Apparently the Student Association is the mother and father of NIU students, or at least it’s trying to be.

Only SA-approved organizations are allowed to chalk NIU’s sidewalks, according to Friday’s article in the Northern Star. What is this, second grade? We find it ludicrous that groups who want to chalk have to be approved by the SA.

The last we knew, NIU’s sidewalks are public property, meaning people should be able to write whatever they darn well please, whenever they please.

As long as groups aren’t calling people to arms or directly breaking restrictions nationally recognized as infractions on the first amendment, we have no problem with NIU’s sidewalks becoming students’ canvases.

We are a newspaper, and therefore we are possibly the biggest proponents of the First Amendment. That disclaimer needs to be included. Whenever issues of free speech come up, we as journalists naturally will tend to lean toward free speech. Perhaps that’s a bias on our part, but we nonetheless are all for unlimited, unfettered student-chalking.

Students shouldn’t have the SA or any group for that matter telling them what or what not to put on their sidewalks.

If a start-up chess club on campus wants to advertise its next round of checkmates, why shouldn’t it be allowed to, even if it hasn’t gone through the SA first?

The NIU Random Knife-Fights With Strangers Group shouldn’t be allowed to grace NIU’s walkways with its prose, but a group like that would be in trouble with the law anyway if it was inciting violence.

So really, why not let students chalk away? If a group scribbles vulgar and profane words, well, so be it.

Someone could stand in the middle of King Memorial Commons and yell obscenities over and over, so what’s the difference? There isn’t one.

Why does there need to be a oppression of well-intentioned chalkers? Such individuals mean no harm and shouldn’t have to go through a centralized body. It is hard to see the real reason for this. Inside the buildings, school-stamps are required for flyers, but outside, on the sidewalks, do we need bureaucracy for washable chalk?

The solution is clear: Open NIU’s sidewalks to the students. Anything less would be uncivilized.

Agree? Disagree? Contact us at

www.northernstar.info.