Word: chalkings
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...