By KERI ANNE FOX
News Editor
 

People walking across the quad at about 8 a.m. the same morning, they saw a connect-the-dot collection of blurry, watered-down splotches.

The reasons for what happened between the hours of 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. is still confusing. Some questions have been answered, satisfactorily or not, and others are still unanswered.

National Coming Out Day and the quad display
The quad display was a part of a three-day event commemorating National Coming Out Day, which officially began yesterday. Events will continue through Saturday.

Twelve organizations, including Gay Lesbian Bisexual Alliance, New World Coalition, Women of Color, Women's Action Coalition and the Bates Democrats formed a coalition in conjunction with the students in Political Science 298: Sexuality and the Politics of Difference, to organize these events, bring awareness of gay issues to campus and create a safe environment for students to "come out" in.

The New World Coalition (NWC) sponsored the quad display as part of the weekend.

The organization blueslipped the quad to set up a display. At this time, no one in the student activities office asked questions about the content of the display, and the NWC said only that they were putting up a display.

The blueslip was authorized and the NWC proceeded to organize.

What happened between 3 a.m. -- 8 a.m.
"Almost 75 people worked as many as three hours in the dark," said Arthur Stamoulis '98, coordinator of NWC. They gathered at the Ronj on Wednesday at 11 p.m. to get into groups, get chalk and discuss how they would decorate the quad.

Although the majority of the chalking was located on the quad, it extended beyond that onto the library terrace and Frye Street, spilling over onto other sporadic spots around campus, including some walls.

"The display consisted of a large number of triangular pink sheets and extensive chalking," Stamoulis said.

What happened after that was sorted through during a meeting at 11 a.m. on Thursday. Twelve students who participated in the display set-up and Deans James Reese, Dan Ludden, Peter Taylor and Stephen Sawyer, Director of the Physical Plant Pat Murphy and Custodial Coordinator Jeff Pelletier, and Associate Professor of Art Erica Rand and Associate Professor of Rhetoric Charles Nero attended the meeting.

According to the administration, at approximately 3 a.m., Dean of Students F. Celeste Branham, acting as the chair of the Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Committee, received a phone call about some actions on Frye Street that were perceived as homophobic.

According to Jessica Ripton '00, there were "three or four guys down on Frye Street pouring beer on the chalkings."

Once that was taken care of (there has not been much discussion of the resolution of this part of the evening), Branham received word via Security that there was no blueslip for the quad activities, and that there were depictions of penises and vaginas in front of Hathorn Hall and Lane Hall.

Subsequently, Pelletier was contacted at home at 3 a.m. to remove the entire quad display by 8 a.m. He gathered a crew of 15 to help remove the display chalkings and triangles.

An additional reason for the removal of the display was provided by an oral policy, which was news to the students during the Thursday morning meeting, that does not allow chalking on sidewalks or buildings.

"The image they [the administration] wants to project of the campus is not one of chalking or graffiti," said Pelletier, who spoke with students before the 11 a.m. meeting.

Later, Brinda Tahiliani '98, co-convener of Women of Color, told the administration that, "We'd [students organizing the even] rather they called us," she said, because there was a student clean-up committee in place and the blueslip had names and telephone numbers of those people who were responsible for it. At least some of the Security officers knew who to speak to because they had been working at the time the display was going up.

By the time Trevor Goodyear '99 left Pettigrew after working all night on a paper, the display was gone. "I came by the library at 7:30 [a.m.] and they were cleaning there, and they said that they had been out there since before light cleaning up everything. I don't know why."

Administrative response
Sawyer opened the meeting by agreeing that the way the incident was handled was erroneous and told the attending students what was being done to rectify it and spoke of "two phases of responsibility," to deal with the incident.

He also said he was "feeling a little under the gun in terms of timing," as it was 11 a.m. and it had been earlier agreed between students and administration that students would go about reconstructing the display at 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m.

The question which had to be answered by 12:30 p.m. was what could and could not be reconstructed.

During this first phase of resolving the situation brought about by the removal of the display, the triangle sheets were returned to the students as, technically, they were allowed to be erected and were taken down only because a blueslip could not be found. At this time, Sawyer told students, "We've got some cash to compensate for the investing in chalk supplies."

