{"id":271,"date":"2025-05-07T18:13:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T18:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/?page_id=271"},"modified":"2025-05-10T00:19:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T00:19:04","slug":"chalk-outlines-of-free-expression","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/?page_id=271","title":{"rendered":"Chalk Outlines of Free Expression"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2023, incorporating input from liberal and conservative stakeholders alike, Davidson College unveiled its Commitment to Freedom of Expression, drawing praise from free speech advocates such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This March, as President Donald Trump threatened free speech on college campuses, Davidson College President Doug Hicks reaffirmed his devotion to the Commitment, declaring there \u201cvast room at Davidson for free inquiry, speech, and debate.\u201d Framing the text of the Commitment by the lobby on the first floor of Chambers Hall, Davidson (literally!) placed free expression front and center. However, when it comes to placing free expression front and center in its policy choices, Davidson\u2019s record proves more complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On April 9, Davidson\u2019s Young America\u2019s Foundation chapter invited Abby Johnson, a prolific pro-life activist to campus to speak. In a testament to the power of the Commitment, Johnson was able to address the school despite holding viewpoints anathema to much of the Davidson community. However, for Johnson\u2019s detractors, who have as much of a right to criticize her as she has to express her views on abortion, this same right to free expression did not fully apply. As shown in the photo below, Davidson directed its Physical Plant staff to power wash away the chalk protest messages written around the walkways of campus by the Davidson chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA). With admitted students coming to campus the next day, the administration did not want Davidson to look like a hotbed for divisive political activism. Hours later, it was as though PPGA\u2019s expressions of resistance had never existed at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upon witnessing this two-tiered approach to free expression, I knew I wanted to do something with chalk to memorialize the extinguished campus speech that the Commitment to Freedom of Expression neglected. At first, I considered rewriting the original PPGA messages or copying down the Commitment onto the brick walkways around campus. However, I realized these both failed to fully capture the source of my concern. The PPGA messages would amplify the substance of their abortion arguments, but gloss over the free expression violations defining this controversy. On the other hand, repeating the Commitment would draw attention to the importance of free speech, but would not directly engage with or condemn the administration\u2019s betrayal of it in the Johnson-PPGA fiasco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intrigued by Johan Gerz\u2019s 2146 Steine <\/em>mentioned in plenary by Dr. Lipsker, where Gerz and his colleagues adorned thousands of cobblestones with the information of Jewish cemeteries on the bottom, invisible to the public, I wanted to take a counter-monumental approach to commemorating this by emphasizing invisibility. Finding inspiration in the white chalk outlines drawn around bodies at crime scenes\u2014and later repurposed in ACT UP protests to mark lives lost to AIDS\u2014I drew broad shapes that could house the paragraphs, drawings, and other expressions of free expression that the college had washed away. The suppression I marked was far less vast, grave, and consequential than those commemorated by ACT UP, but it was a silencing worth remembering nonetheless. By centering my chalk around the absence of speech, I drew attention to the central feature of the event\u2014not debates over abortion access, not the abstract ideal of free speech, but the specific erasure of PPGA\u2019s expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I drew these memorial outlines in front of all of the major academic buildings on Davidson campus: Chambers Hall, the E.H. Little Library, the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center, the Baker-Watt Science Complex, the Sloan Music Center, and the Visual Arts Center. I chose locations for two reasons. For one, these spaces are all hubs for learning. It seemed only fitting to mark the loss of free speech\u2014and, as the Commitment states, \u201can environment in which all students can freely learn\u201d\u2014at the heart of where that learning takes place. Secondly, much as the Stolpersteine<\/em> (stumbling stones) are ingrained in German society on the street, I wanted to choose a place where people were bound to come across it. Most Davidson students find themselves in at least one of these spaces every weekday, rendering their encounter with the chalk all but inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as Gerz acknowledged, I recognize that my unconventional approach to commemoration limits the pedagogical scope of my work. However, to fully capture the void in free expression left by the messages\u2019 erasure, only the complete emptiness of my outlines can suffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Chalk Outlines:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 2023, incorporating input from liberal and conservative stakeholders alike, Davidson College unveiled its Commitment to Freedom of Expression, drawing praise from free speech advocates …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-271","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/271\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.dcreate.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}