Symbolic Expressions : Graffiti Makes Its Mark on Monument to Free Speech

It had to happen.

Berkeley’s unusual monument to the Free Speech Movement, installed without fanfare in May, now is covered with graffiti--some of it unflattering commentaries about the memorial itself.

“This is insufferably pretentious,” reads one message scrawled on the horizontal monument--a circle of dark granite surrounding an artfully dug hole and inlaid on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, where the movement began. “This is silly,” reads another.

Other graffiti, which began to appear about two weeks ago, offer opinions on potential presidential candidate Ross Perot (“Ross is Boss”), political commentary (“Fascism=Racism=Sexism=Classism”) and the ultimate symbol of the 1960s--the peace sign.

The San Francisco artist who created the tribute has mixed emotions about the appearance of the graffiti. The markings are “an organic extension of what I started,” Mark Brest van Kempen told the Associated Press last week, “and I’d feel kind of hypocritical taking (the graffiti) off. But at the same time, I don’t entirely like the way it looks.

Even before it became a magnet for editorial comments, the monument, like the movement it symbolizes, had been the subject of sharp debate in this proudly idiosyncratic area.

Its installation capped three years of sometimes-fierce debate between a group of faculty who pushed for a way to commemorate the turbulent movement’s 25th anniversary in 1989 and campus officials who disapproved of glorifying a period that divided the school and still looms for some as a bad memory.

The Free Speech Movement was born on Oct. 1, 1964, when student Mario Savio and an ex-student, Jack Weinberg, set up a table on Sproul Plaza to recruit for a civil rights group--an act that directly challenged a campus ban on advocating or collecting funds for off-campus causes. The following months were marked by sit-ins, strikes and arrests, including an incident in which 773 students were dragged from an administration building.

The monument prompts puzzled looks, loud laughs and debates that range from the frivolous to the philosophical.

“I feel free!” laughed 36-year-old Jim Rodriguez, a computer scientist and 1985 UC Berkeley graduate, as he stood over the monument on a day before the graffiti appeared.

Ryan Calen, 21, who graduated from UC Berkeley this June, was less impressed.

“It’s Berkeley politics encapsulated in a bowl of soil,” he said. “I can imagine people will be making a lot of speeches in the middle of this.”

Others, such as UC Berkeley junior Matt Geis, stopped to meditate on whether one safely “could commit illegal acts” within the monument’s five-foot-wide circle of granite, or only on top of the much smaller hole carved in the middle.

Brest van Kempen, the artist, clarified the issue: “The hole is symbolic,” he said. “The rest is a stage to speak from. That’s what it’s there for. I’m not trying to trick anybody.”

Brest van Kempen is trying to get the City Council, the UC Board of Regents and the federal government to recognize the space inside the granite as a “free zone” that won’t fall under any governmental jurisdiction. That explains the words he carved into the surface of the monument: “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”

His winning design was selected two years ago from 275 entries in a national competition sponsored by the Berkeley Art Project. Competing with Brest van Kempen’s entry were proposals ranging from a reproduction of a soapbox to an electronic billboard that would flash student-generated messages.

Galen Cranz, vice president of the 150-member Berkeley Art Project, which includes faculty, student and community leaders, said Brest van Kempen’s design celebrates a movement that “did something great for political life.” She noted that before the Free Speech Movement, students had to hold political events unrelated to the university off campus.

“That’s a very important achievement . . . and a very important part of Berkeley’s image. There’s no reason in the world not to want to embrace it.”

But when Berkeley Art Project members began to set their project in motion, campuswide debate erupted about whether the stormy three-month period in 1964 merited its own memorial.

Recalling the divisiveness of the Free Speech Movement, Assistant Vice Chancellor John Cummins, who negotiated with members of the Berkeley Art Project, said administrators “did not want to be put in a position of taking a side on the issue one way or another because it was initially being portrayed as a monument to the Free Speech Movement . . . and there was a real split in the academic community here about the value of the movement.”

The design of the monument was approved by Chancellor Ira Heyman on his last day in office in the spring of 1990. In a letter to project members, Heyman called it “a symbolic memorial to the universally shared value of freedom of speech.”

In all, the monument cost $58,000, which included $10,000 for Brest van Kempen. The Berkeley Art Project has raised $53,000 so far, all from private donations.

Because university officials installed the monument during the last week in May, after most students had left for home, the Berkeley Art Project is planning an hourlong dedication ceremony Oct. 1 featuring speakers, music and other entertainment.

“I think it’ll get a reputation,” said the art project’s Cranz. “It’ll be one of those weird Berkeley things you take people to see.”