For Hosea Harvey '95, the defining moment of his Dartmouth career came late in his freshman year.
On May 6, 1992, more than 500 members of the College community gathered on the Green to display outrage at the verdict in the Rodney King trial and the subsequent riots in Los Angeles. Many students harshly criticized the College's administration for turning a blind eye toward racism.
"That was a defining point for me because I had to figure out, as I think a lot of black freshmen did, how I was going to deal with the issue of being part of the Dartmouth community and being part of the black community," Harvey said.
He said while he worked alongside leaders from other ethnic groups, there was a lot of anger and "the issues weren't being addressed across communities, only within each community and no one was understanding each other."
Harvey said he ended freshman year "totally confused" because of the tensions on campus and resolved to return in the fall with the goal of making Dartmouth better, especially for groups that were having a difficult College experience.
Since his freshman year to the last days of his senior spring, Harvey said he has worked tirelessly to ensure every student a chance for an enriching Dartmouth experience.
Harvey said he tried to do "anything to increase the level of interaction, awareness and communication among students so that they would feel that they were a part of Dartmouth because clearly, my freshman spring, a lot of students didn't."
During his sophomore year, Harvey embarked on a flurry of activities to accomplish his goal. He served on five College committees, worked as the chair of the Student Assembly project committee and became involved in the Afro-American Society, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the Collis Governing Board.
Two years later, Harvey is one of the most high-profile students on campus. He is the senior class vice president, intern to the President's Office and chair of the Student Assembly External Review Committee.
Harvey said he was driven to all this activism on campus because, "I never really found a place at Dartmouth where I felt I really belonged."
"I think that a lot of Dartmouth students spend a long time searching for an identity here ... and recognizing my own trouble, I wanted to do whatever I could to try to help other students have that place," he said.
Hailing from an ethnically-mixed neighborhood and preparatory school in Chicago, he said he was sheltered from much of the awareness and maturity that he has gained over his four years at the College.
Harvey said during the early part of his freshman year his priorities were "fitting in and having fun" -- namely attending fraternity parties and football games and trying to have a stereotypical Dartmouth experience.
He said the process of his growth began later during his freshman year when he realized and began to take advantage of the opportunities a Dartmouth education has to offer.
People who helped spark a more mature perspective of gender relations included senior women in the black community, then- Assembly President Tara McBennett '92 and then Dartmouth Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Organization co-Chair Denny Lee '92.
"Coming from Chicago, there is definitely a different sort of mindset about relationships, what's the norm and what's acceptable and what sort of discourse you have," Harvey said. "Coming here, it shocked me in some ways."
Political events during his first few years at the College, such as the New Hampshire primaries, visits from prominent speakers and the reaction to the King verdict, brought larger and more substantive issues to campus and to his consciousness.
"I think then I finally began to shake off being at the center of my own world and began to really focus on trying to understand other people much more than myself," he said.
But Harvey's quest reached a stumbling block sophomore spring after he lost the election for Assembly vice president to Steve Costalas '94. That year's races focused on the future of the Greek system in the aftermath of the call by then-Assembly President Andrew Beebe '93 to make the system coeducational.
Afterwards, he continued his mission junior year as vice president of the Green Key Society, winning the election as Class of 1995 vice president and becoming a member of Fire and Skoal senior society and Palaeopitus, a group that advises the administration about student concerns.
Next fall Harvey will enter a Ph.D. program at Stanford University and will continue his education at Stanford Law School in the fall of 1997 with the hope of becoming a law professor.
Reflecting on his four years at the College, Harvey said he hopes that students who have genuine concerns are not afraid to express them to their peers and that people who are uninformed about certain issues take the time to learn more about them.
While Dartmouth's strengths lie in its unity, passion, loyalty and the boundless opportunities it offers its students, the College must realize it can no longer afford to be the traditional school it once was and must now focus on how to improve the experiences of all students, especially minorities, Harvey said.
He said, while Dartmouth is not free of social problems, he has been "extremely satisfied" with his Dartmouth experience because no other school offers students as great an opportunity to make a contribution and work toward changing those problems.
Recently, articles in The Dartmouth Review, an off-campus conservative weekly, alleged that Harvey committed sexual improprieties before he enrolled at the College.
"The Review incident really challenged me to decide whether or not I was going to be accountable to a bunch of liars or to my friends and the College community," he said.
He said he has received much support from students and that the Review printed false and unsubstantiated information to create turmoil on campus.
While Harvey said he does not feel people are out to get him, he said, "One price you pay for being active at Dartmouth is that, for your political affiliations or for your views on issues, somewhere you will develop a less than stellar following."