Sawyer also informed students that the deans had tried to reach the College's president, Donald Harward, for permission to send out an allcampus voice mail message asking for help in reconstructing the display. Failing in this effort, they spoke to the Dean of Faculty Martha Crunkleton, who approved of the telephone message.

"This is an exception, a significant exception, to the use of the telephone," said Sawyer. General policy is that campus-wide voice mail is only to be used in case of immediate emergencies. One student at the meeting did, however, point out that all-campus voice mail messages are used to announce Convocation.

In addition to the voice mail, Printing and Mailing Services worked on flyers announcing the same message. An e-mail was sent to all faculty members.

All of these methods cited "a series of administrative miscommunications," that led to the removal of the display. They asked for "members of the entire community ... to assist in the rebuilding of the display."

When Meg MacDougal '00 said that "I think that for the future, we need a public apology," Sawyer cut in with, "That's phase two."

The blueslip
During the 11 a.m. meeting, Taylor said that "the blueslip was initiated through my office and we assume responsbility," for not getting it to Maintenance. He said that with the high number of blueslips that go through the office, mistakes do happen.

Taylor also said that "chalking has never been condoned." He also suggested that if the students running the event had informed the CSA office, through which blueslips are obtained, of the content of the display they would have been informed of the policy, oral as it is.

The other administration members echoed this sentiment throughout the duration of the meeting.

"I'm not understanding why we have to disclose [what the contents of the display were]," said Jessica Brown '98. "It raises some serious First Amendment questions."

"You don't have to tell us what you plan," Taylor said in response. But he reiterated that if the CSA office had been informed of what was planned, the people in this office would have been able to tell the student organizers oral policy before they put all the work into the display.

Maintenance's involvement
What angers many people, students, staff and administration alike, is that Physical Plant workers were called in from home at 3 a.m. to clear the display.

"I don't understand why Maintenance was called at 3 a.m.," said Brown.

That question was never answered.

Considering that a student clean-up plan was in place, Maintenance's involvement was unnecessary. Because they were involved, someone had to pay for the three hours of time and a half overtime for the fifteen workers who removed the display. The dean's office will be picking up that tab, although at first it was debated because, technically, the organization whose name is on the blue slip receives any extra charges.

"That's one of the ironic products of this country club for students," said Rand, speaking of Maintenance being called instead of the people who were responsible for the display.

Chalking: good or evil
A large part of the chalking issue was precedent -- if there was no chalking allowed, what explained previous incidents in which chalkings were left up. Examples were brought up of sports teams unerased chalkings of game times and of Discordians decorating the front of Hathorn. This was presented as a major inconsistency with presenting "no chalking" as a policy.

"We've [the Discordians] chalked before and it stayed for a week until it rained!" exclaimed Sarah Davison '98.

Murphy firmly added that regardless of these incidents chalking was not allowed and was to be removed when discovered.

Regardless, the response to Nero's question, "Is there any official policy [dealing with chalking]," the answer from the administration was "No."

Another issue raised by a student attendee was that the implication was that "there was an emergency situation to `get down all this gay stuff.'"

"You completely annihilated the [display] on this campus. It's all gone. ... It presents a very strong statement against gay pride," said Rachel Simons '98.

Towards the end of the meeting, chalking was brought up again as many students claimed that, "We did everything right, how can this be a mistake?" On this basis, they asked that they be allowed to reconstruct the entire display, including the chalkings -- especially considering there was no written policy prohibiting it.

The response was, "The display could be constructed without the chalkings," said Reese.

Finally, a hypothetical question was asked by one student, "If people were to chalk, I won't, but if people do, will maintenance be called to remove it?"

After affirming that the student clean-up crew still existed, the meeting ended with no direct answer to the question.

The result
A person walking through the quad this afternoon saw a quad colored with people and chalk drawings. These people were working on their own, with no organizational affiliations since it was against college policy to chalk the sidewalks. There were students, some who helped the night before and others who helped because, "some of my best friends are straight," said Kelly Ogden-Schuette '00. There were professors who helped because, "I got the [e-mail] message. ... my students told me about it, I just came to help," said Lecturer Feng Liu as he hung a pink triangle asking "Have you hugged a queer today?" on the wall of Hathorn Hall.

The administration is currently making plans for both a public apology and to work with students to create a policy about publicity and use of public spaces on campus.

While the original chalking "was all about being proactive and celebration, today [Thursday] was defensive, it was about survival,"said Stamoulis.