Dartmouth administrators didn't make a public statement when they learned that a sign instructing worshippers to remove their shoes before entering Rollins Chapel's Muslim prayer room had disappeared the day after the terrorist attacks.
The sign removal -- which could have been done in retaliation or in preparation for a non-Muslim event in the same space -- bothered some Muslim students, but administrators brushed over the incident.
There was no sure way of determining whether the sign's disappearance was "an act of violence" against Muslims, said Stuart Lord, dean of the Tucker Foundation, who handled the incident internally.
Lord added that the Tucker Foundation, which is responsible for the upkeep of Rollins Chapel, saw the sign's disappearance as a good opportunity to replace the old paper reminder with a permanent sign.
The fact that reports of discrimination at Dartmouth in the wake of the terrorist attacks have been limited to an ambiguous disappearance of a piece of paper seems to be a positive indication of Dartmouth's levels of tolerance.
Cooperation makes it happen
According to campus religious leaders and advisers, the relative tolerance among members of the Dartmouth community throughout Fall term this year has been helped along by a concerted effort on the part of the religious community.
Al-Nur, Dartmouth's Muslim organization, has been working to educate both the Dartmouth and Upper Valley communities about Islam, especially by sharing their personal reactions to the events of Sept. 11.
At a Rockefeller Center forum earlier this month, Amin Plaisted, the faculty adviser to Al-Nur, the campus' Muslim organization, said teaching "two hundred and some odd million Americans the difference between Islam as I practice it and what happened on September 11th" seemed overwhelming.
However, he said he has been encouraged by the genuine interest within the Dartmouth community to learn more about the religion and its traditions.
Rabbi Edward Boraz has also been encouraging boosted "interfaith dialogue," which he said has already lead to increased interest and respect across religions.
At the Rockefeller forum, he called the discussions on campus about religion, tolerance and racial profiling, as well as the continued work on the Kosher-Halal dining facility: "positive signs of cooperation and openness between different campus religious groups."
The only way to nurture a sense of "profound respect" for other religions, he said, is by "listening to each other and really trying to find common ground."
An Oct. 31 dinner at the Edgerton Episcopal Center that focused on tolerance aimed to respond to the war from a standpoint of religious faith while at the same time encouraging interaction between members of different religions.
"I think its given motivation for all different groups -- Christian, Jews, Muslims -- to get to know each other," said Campus Minister Josh Thomas '00, who works on programming for Edgerton House.
He added that the "horrible" tragedies of the past few months have forced people to "grapple" with serious questions like their faith in God, but that the necessity to communicate across religious borders has boosted communications.
At the Edge dinner, both Boraz and Plaisted spoke about how to reconcile tolerance for other religions with issues of faith.
"In Islam I find a perfect religion," Plaisted told The Dartmouth, "but in trying to understand it I recognize it fully as a human process and as an imperfect process."
He stressed retaining a degree of humility about one's at both the Edge dinner and the Rockefeller lecture.
Thomas described his personal faith in different terms: "It's one thing to believe in God's truth and another thing to claim to know what that truth is."
Sarah Finck, the president of Hillel, said the outpouring of Sept. 11-related events demonstrated "pressing drive right now to discover what exactly is behind what happened."
She said Hillel has "always tried to do programming with other cultural and religious groups on campus."
John Paul Reid '02, president of the Pastoral Council of Aquinas House, the Catholic student group on campus, explained that the focus of his organization "has been on the victims and how to respond in terms of reaching out toward students who have been directly touched by the tragedies." He said Aquinas House has not held any events to encourage cross-cultural understanding in response to the terrorist attacks.
Administrative effort
Some students praised the effort College administrators have made to address religious and cultural discrimination against Muslim and Arab-American students, but some said they felt more could have been done.
"I think the administration should do more so that any student who has experienced discrimination can go and talk to them about it," said Mohamad Bydon '02, who is active in Al-Nur.
He said Dean of the College James Larimore's campus-wide e-mail cautioning against stereotyping Muslims was "well-taken," but possibly not forceful enough to get across his message.
At other schools, he said, the administration contacted Muslim students individually to let them know exactly what counseling and support services were available to them.
Aly Rahim '02, a member of the seven-person council that oversees Al-Nur, said, "Initially, there was some concern that it took [College President James Wright] some time to respond" to what happened. But he added that eventually "people in direct contact with the students saw that something needed to be done" and the response "percolated upwards."
He praised the efforts of the Office of the Dean of Student Life as well as the International Office.
Finck said she thought the College has been doing a good job of organizing events and communicating with students in the aftermath of the events.
Ignorance
Rahim said at Dartmouth "most people are sensitive to diversity and relatively well-educated."
He continued, "You don't see the kind of blanket discrimination against Muslims that might exist in other parts of the country."
But he cautioned that simply being educated isn't enough. "There certainly has been ignorance about Islam," he said. "A lot of people assume that Islam is intrinsically violent."
Bydon said that he has not personally experienced any explicit discrimination at Dartmouth, but he has witnessed what he sees as "ignorance."
At Dartmouth, Bydon said, "Most of what I see on campus isn't discrimination but ignorance of what Islam is."
But he reported that when he leaves the Dartmouth community, he has run into problems since the September attacks.
For example, he reported that American Airlines staff prevented him from boarding a flight back from Rome because, they told him, that he "looked like a terrorist."
