Words by Willa Umansky PZ ’27

Graphic by Ava Tratt PZ ’27 and Genevieve O’Marah SC’28

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and concision.

The Outback: Can you explain a little bit about the free wall project? In practice, what are you trying to do? 

This past summer, I and Grace Wood-Hull (PZ ’25, free wall project co-lead) … were tour guides at the Office of Admissions over the summer … We had been touring all summer, and the free wall had been up in its regular glory — we’d been pointing it out on tours. 

One day, later in the summer, I was doing a tour. I turned the corner, ready to talk about the free wall, and I saw that it had been completely erased … I had been under the impression that was the thing about Pitzer’s free wall — it wasn’t turned over.

…Once the school year started, we went to the Office of Student Affairs to ask what the deal was. They told us that the free wall was supposed to be turned over every year for maintenance. Apparently that [turnover] hadn’t been done because there was an interim Office of Student Affairs person that was too scared to clean it up because of [potential accusations of censorship]. So there is policy in place, but no one’s seen [it] and no one seems to know about it. 

… We heard about this award opportunity from the Community Engagement Center (CEC), apparently pitched as part of a consortium of schools called Project Pericles… They were doing grants where you could apply for money to do a project on fostering constructive, expressive speech on campus… We got money specifically to start conversations about the free wall, host events, and we were trying to do an art exhibit… We were also hoping to have an end of year event that celebrated student organizing and free expression on campus, and particularly now it seems like that kind of thing is needed. 

[Grace and I] have been trying to get people’s perspectives on how they think the free wall should work [through town halls]. [We’ve also been] meeting with the Dean of Campus Life, Alayna Session-Goins, about what has been done on the free wall so far, [we’ve learned] that it has basically not really been a space that’s been “officially governed.” … [The Pitzer administration] have been hesitant to pass real laws or guidelines on it because it was student space. We’ve just been navigating all that information and trying to figure out [how] best to … set a clear culture around the free wall going forward.

OB: How have you felt the administrative response to your project has been? Are they facilitating your work or inhibiting it?

They’re definitely facilitating it… I think from the administrator perspective, it’s hard to balance. [Genuinely] wanting students to have a free space, and also being an administrator who’s worried about … maintaining a civil campus culture or PR and things like that. We’ve really tried to reassure [Session-Goins] and other administrators that we are able to govern ourselves. When offensive stuff is put on the wall, ideally, we all have access to paint and other resources to be able to take care of it ourselves immediately, and we don’t need to have other people step in.

A lot of… campuses operate off of the premise that you can’t trust students to make their own decisions. I think the Free Wall is a space [where] the stakes are relatively low enough to where you can experiment with that kind of model. It’s not to say that hate speech isn’t a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing. 

But if someone sees hate speech on campus, I would hope that I could trust enough in my student body that someone would just say, ‘That’s fucked up. I’m gonna go over it right now and paint a flower over it or something.’ I think that it’s actually really important for us to be entrusted with organized anarchy; or shared, collective, grassroots governance; because that actually instills a culture where we feel responsible for the space. We feel as though we’re actually real citizens of the space that have… a stake in making sure that campus is a space where people feel heard and welcome and supported. 

OB: Plug yourself, tell people how to get involved and why specifically they should. 

Grace and I have been talking about starting a Free Wall caretakers club. This would be… a group of students whose role is to be first responders/creative facilitators of the space. If someone does have an issue with something that’s painted on the Free Wall, instead of having to go to Office of Student Affairs (OSA), they could first go to Free Wall caretakers, who would have a consistent supply of paint. If the student didn’t feel comfortable painting over it themselves, they could be accompanied by a Free Wall caretaker. The Free Wall caretakers could also be the ones that [maintain] an archive of the Free Wall space and give information sessions at the beginning of the year on what the free wall is and how it works, so we can create that culture and that collective understanding of the space. 

Students interested in working as a Free Wall caretaker should email Chi at chiadi@students.pitzer.edu or Grace at gwood@students.pitzer.edu. They are hoping to charter working on the club before the end of this year!