Can we talk about that free speech wall at UW Madison?
I was walking through Library Mall last Tuesday and saw that big chalkboard the College Republicans set up for people to write whatever they want. Normally I just walk past, but this time I stopped to watch for about 15 minutes. Some guy wrote a pretty harsh take on affirmative action, and a student next to me started filming him while muttering about reporting him to the dean. Nobody actually confronted him, just the filming. It got me thinking about how even when a space is specifically set up for open expression, there's this unspoken social cost to using it. I used to think free speech on campus was just about official policies, but that day I saw how peer pressure and phone cameras can chill speech way more than any rule. Has anyone else noticed this informal censorship happening at your school, where people self-censor because of what friends or classmates might think?