{"id":642,"date":"2004-02-17T02:23:27","date_gmt":"2004-02-17T07:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/paint_chalk\/"},"modified":"2004-02-17T02:23:27","modified_gmt":"2004-02-17T07:23:27","slug":"paint_chalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/paint_chalk\/","title":{"rendered":"Paint ≠ Chalk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Say Uncle brings to my attention<\/a> this newspaper story on a former UT student who is suing the university for arresting him after he painted “No War” on university buildings<\/a>.
\nFrom what I gather, the gist of the ex-student’s complaint is that he was he was singled out for punishment not for his conduct (painting the building) but for his anti-war message. Apparently, there’s no explicit rule against painting campus buildings.
\nThus the complainant argues that but for the university’s content-based restriction, it would have been okay for him to spray paint the buildings.
\nI don’t know this student’s “speech” got cleaned up faster than other graffiti, but clearly the university cannot give students free reign to paint buildings.
\nWhen I was over on The Hill, most of the daily graffiti I saw (outside of the bathrooms) was written in chalk, not paint. I think most sober students understand this distinction. By pressing the issue in a far-fetched claims such as this, the litigants are alienating public opinion and only making it more difficult for protesters to bring legitimate First Amendment claims in the future.
\nThe real shame of this all is that if there currently isn’t a rule against graffiti, there may be one now–even for those using temporary chalk. So, as is often the case, someone who goes too far may end up ruining a practice for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say Uncle brings to my attention this newspaper story on a former UT student who is suing the university for arresting him after he painted “No War” on university buildings. From what I gather, the gist of the ex-student’s complaint is that he was he was singled out for punishment not for his conduct (painting […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}