Friday's protest/rally/speak-in/speak-out culminated in Collis Commonground with administrators and Trustees assuring us that we had their support. That our values are their values. That their priorities are our priorities. That versa vice, vice versa.
But after this event had settled in our hearts with a warm fuzzy glow, we were not satisfied, but tired, tired because what failed to happen was what we were looking for behind all of our proposals -- an adequate investigation into why so many students still find it so hard to believe them. This reason was one of the many motivations for spending countless hours organizing such an event in the first place, and it is also an explanation for why students sat in the Rockefeller Center chanting "hell no status quo." What is it that leaves many of us unconvinced, and what draws close to 60 students to the hallway outside of the Trustees meeting when they should be sitting in their 10s?
Our frustrations -- while at times difficult to articulate -- are based on the very real facts of our lives, in our skepticism about whether or not the administration really does prioritize, and if things will change in any way, ever, and most importantly, to finding out who is truly dedicated to that change and who is not.
Perhaps we are impatient. But how can we not be? Impatience does not necessitate idealism on our part, and it is the history of this college -- its aggregate history as well as our own personal histories here -- that necessitates impatience, if we are to have any faith in the shifting of privileges and priorities on this campus.
It is perhaps sad that so many students must spend so much valuable time finding different ways to pressure this "administration" (a word that we've been throwing around quite casually -- someone would do everyone a great service to define it) into taking the necessary steps to improve academic, social, residential, and intellectual life on this campus. It is a foreboding sign that a grand "Initiative," the size and girth of which, at the time it was announced, could have taken over New England -- fizzled out into an initiative for beds, after which we all did a simultaneous forehead-slapping as we realized that nothing much could be done about anything, short of erecting more buildings with more beds, and some more committees to figure out these perplexing, plaguing problems. Oi. And one wonders why our blue-balled and blue-clitorised students are storming Parkhurst?
And so, it's time to start asking the larger questions, not to write us off as students complaining about the same thing year after year. Let's ask why, year after year, students still feel the need for the same things. Let's find out what pushed student after student to speak out at the microphone Friday morning?
In Collis Commonground, after the day's events, Chairman of the Board of Trustees William H. King Jr. '63 spoke of mortar and bricks, alluding to the fact that some of our demands just will not be seen in our time. Perhaps he is right -- this fact is just something we need to accept and get over already. The first aspect of this is rather indicative of student frustration right now. Imagine if one of the many off-campus houses Dartmouth has recently incorporated into its kingdom was handed over to a group of community members who want to come together and turn it into a Women's Resource Center. Imagine if Dartmouth set out to convince the fraternity Phi Delta Alpha that it should sell its property so that we could put a Gender Studies/Women's Resource Center in its place, right in the middle of frat row (with a residential component, if you're worried about beds). And why should it not be able to sit there? And if all of these ideas are so "unrealistic," then we need to discuss what is realistic while still being effective and bold. If we accept the bricks and mortar philosophy as a truth, then we need to sit down and ask what short term things can help the situation. Poison Ivy certainly won't, and that little club is quite possibly the biggest change most of us have seen since the release of the gargantuan Student Life Initiative (SLI).
Part of what we're talking about is leadership. Look at the response to the Psi Upsilon incident (forget about what happened or what should have happened). It was supposedly a big deal in our close-knit academic community to see what the students would do, and, weeks later, what the disciplinary committee would do. I was off-campus, and I received two campus-wide blitzes about snow. There was no campus-wide blitz from an administrator about the Psi U incident saying how the incident affects our diverse "community." I'm not expecting any grand pronouncement or a finger-wag and "Greeks R Bad" reprimand directed at the house. I am just noting the complete lack of acknowledgment and discussion, especially at a time when we truly need a restating of the purposes and programs of the College, as many students are doubtful about this school's mission. We needed some kind of comment to lead us through the hurt and past tensions and confusion that this incident reminded us of. Dean of the College Larimore's letter was a step in the right direction, but it occurred weeks after the fact and was buried in his welcome back greeting.
It's this kind of support that students are in some ways looking for, besides the many suggestions provided in our proposals both on Friday and during the entire SLI process. But connections are rarely made, and it would be a shame if our actions on Friday were misunderstood as a whiney attempt to get a new Korean Language Studies program or more information on college investments -- those are merely the specifics, the parts, not the whole. The real point is that too many students are fed-up and flailing, tired of accepting rote diplomacy on these matters. I had a student tell me on Friday afternoon that it was one of her best days at Dartmouth; and, in some sort of strange coded language, I understand what she meant, that she truly felt supported by her fellow students, by friends, and folks she'd never seen before; that what was expressed at the microphone was so integral to her daily life as a Dartmouth student that having it acknowledged in the center of campus for every tour of '06s and every passerby was a relief; that finding so many people who know how it's possible to feel these things at an institution which we worked our asses off to get into; at an institution that often uses us, our interests, our ethnicities, and our entire backgrounds as selling points; that we could be the ones most caught between our love for Dartmouth and our continual aggravations; that we had, for a few hours, created a kind of intellectual community -- all different people, some we knew, some we didn't, feeling passionate, feeling excited, understanding each other, supporting each other, even laughing a bit; that we had carved out a space -- on the steps of Parkhurst--where we all mixed comfortably, spoke out and expressed things that are perpetually wedged in our throats. We had created, complete with amplification, humor, respect, pain, honesty, organization, the ever-exalted "dialogue." By using boldness rather than discretion, we moved forward in a way that we know the administration must approve of; our hope now is that they begin to mimic our actions.
