The Wheaton Record

4.24.20

• Student Government (SG) passes proposal to request the option to apply a Pass/No Credit designation to coursework completed during the Spring 2020 semester.
  
• Faculty vote to approve SG proposal and Provost Margaret Diddams releases official announcement via email. The decision allows students to opt for classes to count toward graduation requirements without receiving a weighted letter grade.

Correction: a previous version of this article initially stated that the SG proposal applied to course work in the Spring 2021 semester. This was a typo and is now changed to reflect the correct year.

4.17.20

• May 2020 Commencement ceremony has been delayed. Online events will be held for graduates in May, with a possible in-person ceremony to be scheduled during the 2020-21 academic year.
  
  
• First responders are offered housing in 58 vacated campus apartments after the college signs agreement with the City of Wheaton.

By Tennyson Bush

After a temporary judicial ruling preventing the city of Chicago from limiting free speech in Millennium Park, Wheaton’s Chicago Evangelism Team (CET) returned to the park on Friday, Feb. 21. Judge John Robert Blakey ruled in a 32-page opinion memorandum that “the City’s restrictions prohibit reasonable forms of expression in large areas of the Park.”

A status hearing is scheduled for March 4 to discuss how the case will proceed. Though the students have won the right to return to Millennium Park to preach, the case is not yet over, and Judge Blakey’s decision to prohibit Chicago from enforcing speech restrictions will only last until a final judgement is made at the conclusion of the case.

Senior accuses SG of censorship

By Tennyson Bush and Carolina Lumetta

2.28.2020

On Feb. 19, Senior Class Co-President Joshua Franker posted a laminated notice on the forum wall in Lower Beamer stating that all anonymous posts would be taken down at the end of the day. In response, senior Leo O’Malley began collecting signatures to hold a referendum on all 2019-2020 Student Government (SG) proposals. After a day of encouraging students to join his cause in Lower Beamer and other areas of Wheaton’s campus on Thursday, O’Malley says that he now has 103 “signatures and commitments to sign.”

Franker’s notice, which was not an official SG initiative, encouraged students to take ownership of what they post on the wall. “Look to write what is edifying,” the notice said. “Please put your name and date on your posts (Posts without names are welcome but will be taken down at the end of the day).” Franker enforced this rule for three days following the post. “Any student could have done what I did. Any student can post on the forum wall or take stuff down,” he said.

The rules laid out in the notice mirror the ones suggested in a Nov. 9 SG proposal called “Standardization of the Forum Wall” in which Franker called for “continued conversations with the administration” about the forum wall.