Beilock: College President Apologizes for Community Harm
Dear Dartmouth students:
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Dear Dartmouth students:
Back in November, shortly after College President Sian Leah Beilock’s first round of arrests of two peaceful student protesters, I wrote a piece elaborating on the case for divestment and the arguments behind it. At the time, I was in Hanover.
We, alumni of the College, were horrified to see our alma mater on the front page of the Washington Post today — not because of its careful teaching or tolerant educational environment, but because a 65-year-old professor was violently thrown to the ground by New Hampshire State Police. Her crime? Trying to protect peaceful student protesters from police officers in riot gear. In horror, we learned that — as they chanted, “There’s no riot here/Why are you in riot gear?” — students were arrested en masse with disproportionate force. In even greater horror, we learned that student journalists were arrested while covering the events.
Following the arrests of 90 people during protests on campus Wednesday night, College President Sian Leah Beilock sent an email to the Dartmouth community. In it, she wrote that “the Board has a clearly articulated process for considering [divestment], which was explained to student protesters.” However, a close examination reveals that this process, the criteria underlying divestment decision making and the committee overseeing it are far from clear or accountable. The goal of the “clearly articulated process” actually seems to be an attempt to mire divestment discussions in administrative lingo and to provide administrators with a talking point for their lack of action and accountability to the Dartmouth community. In order to make divestment possible, Dartmouth must change the criteria, governance and process by which it evaluates divestment proposals.
Four years ago, as I prepared to graduate high school, I — like many other members of the Class of 2024 — sat stuck at home on online Zoom school. I frankly do not remember those classes much because, as a native Minnesotan, I spent most of the time glued to my phone, watching video after video of police violence brought upon Minneapolis. These were places where I had childhood memories, neighborhoods where my relatives lived and communities full of people I cared deeply about. I was paralyzed, outraged and could not look away.
Last fall, I wrote an op-ed about the actions College President Sian Leah Beilock took against student protesters on Parkhurst Lawn. I argued that the situation had escalated to an unnecessary extent and that the College’s reasoning behind its arrest of two students set a dangerous precedent for free speech on campus.
It should come as no surprise that many people reacted with horror to the stories of students who have been arrested, beaten and tear-gassed on university campuses around the country for protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, the images of armed riot cops stationed on campuses around the country seem more reminiscent of scenes from war than of the modern university. State violence on college campuses is not without precedent. From the Tlatelolco killings of Mexican students calling for political change in 1968, to the slaughter of pro-democracy students in the Athens Polytechnic uprising of 1973, to the United States’ Kent State massacre of students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia in 1970, we have seen that, when pushed, governments are unafraid to open fire on their own citizens.
The Dartmouth Climate Collaborative — announced on April 22 — signifies a major step forward in the College’s response to climate change. The College has committed to investing more than $500 million into reducing carbon emissions, while also kickstarting other projects to reduce emissions and raise awareness about climate change. This policy change exists because of the hard work of organizations like the Sustainability Office and because students have never stopped demanding more from Dartmouth. As such — while we should celebrate the achievements of this plan — we must continue to push for more. Although College President Sian Leah Beilock proclaims that “the time for bold action is now,” the truth is that Dartmouth’s climate response is not nearly bold enough, failing to prioritize climate and environmental justice.
As yet another admissions cycle wraps up, students across the country and world are making big decisions about their futures. Some will enter immediately into the workforce, while others will be drawn to professional training through trade schools or military service. For the majority of Americans, however, high school graduation signals the start of additional schooling at a college or university. It is concerning that a contingent of those students will have their plans derailed not by grades or test scores, but by ballooning tuition costs.
I applaud College President Sian Leah Beilock for securing tennis legend Roger Federer as the commencement speaker for the Class of 2024’s graduation on June 9. The announcement has been rightly met with a great deal of excitement not only from the student body and the greater Dartmouth community, but also from many unconnected to Dartmouth — in the Upper Valley and beyond. Federer’s visit to Hanover is sure to draw a great crowd.
