Despite the often-cited sentiment that Dartmouth students are apathetic, last week's protest constitutes only a small part of the College's scattered albeit strong tradition of campus activism.
Issues ranging from Vietnam to South Africa and Greeks to gays have incited student passions over the past 30 years.
In May of 1969 angry students stormed Parkhurst Hall to demand the eradication of the campus ROTC program in the wake of the Vietnam War.
A crowd of nearly 100 protestors, including some professors, seized the building, forcing deans and then-College President John Sloane Dickey to cut their workdays short.
Despite a court-injunction, the mob remained inside Parkhurst until nearly 4:00 a.m. that morning, when then-Grafton County Sheriff Herbert W. Ash ordered the police to break down the doors. The protestors were sentenced to 30 days in jail, and leader of the siege David Green '71 was expelled from the College.
Although Green continues to stand by his decision to protest and supports continuing student activism at the College, he expressed some regrets in an interview with The Dartmouth two years ago.
"We were right but we were arrogant about it. We were intolerant and extreme and saw every thing in black and white."
More than a decade later, in 1985, students who objected to Dartmouth's investments in South African businesses constructed a shanty town on the Green to protest the nation's rigid social practice of Apartheid.
In January of '86, on the first anniversary of the national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 12 students armed with sledgehammers, many of them members of The Dartmouth Review, attacked the shacks in what they referred to as an effort to "beautify the Green before Winter Carnival."
Over 250 members of the Dartmouth community including students, faculty and administrators gathered on the Green as well as outside Parkhurst Hall to rally in protest of racism and oppression at the College.
Rajiv Menon '86 said at the time of the event that the destruction of the shanties was "more than simply an attack on those of us fighting for divestment." Menon viewed the event as "an attack on Martin Luther King" and his memory.
Despite the vandalism, the protestors insisted that the shanties remain standing in their destructed state.
"Leaving [the shanties] forces peopled to confront this intolerance and ... aggression," protester Will Horter explained in 1986.
Eventually, the College responded favorably to the students' sentiment. At the time, South African holdings constituted 15.3 percent of the College's $414 million endowment. After the incident, the Board of Trustees began to work toward reallocating investment funds. By 1989, they had divested completely.
In more recent memory, nearly 1000 students marched to President of the College James Wright's residential lawn after the Trustee's public vow to end the Greek system "as we know it" just before the 1999 Winter Carnival.
The opening ceremonies were icy in tone as well as in temperature; students clad in Greek letters and T-shirts proclaiming "unaffiliated, but I support the Greeks" threw punches in the air as they sung the "lest the old traditions fail" line of the alma mater.
Dartmouth has even seen some activism in the past year.
Last May, over 100 members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered and heterosexual ally community turned out to protest the controversial speech of Yvette Schneider, a self-described "former lesbian," who detailed her metamorphosis from homosexuality to Christianity.
After last year's announcement of a possible fall housing crunch, disgruntled '03's gathered on the Parkhurst lawn and signed an online petition demanding that the College guarantee housing to all students.
