Did you know it was illegal to draw peace signs on the sidewalk in chalk? I didn’t. And neither did some members of the Wellesley College Peace Coalition who:
spent the early evening scrawling onto the town center’s sidewalks peace signs and quotations from Mohandas K. Gandhi. Someone followed them back to their dormitory, copied down the license plate number of the car Smith was driving, and contacted Wellesley police, according to the police report.
It turns out that the chalking or “tagging” was against the law. The students were contacted that night and summoned back to the scene of the crime. The officer who confronted the girls told them to clean it up or else they’d be arrested. They agreed to clean it up but when they asked for more information about what law they had broken, he lost patience with the situation and went ahead and arrested them anyway.
Now, law enforcement and protecting public safety is difficult business. And I applaud the original attempt to let the students get off with a warning and cleaning up the chalk. But doesn’t it just make sense that students involved in a peace organization might want to know where they crossed the line and came afoul of the law? To arrest them for asking the question strikes me as out of proportion, at best. At worst it is the result of someone having a chip on his shoulder regarding college students, and perhaps is more interested in intimidation than in promoting good citizenship and adherence to the law through education.
I would give the benefit of the doubt to police in nearly any situation where public safety is concerned. But this was a bunch of chalk on a sidewalk. The police seem to have had the law on their side, but they didn’t seem to have good judgment to go along with it.
And, to the fine folks who turned in these naughty college students, some literature:
‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’ the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.Mrs Parsons’ eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back again. In the better light of the living-room he noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.
‘They do get so noisy,’ she said. ‘They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging, that’s what it is. I’m too busy to take them. and Tom won’t be back from work in time.’
Enjoy. You must be feeling pretty smug!
Posted by James at May 1, 2006 1:21 PMWow. So these young ladies got arrested for 'tagging' with chalk, which washes away. Nice. I hope Office Pole-up-his-ass is proud.
Posted by: briwei at May 2, 2006 12:56 AMDoesn't law enforcement have anything better to do? I guess there isn't much crime happening in Wellesley. Sounds like a pretty cushy place to be a cop, if you ask me.
I wonder if Sidewalk Sam is considered a law breaker.
You can spell it out for someone, and they still don't get it.
You could maybe blame some of it on a lack of familiarity with literature, but you shouldn't need to read the whole book to understand "thought-criminal" in any case.
Go ahead, tattle on your neighbors because their opinion isn't what the government says it should be. War is Peace! Ignorance is Strength! Freedom is Slavery! By all means, arrest people when they ask questions. An inquisitive society is an unruly society!
Posted by: Julie at May 2, 2006 11:12 AMLet's not forget the gem uttered by Our Fearless Leader himself: If you're not with us, you're against us.
I know what will spice it up for the Wellesley cops. In the interest of "keeping it real," I suggest they do a co-op/cop exchange with, say, Boston cops stationed in Area B.
Maybe after working in the city, they'll have better judgement as to what constitutes a crime and what does not.
They might even care to read "Freakanomics," which debunks the NYC "broken window" theory of policing.
Posted by: Patti M. at May 2, 2006 11:24 AMI wasn't making an analogy between the hanging and the chalking fine. If you're familiar with 1984, the youth group (Spies) was encouraged to turn in people for crimes against Big Brother. That's why I was addressing this excerpt to the person who turned them in. These were the kids who were turning their own parents in for thoughtcrime.
The hanging is just incidental. It just happens to be the weekly event that the kids love to come out for.
Posted by: James at May 2, 2006 1:10 PMCrap, I deleted carpundit's comment by mistake while trying to delete spam. I can't wait to move over to WordPad. Here was his comment:
Yeah, it's exactly the same thing: a hanging and a chalking fine. What is this world coming to?
Posted by: James at May 2, 2006 1:24 PMAnd of course, there is our leederz other gem "There ought to be limits to freedom"
Posted by: briwei at May 3, 2006 10:57 AM