Regarding the ongoing tempest-in-a-teapot over at Catt Hall: If masking a vanity-brick is “free speech”, then why wouldn’t uncovering one be free speech as well?

And if it’s free speech to cloak (censor) anything in the public or quasi-public domain that offends one’s sensitivities, this could have very interesting implications for the landscape. The world could start to resemble a great Christo installation; perhaps someday we could even develop “cloaking devices” like Star Trek’s Romulans, and make any offending or incorrect element of the landscape simply disappear!

But if we must censor the un-censors who have somehow already managed to do their surreptitious brick-unmasking 60 or 70 times unseen, maybe the Sep. 29th Movement staff could organize its militant members into a tag-team, round-the-clock vanity-brick watch.

This would draw upon their keenest talent (the ability to narrowly focus their collective attention in a highly selective manner) and their most ample resource (way too much time on their hands), while freeing the university from being intimidated, through threats of vandalism, into conducting silly investigations.

Michael Martin

Assistant Professor

College of Design