Spring Break
'Writing on the wall' to be destroyed today
Rashida Lyles Cowan/Staff Reporter
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News
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The campus community will come together at 12:15 p.m. today to symbolically break down the barriers between one another.
The wall is 44 feet long and contains 200 cinder blocks.
Within each cinder block, metal stakes were placed inside to make sure they would not be easily broken.
When tearing down the wall, ropes will be placed in the metal stakes for people to hold on to the rope and pull the wall down.
Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, a communication studies professor, will be the keynote speaker on the subject of words that hurt and cause struggles between students and community members.
Karla Browning, programming and diversity coordinator for the Residence Hall Association, said everyone on campus is different, and by being different, people tend to separate into groups that are the same.
"Being different, people should come together to realize differences between them are good," said Browning, a sophomore family and consumer sciences major.
Browning created this idea of "Writing on the Wall."
"The wall symbolizes the boundaries between EIU students on this campus," she said.
By painting these words of hate, students can see how much these words hurt others, Browning said.
"Writing hate words on the walls, an individual is able to touch a big group of people," she said.
Browning said the wall is not necessarily a tool to make a huge visual aspect to diversity, but to get people to start talking.
"Diversity through word of mouth," she said.
Emily Brauer, a freshman sociology major, thought the "Writing on the Wall" was a creative idea that many people have never seen.
"This wall is going to mean something to people," she said.
Karyn Skrzypczak, a freshman marketing major, believes the creation of the wall shows the harsh words that are thrown around and the barriers that the words will break by writing them down.
"You hear these words on a regular basis, like faggot or bitch," she said.
When one sees these words written out, it makes one gasp, and it hurts, Skrzypczak said.
"I do not know if EIU will change as a whole, but people's perspective as an individual about what they say and think will," Brauer said.
Both Brauer and Skrzypczak, from the sorority Sigma Kappa, volunteered to be wall watchers.
Brauer said the Sigma Kappas are the only sorority currently involved with watching the wall.
The purpose of wall watching is to make sure people do not vandalize it.
"In addition, EIU security wants people to be able to watch the wall, because you do not know what people are going to do," Browning said.
She said each wall watcher usually has shifts of two hours.
Browning said the one thing she wanted people to walk away with from the "Writing on the Wall" is for people to learn not to use those words, because if one person is offended by it, so can others.
"Look at the words and know that people should not use them," she said.
Rashida Lyles Cowan can be reached at 581-7942 or at rnlylescowan@eiu.edu.
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