For those of you not following the story: For more than 100 years, a split-rail fence on the Carnegie Mellon University campus has been used by students to share promotional messages. Fraternities and sororities paint it during rush week; student organizations promote events; individual students share opinions.
Because it’s CMU, an entire arcane and byzantine set of rules governs when and how the Fence may be painted.
Ahead of a visit by President Trump, students painted the fence to say “No Rapists on Our Campus” and “Shame on You.”
CMU’s president, Farnam Jahanian, ordered university employees to go out and paint over the message.
So the students repainted it.
Jahanian ordered it repainted again, and then issued a decree forbidding any messages from being painted on the Fence pending “meetings” to discuss the “appropriate use” of the Fence, on the grounds that students are painting “offensive” messages.
Needless to say, this is all what we call “bullshit.”
The ironic thing, of course, is that if Jahanian had just ignored the message, no one would have noticed it.
Now, he’s got alumni, students and faculty up in arms.
As a former editorial cartoonist for CMU’s student newspaper, The Tartan, I thought I ought to do something. We’ll see if my show is on WRCT (CMU’s radio station) this weekend …
Background stories here:
And a Reddit thread on the controversy: