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BY MENGHAN JIN

In print | Published November 4, 2010

Posters are ubiquitous on campus; posters denouncing President Obama’s presidency usually are not. That is, until last Wednesday.

In an effort to promote a new conservative student group known as the Swarthmore Young America’s Foundation (YAF), Danielle Charette ’14 put up countless controversial posters in various campus buildings last week reflecting her conservative ideals. Several of them, however, were defaced and even taken down and replaced with parodies of Charette’s original posters.

Especially noticeable in Sharples, some of Charette’s posters portrayed a fractured picture of Obama’s face, declaring statements such as, “Epic Fail” and “After only one year, we are poorer, weaker, less respected, and less free.” Another poster declared, “It’s the economy, stupid,” over a picture of Ronald Reagan.

Also immediately after they were put up, Charette’s posters sparked a wide response from the student body. “Everyone was pretty much … shocked to see that kind of rhetoric used at Swarthmore,” Andy Forrest ’12, member of Students for a Democratic Society, said.

Unidentified sources have been putting satirical sticky notes on the posters saying “down with the fascist government” and “down with bureaucracy.”

Charette has also noticed that all of the anti-Obama are missing and that several other mock-ups have been posted around campus, calling YAF “our local branch of the number one conservative group in the United States.”

“If 50 percent of the American public doesn’t like Obama’s policies, it shouldn’t be World War III if one Swarthmore student criticizes the president,” Charette said in defense of her anti-Obama posters.

Dan Symonds ’11 admits that he has been putting up counter posters of his own, but made sure to leave Charette’s posters alone. “I wrote some quick comebacks in the hopes of satirizing YAF’s ideological kin, using the same level of emotionalism and superficiality that the ‘Obama epic fail’ sky-is-falling flyers did,” he said in an e-mail.

For both Forrest and Symonds, most of the controversy lies in the inflammatory language in Charette’s posters.

“I don’t necessarily have a problem with posting controversial views, but when you start saying things like ‘Obama’s a failure because he’s an embarrassment,’ it doesn’t really make much sense to me,” Forrest said.

Charette’s intentions, though, were not to anger.

“I was frustrated that we were just having a one-sided dialogue about certain things and I thought, ‘Well, I can’t really get frustrated if I don’t come back from the other side,’” Charette said.

Thus to enhance dialogue, Charette formed a new conservative group, YAF, that would work with the national YAF — an organization specialized in helping students promote conservatism at their schools — to bring conservative lecturers to campus. The posters were just a way to publicize the group.

Currently in the process of being chartered by Student Council, YAF already has a cohort of about six students who are interested in joining.

Natalie Litton ’12, president of the College Democrats, finds the formation of such a conservative group healthy for Swarthmore. “I think it’s great,” she said. “I think that every student on this campus has a right to form a group to build to the conversation.”

What’s interesting for Charette and most conservative Swarthmore students is that in the real world the posters would be considered moderate. “I’m from D.C. and to be honest, most of those posters were very, very tame compared to actually offensive posters,” said Peter Ballen ’14, who identifies himself as conservative.

Charette figured that since the Swarthmore community is primarily left-leaning, students would be offended by her posters, but she did not anticipate such a passive-aggressive response from the student body. Despite the fact that she provided her contact information on all posters, only a few students have personally e-mailed Charette asking her to defend her views.

“I don’t think there was a lot of thought behind the original removal of the posters, because they … didn’t ask to hear our argument,” she said. “No one contacted us … they just assumed they knew what we were all about.”

Litton claims that the College Democrats are not behind any of these counterattacks. Though she may find fault in Charette’s posters, Litton said, the expression of ideas at Swarthmore should not be suppressed.

“I don’t agree with the ideology, but that has nothing to do with the right to gather, to post their ideas or to look for others who are similar minded,” Litton said. “I think that people should not be taking these posters down; they should not be writing on them; they should not be parodying them.”

But in putting up his posters, Symonds had no intention of disrespecting Charette’s right to express her ideas. “I regret that my initial postering retort seems to have been interpreted as a personal attack against Danielle, when I meant only to lampoon the incendiary bluster of the posters themselves,” he said in an e-mail.

Forrest also claims that SDS as a group is not involved with any of the counter posters and stands behind Symonds’ conviction that he did not remove any of Charette’s posters.

“I definitely know that [Symonds] didn’t take any down. He made sure that the other posters were still visible,” Forrest said.

The taking down of Charette’s posters also sparked Kenneson Chen ’14 to put up posters with a photo of Reagan as a hero and two shirtless men kissing with the text, “What do you think? It doesn’t matter. If you take this down … it’s censorship.”

All of these responses show that Charette’s posters have done more than just bring a conservative voice to campus. They have sparked many discussions about the importance of the freedom of speech and tolerance, especially at Swarthmore where the diversity of ideas is highly respected.

“If we really value diversity, we should value someone who comes forth, has a different opinion and be willing to listen to that and tolerate that,” Charette said.

Ballen, who is considering joining YAF, agrees. “If you want to put up a poster that says, you know, ‘Obama is a socialist’ or ‘Republicans are fascists’ or ‘Reagan and Bush are war criminals’ or whatever you feel like, that’s your right.”

For Charette, these counter posters will not stop her from continuing with the formation of her new conservative group.

If anything, she’s found amusement in catching people’s reactions as they passed by her posters last week. “It is funny to watch people casually walk into Sharples and then their heads kind of turn,” she said.

But Charette does plan on reconsidering her advertising tactics for YAF. Based on the response she has already garnered, she probably will not put up any more anti-Obama posters. “If we do advertise,” she said, “we’re going to need to be much more moderate.”

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