Colorado State University senior Amber Wright sat on the Lory Student Center Plaza Oct. 7, chalk in hand, surrounded by puddles of water, colorful smears and the remnants of chalked messages. She drew arrows pointing to the puddles, accompanied by the bright orange words “RIP Free Speech.”
Chalking on The Plaza has long been an outlet for free speech and expression at the university. While the free speech zones on CSU’s campus are not limited to The Plaza, it is where chalking, tabling, debating and messaging are most commonly found.
For two months, largely unbeknownst to the university community, the policy that allowed for this expression — alongside other speech guidelines — was rescinded.
Oct. 7 marked the two-year period of the current Israel-Hamas war, which the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has recognized as a genocide. Members of Students for Justice in Palestine, students carrying Israel flags as well as other standard CSU departments and programs hosting tabling events were present on The Plaza that day. Also present were members of the CSU Police Department and a few members of university administration who watched as Facilities Management power-washed chalk messages off the ground that did not comply with the revised policy.
“Importantly, at the very start of the day when we started chalking, some of our messages were more like, ‘Free Gaza,’ ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘680,000 dead,’” Wright said. “They brought out a truck so that they could begin hosing down our messages. At that point, they erased everything on the north (end) of The Plaza that had those messages. They have left our other messages alone — the ones that were entirely compliant. But then, they began following us, essentially, and actively monitoring what we were writing as we were writing it.”…