The message was painted over about four hours later with the phrase "Bobcats stick together."
Ohio University’s "graffiti wall" is causing controversy once again.
In response to the recent cancellation of several events for Greek Week 2016, some members of the OU College Republicans painted the wall at about 10 p.m. Wednesday with the phrase "Trigger warning: there are no safe spaces in real life! You can't wall off the 1st Amendment,” David Parkhill, president of the group, said.
After images of the wall circulated on social media that night, a group of students, who would not disclose their names or an affiliation with a student organization, repainted the wall at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday with the phrase “Bobcats stick together.”
As of Thursday at noon, that painting remained on the graffiti wall.
“It’s our First Amendment right,” Parkhill, a sophomore studying business management, said. “We feel like we’re being silenced and we feel like people are putting our point of view down, which is what we don’t want, so we’re going to fight back and we’re going to say this is our point of view.”
On April 7, the phrases “Trump 2016” and “Build The Wall” were painted on the graffiti wall by unnamed members of the Greek community, which led to the alteration of the Greek Week schedule, set to take place between April 11 and 18, according to a letter sent Sunday to sororities and fraternities.
The phrase “Build The Wall” refers to Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign proposal to construct a wall between the United States and Mexico to discourage illegal immigration from South and Central American countries.
“We just want people to know that conservatives and people who believe in the wall have the right to express their opinion,” Parkhill said. “This is about our freedom of speech. We want to express our opinion just as much as everybody else wants to express theirs.”
Here is a better pic of the graffiti wall at Ohio University pic.twitter.com/uS39S4mDRe — Megan Henry (@megankhenry) April 14, 2016
Members of the OU College Republicans, Parkhill said, feel their opinions are not welcome on campus.
“We want our voices heard, even if it’s an unpopular opinion,” he said.
Jonathan Peters, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Kansas and an expert in First Amendment law and media policy, said the First Amendment generally does not apply to actions of private entities such as fraternities and sororities in the sense that if an inter-fraternity council or house leader wants to discipline members for speech, they are able to do so.
However, universities are required by two civil rights statutes, Title VII and Title IX, to regulate on-campus activities that constitute harassment or unequal treatment based on sex, race, religion and national origin, Peters said.
“Students who say they feel unsafe are more likely to be heard by university administrators than those who demand censorship on other grounds,” Peters said in an email.
OU College Democrats President Jake Fenzl said he was not a fan of the “trigger warning” phrase at the top of the wall.
“Oftentimes Republicans will use the First Amendment as an excuse to go against political correctness,” Fenzl, a senior studying political science, said. “It’s adding on to the wonderful drama that happens with the graffiti wall.”
This week's incidents are not the first time the graffiti wall has been a catalyst for political discussion this academic year.
In December, the OU Black Student Union painted the wall with wall with a fist and “#BlackLivesMatter” in response to an act of vandalism of a bulletin board in Sargent Hall.
The message on the graffiti wall was altered five days later with the phrases “Everyone goes through their own shit” and “#AllLivesMatter."
@megankhenry
