard ought to be the preeminent forum for communication in America, and its pathways ought to be its most prominent bully pulpit.

Certainly, Harvard is right to protect the interests of its campus as a historical landmark. As the oldest college green in America, there is good reason why hot dog vendors and tennis courts remain absent from the Yard. But Harvard’s precious few acres are there for students, not for tourists—and they have been the site of endless instances of public discourse throughout the centuries. Certainly chalk is no more foreign than black steel trash cans or Poland Springs delivery trucks, both of which enjoy free access. Chalk does not disrupt the equilibrium between artifact and organism that the Yard currently enjoys; it would, if anything, enhance it.

Harvard’s ban on chalk—the stuff of hop-scotch and four-square—is an anachronistic attempt to preserve a nonexistent dream of a pristine Yard. Let’s let that attempt cede to a dream of a campus environment teeming with messages. The power of the pen and the power of the chalk stub are not so far apart.

Garrett G.D. Nelson ’09 is a social studies and visual and environmental studies concentrator in Cabot House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.