In recent weeks, there has been considerable debate surrounding competing interpretations of civil and institutional rights here on campus. Plagued with intellectual anxiety concerning the conceptual battleground that has caught the pejorative attention of newspapers nationwide, I have often pondered — what if there were a forum on Pepperdine’s campus where anyone could write anything without fear of public backlash or administrative action? What if there was a medium for the voice of the people? What if there was a center for scholarly discourse and radical change? Quickly, I thought to myself — Ben, you fool. Enter the Freedom Wall to save the proverbial day.
The Freedom Wall — mounted like a glorious Roman frieze in the damp grotto under the TCC — is a true masterpiece of libertarian triumph. Do we not realize how revolutionary this is? Apparently, at Pepperdine, we are not free to say whatever we want, wherever we want …unless you post it to the Freedom Wall — then you’re in the clear. It’s the exception to tyrannical censorship, the phenomenal manifestation of free will, the license to transform the world with a pen and paper.
In the Freedom Wall, we have a voice. We are empowered. Reason shall triumph and goodness will prevail for we have a path to the light! Pepperdine, this is your soapbox. This is your ticket out of civic fear and oppressive bureaucracy. Scribe your manifestos. Hammer your theses into the Wittenberg door. Truth has nothing to hide from inquiry, so inquire we shall! Free at last! Free at last! Free at last!
Two bedroom apartment with titanium mini-fridge and ocean view for $2,500/ month. Oh what the f— have you seen this thing lately? I decided to stroll by the Freedom Wall expecting philosophic inspiration, expressions of contentious convictions and passionate advocacy. Instead, I found a bulletin board.
Black Student Association meeting next Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the HAWC.
Are you kidding me? Pepperdine, we are “free” to post descriptive informational facts wherever we want. The Freedom Wall was not mounted so you could spam us with your trivial news. It looks like a big, ugly tangible Facebook event wall.
I remember when the Freedom Wall was a genuine resource for the discussion of human rights, theological doctrines, environmental issues, and questions of liberty. Now it’s the eyesore that is utterly ignored by everyone except for a certain few looking to push the next student coffeehouse. What are we to make of this academic entropy? From where comes this devolution of cognitive achievement into the primordial goop of shameless publicity?
The Freedom Wall was created so we could publicly discuss things that really matter, and we bastardize its integrity with every poster advertising the “Wild at Heart” Club Convo. Honestly, I would rather the Freedom Wall be completely blank. I mean absolutely devoid of any content.
That’s it! I feel a moral compulsion to tear down these flashy nothings — these knives in the heart of truth itself. Like Christ fending off the usurers, let us overturn these tables of madness and begin anew — a tabula rasa for the cleansed Freedom Wall.
What are we to do with this freedom, Pepperdine? Our destiny is in our hands. We can inundate the Freedom Wall with insightful fervor or we can bombard it with gas nonsense and ping-pong tournament details. By debasing a medium with such potential sanctity, we have tacitly enslaved ourselves to the shackles of stupidity and mindlessness. With every wilderness weekend flyer and Malibu Prudential realty advertisement, we spit upon the very essence of what it is to be free.
Look, I’m not saying everyone needs to go out and write a dissertation on some moral issue just for the hell of it. I understand that not everyone engages their particular passions through dialectic and the written word. But at the least, don’t staple your crappy pamphlet to the wall we specifically designate for the championing of reason. Really this is about us, Pepperdine.
One would think a Freedom Wall would be at least minimally representative of the intellectual zeitgeist of the university. Au contraire. At Pepperdine, the Freedom Wall is a mural of “Rush Sig Ep” posters, and guitar lesson advertisements. Well … I guess that seems about right.
