EVEN USING CHALK ON SIDEWALKS CAN TEST FREE SPEECH

Writing on sidewalks has become an issue, at least at one college campus in Missouri. Students at Stephens College in Columbia who chalked gay-pride messages during National Coming Out Day were peeved when the messages were hosed off later that afternoon.

Putting messages on sidewalks is somewhat reminiscent of childhood days when every neighborhood had sidewalks and when neighborhood children played together, often marking out areas for hopscotch. But writing where lots of people walk is prevalent today on college campuses. Even at Southeast Missouri State University there are all sorts of messages on the walkways.

Stephens College, whose student body is all women, is across the street from the University of Missouri campus. Its students have been writing on sidewalks for several years, but last year the college's administration adopted a policy prohibiting the practice. The event that sparked the creation of the policy was last year's gay-pride observance.

Unfortunately, the college has been selective about enforcing the policy. During freshman orientation, for example, students wrote welcoming and sometime humorous messages on the sidewalks, and nothing happened. But when the gay-pride advocates put their messages on the walkways this year, the school cracked down.

There are good arguments to be made for banning sidewalk writings. At Stephens, some administrators think the chalked displays smack of graffiti.

But the students have a point: If the college is going to allow only the messages it condones on the sidewalks, it is creating a freedom-of-speech morass. Those rights, whether on sidewalks are in the ether of computer communications, are fragile enough as it is. Both the students and the administrators at Stephens Colleges would be better off to have a clear understanding of the rules. If some messages are going to be banned, then shouldn't all of them be prohibited?