RALEIGH -- Bigoted messages scrawled in spray paint have again forced North Carolina's largest campus to wrestle with the boundary between free speech and hate speech.
The Free Expression Tunnel at N.C. State University has served since the 1960s as a space for any student with an aerosol can and an idea to express. Graffiti covers the walls and ceiling of the concrete tunnel, which goes under railroad tracks on the campus.
On Sunday night, a student reported what NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson described as "racially charged obscenities and derogatory comments" directed at gay people, along with a drawing of President Barack Obama, inside the tunnel.
Early Thursday, 25 to 30 students held a vigil blocking the tunnel's entrance until about 7 a.m., when Woodson arrived to speak with them.
Later Thursday, the wall was painted over in black, and only a few messages were there. Among them: "Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color."
Another invited students to wear black to combat racist thoughts.
"The question for all of us is are we going to practice the politics of hate and destruction, or are we going to be a force for respectful dialogue, even where there are differences of opinion," the chancellor asked.
Time to hash things out
Nobody is talking seriously about closing the tunnel or restricting students' access to it. Instead, campus leaders say they want to use this week's events to promote campus discussions about diversity.
"Although you can't completely regulate what happens in a free expression tunnel, even if you think some of the things said there are disturbing, you can use them to enhance the dialogue," interim Provost Warwick Arden said.
He met Thursday with Jose Picart, vice provost for diversity and inclusion, and two students who were particularly upset by the graffiti. Both students said they left feeling that conversation could help stem problems.
"The key to everything is education," said sophomore Shaneice Mitchell. She said she thinks those who left the offending graffiti, who haven't been identified, did it more out of lack of knowledge than meanness.
Sophomore Jasmine Brown agreed: "A lot of people here are from small towns, and they don't know about diversity. It's new."
This week's graffiti is not the first at the tunnel to spark outrage.
In 2008, shortly after Obama's election, graffiti appeared in the tunnel saying that he should be shot or hanged. There also were references to the Ku Klux Klan. The painting was examined by the U.S. Secret Service, which determined that it was not a serious threat against the president's life.
In 2009, a mural of former women's basketball coach Kay Yow, who died of cancer, was defaced with the words "cancer rules."
NCSU responded to those incidents by improving lighting outside the tunnel, which is monitored by cameras, and by posting signs that explain the tunnel's purpose. A campus culture task force also was appointed, and language was added to the student code of conduct making hate speech and bias an aggravating factor in offenses.
Dialogue continues through another task force aimed at bringing together a diverse student body of 34,000 students, Picart said. One strategy is for disparate campus groups to hold joint events.
New expressions
With the tunnel painted mostly black Thursday and talk of the graffiti swirling around campus, freshman Brian Coffin stood spray-painting an announcement about a meeting for Campus Crusade for Christ. His announcement had no relation to the racist graffiti or to the protesters who blocked the tunnel, he said.
"I don't think the tunnel should be about hatred," Coffin said. "But without that vent, it will come out in other ways - potentially more damaging ways than spray paint in a tunnel. Spray paint can be covered over in one morning."
With that, he went on painting.