I’d like to play a quick game. I’m going to give you four satirical headlines, and you tell me which ones were pulled from The Onion and which were generated by artificial intelligence.
It is not often that one has the opportunity to interview the first woman Chief Justice of Canada’s Supreme Court, the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin. One of the most revolutionary justices in Canadian history, McLachlin is Canada’s longest serving Chief Justice ever, holding the post from 2000 to 2017. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview her on the subject of improving gender equality in the legal profession.
When I told a few friends I was planning on attending former Québec premier Jean Charest’s talk on conservative environmentalism at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, I was met with laughter and scoffs. At first, they thought I was joking, but their amusement turned to confusion once they realized I was serious. I view Dartmouth as an overall left-leaning campus, and my friends and I generally fit this category; their aversion to a conservative-leaning lecture made sense. Nevertheless, environmental conservation is decidedly a bipartisan agenda item. Political affiliation shouldn’t complicate what is quite literally a life-or-death situation, and only once we reconcile our opposing ideologies and recognize the value in each side’s approach can we begin to develop an effective solution to climate change.
Dartmouth recently made headlines as the first Ivy League institution to reintroduce the standardized testing requirement in the admissions process, after three years of test-optional admissions. The College initially introduced its test-optional policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many students were unable to take standardized tests as a result of quarantine policy. The controversial decision to reinstate the testing requirement stemmed from an internal study conducted by a quartet of Dartmouth economists — Professors Elizabeth Cascio, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger and Michael Tine. Their findings were published in a report addressed to College President Sian Leah Beilock and vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid Lee Coffin on Jan. 30, according to previous reporting by The Dartmouth.
The world seems, broadly speaking, pretty bleak at the moment. The looming threat of climate change continues to be a massive, ineffectively addressed problem, authoritarian regimes continue to suppress citizens and there’s an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Problems persist at home, where we see continued concerns over gun violence, persistent income inequality and legislation that punishes queer people for existing. For the average Dartmouth student, this reality is not only terrifying, but also exhausting. When met with such seemingly insurmountable pain and strife, many people’s natural instinct is to throw their hands up in defeat. But that reaction is wrong.
In Egyptian Arabic, the word for bread is pronounced “aeesh.” This word is the same as the standard Arabic word for life. Bread is found on every table for every meal in Egyptian households. It is sustenance, the reason for life in Egypt. Egyptians consume more than twice the amount of bread per person than to the global average. Bread prices, therefore, are an insightful indicator of the living standards of Egyptians at a given moment.
One of the most impactful moments in my first year at Dartmouth was former Rep. Liz Cheney’s “An Oath to Defend Democracy” event, hosted on June 5 and sponsored by the Dartmouth Political Union, the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Dickey Center for International Understanding. Even before Rep. Cheney took the floor, I was struck and confused by a moment between her and Rep. Annie Kuster ’78, who also attended the event — the two representatives embraced each other as true friends, despite opposing political ideals.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe argued during the Virginia gubernatorial debate in October 2021. It was this line that likely cost McAuliffe the election. The Republican candidate Glen Youngkin seized on McAuliffe’s words, launching a series of attack ads aimed at mobilizing angry parents. Following the debate and subsequent ads, new polling showed Youngkin leading by 17 points among parents of K-12 children — a demographic that was crucial to his election win. The 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election provides evidence that parents feel strongly about the importance of their role in deciding how their children are educated.
Conservatism is dead in the national Republican Party. For the casual follower of politics, the near clean sweep of state and territorial contests by former President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries should put to rest any confusion about this statement. Although more classical conservative elements of the GOP put up a modest fight vis-a-vis former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and, to a far lesser extent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s challengers had no practical chance of success. With Lara Trump’s election as Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee and the rise of a sizable pro-Trump faction in Congress, Trump has asserted near total control over the Republican machine in a matter of only eight years.
It has been 740 days since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The attack was a global shock: nobody could fathom that in the 21st century, we would regress to colonialist regimes waging a territorial war. This detestable action should not be tolerated by any country, as we cannot allow a new precedent of larger countries violating the sovereignty of smaller ones.