A concrete courtyard played host to a display of community as Bryan residents came together last Friday afternoon to turn a frustrated protest against perceived censorship into a sprawling piece of lyrical art. Chalking on the walls outside of Bryan dorms was outlawed for the first time this year, and amidst confusion about the reasons for the new rule, many residents felt that their artistic voices were being smothered by bureaucracy.
Guilford students are notorious for their social consciousness, and they do not take lightly any perceived attack on their freedoms, especially the freedom of speech. But is this a case of freedoms deprived? Or have students, overzealously protecting their rights, failed to comprehend the full picture?
The latter is exactly the case, according to residential life director Patty Burgoon. “Last year the task of removing the chalk went to maintenance, and since they were unable to remove some of it, the students were made to pay damages. We didn’t want that to happen this year,” she said. So the problem was addressed at what seemed to be the root, and the chalking was forbidden.
But this was not the logical conclusion for many students. First-year Tyson Buis said, “If the problem was removal, why not just let us accept financial responsibility and be done with it?”
”This is completely ridiculous,” said sophomore Brynne Kirk, as she and fellow pro-chalk activist Alicia Frasca circulated a petition to all Bryan residents. The petition was intended to be a compromise. The wall-art could stay up, but all words and phrases would be promptly taken down. This would not be a bad idea by most standards of taste, as one such phrase reminded Bryanites to “act your age, not your [expletive deleted] size.”
But a compromise was not to be had, and steps were taken to see that all chalk-vandals were fined. Realizing their defeat, but not accepting it, students removed the chalk, and life at Bryan Hall fell to a deceptively quiet level.
At this point, confusion took root, and what happened next is unclear. Some people may think that, frustrated and embittered by their loss of voice, the intellectual delinquents of Bryan took to the “streets” and covered the quad with sundry cries for love, beauty, and art. The truth is less romantic; the beautiful montage developed as a result of boredom.
Two first-year students, Aaron Friedman and I, sat talking over lunch about Allen Ginsberg. The conversation drifted to the wall chalk, as both of us live in Bryan. Later in the afternoon, we decided to write Ginsberg’s “Song,” in the quad, for lack of better canvas.
People slowly emerged from their rooms and waited to see if security would immediately rush to the crime scene. After about an hour, seeing that they did not, many residents proceeded to join in our senseless act of beauty. Three or four hours into what was taking on a carnival atmosphere, Patty Burgoon unwittingly sat next to this reporter and let slide, “Wow. This is beautiful.”
Rains came early in the morning on Sunday, washing away all controversy and forming murky puddles with only the occasional memory of color in it. I stepped fuzzy-minded out of my room too early that morning, just in time to see the melting, and as I did, I felt privileged to see the art the community had come together and created become pretty soup bubbling down the drain.