"Now Internet users worldwide can engage in the kind of free expression inspired by the City of Charlottesville's proposed community chalkboard. A new Web site, chalkboard.tjcenter.org, has been sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression to promote free speech online.

The Thomas Jefferson Center, whose free speech chalkboard for the Downtown Mall was approved by the City Council last March, created a virtual version of the board. Internet users will be able to anonymously post, read and edit their own and others' comments on any subject in the open online forum.

Though completion of the physical board is not expected until summer 2003, the online version is officially up and running today. The site will function like the actual board which will be located on the Downtown Mall. Both forums will serve as platforms of free expression, said J. Joshua Wheeler, the associate director of the Thomas Jefferson Center. "The physical chalkboard will be for the community of Charlottesville, but the virtual chalkboard is for the community of the World Wide Web," Wheeler said.

He said the board is "serving a positive function in that it forces people to examine their views on how free speech operates in their society."

The Web site's format is similar in appearance to other online chat sites, but is completely anonymous and allows users to edit or erase other postings. The structure of the virtual chalkboard is unlike any other on the Web, said site architect Waldo Jaquith, a designer with the local company Munk & Phyber, Inc. A free speech advocate and a candidate in the upcoming City Council election, Jaquith said, "The chalkboard will show the greater community, if not the world, the kind of willing-to-experiment, progressive, open city we live in."

The innovative characteristics of the chalkboard, however, are causing controversy among citizens who are in favor of the actual board but are wary of the online version.

Mayor Blake Caravati [also a candidate in the upcoming city council race] called the online chalkboard a "valid test" of the real board, but stressed that a fundamental difference in personal accountability between the two projects. Whereas a contributor would have to appear publicly to write on the actual chalkboard, online users can speak their minds and edit other's statements without entering the public realm. "There's no accountability, and that doesn't fit my opinion of freedom of speech," Caravati said.

George Loper, a local citizen and financial supporter of the virtual chalkboard, contends that the anonymity of the site is a useful way to hear voices that would otherwise be intimidated to express their views publicly. "Some things aren't going to be said publicly if they can't be said anonymously," Loper said." (Laura Schmoyer, Cavalier Daily Staff Writer, The Cavalier Daily, January 21, 2002).