If you’ve walked across the UAB Campus Green lately as we all often do, you have no doubt noticed the large amount of sidewalk chalking that is present. I noticed it the other day as I was giving my weekly TrailBlazer tour – the tour noticed too. I was trying to give my “Who Is Vulcan?” spill and everyone in my tour had their faces down looking around at the ground. Great.

It appears than an epic battle, a battle which has been waged since the beginning of time, is taking place in the form of pastel colored sidewalk chalk. Since my tour was taking note of all the interesting hieroglyphics, I decided to take the time to check them out too. When I looked around some I noticed that there were bible verses, philosophic quotes, curse words, and a large array of phallic symbols scribbled all over the middle of our wonderful campus Green. I even think I saw a fibonacci sequence in there somewhere. I think it’s kind of funny that this type of thing is happening. It’s like a real life Facebook wall. I feel like the students responsible for all the chalking should show up on the campus green on Midnight of the last day of classes and have a massive water balloon fight. This could help quell a lot of the underlying tension.

So, I got curious I did a little bit of research and I think I have found out who is responsible for the majority of the chalking. Turns out that there was a debate recently on campus hosted by both Campus Crusade for Christ, better known on our campus as UAB Life 180, as well as the UAB Free Though Society. The debate was titled “Does God Exist?” and took place last Wednesday 4/21 at the Chemistry building (oops, maybe I should have announced this). The debate featured Dr. Robert Collins, who is apparently and atheist author, as well as James Drake who is the director of UAB Life 180 (I guarantee if you saw James Drake you would know who he is, the dude with the beard, you know the guy). Anyways, I can only imagine the interesting exchange of comments at this debate. If the chalk on the green is any indicator, no matter which side you’re pulling for, you would of had a good, or should I say, exciting, time.

So, back to the chalk. Today I was on Twitter and I saw a tweet from the UAB Free Thought people. Then I realized that it was raining outside and we all know what rain means for chalk! In jest, I sent them this tweet stating that God must have washed away their evil messages, to which they replied with this tweet. I thought it was pretty funny and that they were good sports.

So, finally, I would like to declare this chalky exchange the “UAB Chalk Wars” and I would like everyone to refer to it as such from now on. Make sure to check The Green on a daily basis for all the latest happenings of the UAB Chalk War. That is all. Oh wait, that is not all! I just found some videos from the debate!

It appears that they interviewed some people from both sides of the tracks:

The Christian view: (whoever edited the video could have chilled out with the music, you can’t hear the second dude talk!)

And, here’s an Atheist’s view of the debate:

Wow, from the sound of the background noise in the videos, it appears there were A LOT of people at this debate. Good stuff. Also I noticed that both sides of the debate think they got the short end of the stick during the actual debate. Classic.

Please, draw your own conclusions and tell me about it in the comments! Peace.

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