Asa graduating senior, there are far more important ways to concentrate on enjoying senior spring. Sitting on the senior fence sure would be nice. Instead, I'm writing to put The Dartmouth Review's history into a larger and broader perspective.
The Review has a history laden with controversy. During my freshman year, it published a scathing response to the Rodney King activities at Dartmouth. The cover featured two-dozen protesting minority students. The headline read: "L.A. Comes to Hanover: College Green Looted by the Usual Suspects." Inside the issue, the writers denounced the week's events.Thereafter, I worked on a campaign to fight back against The Review. We wrote editorials in The Dartmouth, did research in Baker Library and sent numerous blitzes. We printed "Please Do Not Deliver The Dartmouth Review here" stickers that are still prominently posted in various College buildings.
The end result of these experiences was the hatchet job that I received in The Review two weeks ago. However, it pales in comparison to the attacks on other students, administrators, and faculty that have been written since 1980. Our community should know this tradition that I have been made part of.
A year before my arrival here, Dartmouth's Board of Trustees wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal illustrating the Review's recent past. Board Chair George Munroe '43 wrote: "The Review's infamous history should be well-known. It hosted a champagne-and lobster feast the day an Oxfam fast drew attention to world hunger; published an article titled 'Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro,' implying black students were illiterate; had members who sledgehammered, in the night, symbolic anti-apartheid shanties on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday; cartooned Dartmouth President James Freedman, who is Jewish, with Nazi uniform and Hitler mustache on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht;" (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22, 1990).
Once a year since my matriculation, The Review has singled out students for public ridicule. To attack the Student Assembly Vice-President (a heterosexual Review opponent) during my sophomore year, they named him "Carnival Queen" and placed his face over a woman's figure. During my junior year, the cover featured an objectionable cartoon of two black students with thick "jheri-curl" hair and hip-hop clothing. The feature article noted: "minority students [at Dartmouth] ... do not achieve as high as whites."
Putting these past events in perspective of more recent happenings, some Dartmouth students want to believe that the administration engages in a cover-up to protect the reputations of its "student leaders." Not so. Most of the 400 faculty members and members of the college community shun The Review. Most administrators have never and will never interview with the Review. Since 1980, numerous professors, including Hoyt Alverson, William Cook, Roger Masters and Marysa Navarro, have spoken against its controversial legacy.
The College is not a police state, and we should not expect our administrators to start prowling around garbage cans searching for evidence because The Review tells them to. Why should we expect deans to pick up where their tabloid left off? Who are the "sources" and where is any evidence? Do we really want the deans to interview our neighbors and high school teachers to "discover" our "sordid" pasts -- especially when they may not even exist? In last week's issue, The Review freely and conveniently changed some stories from "stalking" or "harassment" to "sexual assault" -- a dangerous label that they do not even explain. It's this kind of irresponsible journalism that undermines the important issues that last week's events raised. They mock the pain of the Dartmouth women who have stepped forward to address stories that have truth behind them.
Dartmouth students deserve to know the whole truth -- from the only source that's on record. It's true that I went to Brown Summer Academy -- although The Review even got the year wrong. They neglected to mention my failing grades, and they conveniently forgot that my grandfather died the weekend that I decided to leave the program. Review writers weren't offering me sympathy at his funeral.
What The Review didn't show was the reality; I simply couldn't handle the overall climate at Brown. I lacked the maturity, money and mentality to survive. From a nationwide pool, I was the only African-American male to join the other 200 students. My views did not meet with universal acceptance, and I wasn't quiet about disagreeing with people in an immature manner. I freely quoted profane comedy and rap music, and some students did not appreciate it. Upon reflection, they were right. My views on male-female relations were trapped in a construct that I had yet to break out of.
My summer at Brown was not an ideal experience. But, I must confess that I am not the same student in 1995 that I was in 1990. My experiences here have made me aware of the difficult dynamics of gender, race and class relations and the way that our personal backgrounds affect our ability to change or alter our "high school" forms of behavior. Brown and my last year of high school taught me that I had more to learn about relationships, about the growing importance of "difference" and finally about success in academics. I no longer support entertainment that promotes the degradation of women; I often attend lectures by outside speakers; and I attempt to perform in the classroom to the best of my ability. I will be forever grateful to Dartmouth for the growth that I've had and the experiences that have made me a better person.
The Review's "cover-up" theory is a fantasy. How was a student's admission pulled at Princeton (in August) after the student had turned down Princeton in April? Why would the Editor of The Dartmouth and scores of Dartmouth administrators and students keep a potentially devastating story secret and coerce students into making bizarre deals? Why won't anyone go on the record? The answers are simple, and much less newsworthy.
The truth is, academic failure, death and a few personal conflicts are not sensational, and they don't make you read a dying off-campus weekly. The Review has divided our campus for 15 years now, largely along the fault lines of race, sexuality, gender or religion. When we give credence to their attacks, we only give them credibility. You rightly ask, "How can they get away with printing lies?" My answer is simple: They won't, if we don't let them.We do agree on one thing, however. A former Review editor wrote, "Half-truths, denials, and outright lies just do not seem the best way to build trust" (Sept. 7, 1992). Well said -- and poorly heeded.
