Chalk messages erased, some students upset

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) – There’s a controversy over chalk at UNCW. Some students said the college is censoring what they call free speech on the sidewalk.

Sunny Rucker, a UNCW student, said she on Monday morning noticed several messages written in chalk on sidewalks all over campus about the Black Lives Matter campaign.

“The messages were extremely poignant,” Rucker said. “They made you think.”

About a half an hour after she first saw them, though, they were gone. Rucker said she saw a UNCW truck pressure-washing the sidewalks, and washing away the messages.

It’s something she, and fellow student, Mikayla Kinloch, said is unfair. They said they don’t understand why the university would immediately remove messages about the Black Lives Matter movement yet allow pictures of abortion to stay up for days.

“Three weeks ago, there was an organization called the Genocide Awareness Project and on campus,” Rucker said. “They had huge, like probably 15-foot tall poster boards of very bloody babies,” Rucker said.

“I was really appalled that the school would go to the length of trying to erase a political matter, which they’re trying to express themselves with simple things like chalk, by pressure-washing it off when they’re allowing other things with graphic images to be on campus,” Kinloch said.

A UNCW spokeswoman said the school is looking into it to the matter. According to UNCW’s chalking policy, students can only use chalk on sidewalks, and not on brick, asphalt, and buildings. Rucker said she doesn’t think the recently-removed messages violated that policy.

“I mean there’s a comment that says it’s not supposed to be obscene. This wasn’t obscene at all,” Rucker said.

As Rucker and Kinloch wait for UNCW to respond to the issue, they say they hope the messages and their removal help raise awareness about free speech and censorship.

“I don’t feel like it’s right that we should be limited to our freedom of speech,” Kinloch said. “I think, right now, it’s more about awareness about the fact that we can’t let this happen.”

Rucker said she thinks InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was the group that wrote the messages in chalk. WWAY could not independently confirm that detail Monday night.

Rucker adds that there is a meeting Tuesday with the dean of students to talk about the message removal.