Carlene Coombs

For the third year in a row, students and community members gathered this week to create vibrant chalk art portraying messages of love and kindness in hopes of supporting LGBTQ+ students at Brigham Young University.

The event is called “Chalk the Walk” and is organized by the Cougar Pride Center, a student-run LGBTQ+ resource center for students at BYU.

Each evening this week, students and community members have been joining together to write encouraging thoughts, draw pride flags and even doodle dragons and ducks.

The purpose of the event, according to Cougar Pride Center President Macey Gwynn, is to make students who attend and those who just walk by feel “loved and supported.”

Liz Nava, a BYU student, said she attended Friday evening because she wanted to help other queer students know they have a community.

Carlene Coombs

“I think a lot of people just think that there are not a lot of queer-representing people at BYU or in Provo,” she said. “So something like this can help them … understand that they’re not alone and that they’re loved and cared about.”

As the group gathered Friday evening, sketching and socializing on the sidewalk adjacent to the BYU Botany Pond, those walking by paused to view the drawings and messages, with some picking up chalk to add their own.

In the past, the group has experienced their chalk art being washed away, and this year was no exception.

On Thursday, Gwynn said she returned to the public sidewalk they had been using to find the chalk had all been brushed away, with some looking like it had been washed off. She immediately took to Instagram, calling supporters to return and recreate their hard work.

“The result of that was just this awesome and beautiful turnout and expression of queer love that was just so inspiring and so beautiful and really just made my entire year,” Gwynn said. By Thursday night, they had colored as much sidewalk as they had in the previous two days, she said.

Carlene Coombs

While the pride center still doesn’t know who brushed away the chalk, Gwynn confirmed it wasn’t done by BYU or Provo city officials.

Chalk the Walk first began in 2021 with a group of LGBTQ+ students, allies and community members drawing on the sidewalk near the Karl Maeser building on campus. The drawings began after a controversial talk at BYU by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint Apostle Jeffery R. Holland, who used a metaphor about “musket fire” being needed to defend the church and the doctrine of family and heterosexual marriage.

That year, the chalk was washed off the sidewalk every night by BYU officials because the sidewalk was on private campus property, said David Shill, a board member for the Cougar Pride Center. Since then, and including this year, they have only used public sidewalks.

Also that first year, a BYU student was filmed washing away the chalk art and using homophobic slurs, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Cougar Pride Center took on organizing Chalk the Walk last year and has continued the tradition this year.

Nan Osborne volunteers at Encircle and hosts a weekly meeting for parents of queer children, where she said she sees many parents worried about bullying at schools. She said as a mother of a queer daughter, it’s hard to see LGBTQ+ students being bullied and judged at school.

“I want all the kids who come here who are queer to know that they’ve got a team of support that they can walk this whole block and say, ‘Every person who was drawing is supportive of me,'” she said. “And maybe that will help just a little bit.”