'THE CHALKENING' OF TRUMP: TERROR GROWS ON CAMPUSES
Free-speech advocates confirm students distraught over campaign slogans
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image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/03/Trump-chalk.jpg
Students at Emory University in Atlanta told school officials they are “afraid” after viewing pro-Trump chalk art (Photo: The Tab screenshot)
On university campuses, where many enthusiastic students vote for the first time, political candidates’ slogans typically appear on signs, bumper stickers, T-shirts, placards, dorm-room walls and even in chalk on sidewalks.
But as with about everything else in the 2016 presidential race, there’s nothing normal about the impact of the slogans this year, especially the ones promoting GOP front-runner Donald Trump.
They’re striking terror.
The incidences of Trump sidewalk art across the nation even has been dubbed “The Chalkening.”
“‘The Chalkening’ spreads,’ tests universities’ commitment to free speech,” headlined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
FIRE cited a report that Emory University students “think Donald Trump is out to kill them” because of slogans chalked on campus sidewalks and walls.
“After the GOP frontrunner’s name was written in chalk on a campus wall, students said they ‘feared for their lives,'” the Daily Beast reported.
“Early Monday, students say, they were ‘attacked’ by Trump’s name in large, pastel letters on campus walkways and buildings. ‘Vote for Trump,’ ‘Trump for Pres,’ ‘Accept the Inevitable: Trump 2016’ and more chalk sloganeering for the Republican presidential frontrunner was written all over the most trafficked areas on campus,” it said.
“I legitimately feared for my life,” claimed Paul Camila Alarcon in the report. “I thought we were having a KKK rally on campus.”
WND reported that dozens of students converged on Emory’s administration building to discuss the “pain” they felt over seeing Trump’s name.
Emory’s College Council and Student Government Association distributed email reports to their contact lists, and school officials told students they would hunt down surveillance camera footage to identify “suspects” to proceed with a “conduct-violation process.”
“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” a student told school officials, the report said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well. … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”
College sophomore Jonathan Peraza asked a group of students what they were feeling, and they replied “fear” and “frustration.”
“You are not listening! Come speak to us. We are in pain!” Peraza exclaimed outside the school’s Goodrich C. White Hall.
FIRE’s Chris Marchese said “The Chalkening” now has spread to other campuses, listing the University of Illinois, Ohio University, University of California-Santa Barbara, DePaul, University of Michigan, Kansas, Connecticut, College of William and Mary and Tulane.
At Michigan, police were summoned because of the appearance of “Trump 2016” and “#StopIslam” slogans.
Michigan spokewoman Diane Brown said, “We will continue to monitor campus and work with our campus partners to ensure our students have a safe environment to live, learn and dialogue.”
The school took immediate action, and reports were filed with the school’s “bias response team.”
“Attacks directed toward any member or group within the University of Michigan community, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with our values of respect, civility and equality,” Brown said. “… We are fully committed to fostering an environment that is welcoming and inclusive of everyone.”
At Tulane, a political slogan generated this comment from freshman Claire Cruz: “As a Latina on a mostly all-white campus, I am constantly seeing little acts of racism and white privilege, but this huge act was a slap in my face. Not only do I feel as if my safety has been threatened, but also my humanity is being completely written off.”
FIRE’s Marchese commented that “these chalkings wouldn’t be newsworthy if it weren’t for the responses they have received, with some likening such expressions to mass murder, and schools responding with promises of cracking down on speech.”
If speech is offensive, he said, the solution is not to restrict it.
“Indeed, the response to offensive speech should be more speech. But public universities like the University of California, San Diego, cannot respond to such expression with ‘the fullest sanctions.’ Instead, they should respond with the fullest application of the First Amendment.”
Also sounding off on the issue was First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh, whose blog “The Volokh Conspiracy” is published by the Washington Post.
He wrote of universities promising crackdowns, including San Diego.
“The university, as the owner of its property, might have the power to prohibit all chalking on that property … But UCSD policy expressly provides that chalking is permitted ‘on sidewalks of the university grounds that are exposed to weather elements and not covered by a roof or overage.'”
He noted that “any attempt to punish the chalking precisely because of its viewpoint would clearly violate the First Amendment.”
Added Marchese: “FIRE agrees with Volokh’s analysis that if the school punishes chalking based on content, it violates the First Amendment. That is, the institution must enforce a chalking policy without respect to the expressed viewpoint.”
Breitbart reported the Trump chalkings had become “an epidemic” and noted the response is “panic among the regressive left.”
Copyright 2016 WND
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