In the days before winter break, controversy held Dartmouth College hostage. Dartmouth Hall played host to student speeches, passionate protesters and the ears of the national media. A Student Assembly BlitzMail message announced that a rally titled "Solidarity Against Hatred" was planned during a meeting held in response to the Dartmouth Review issue with cover art depicting a Native American holding a scalp. What was missed in the midst of student activism was the way in which the student response to the offensive Review cover ran counter-productive to the activists.
The Dartmouth Review feeds off outrage. They want students to be outraged because outrage brings them attention, a larger readership and more donations. They refer to Dartmouth's sports teams as "Indians" and they make offensive covers as a way to get under people's skin. When the Review prints an offensive headline and students protest, the Review is proven in the eyes of its backers to be relevant to the students and correct. When people call for the punishment of Review staffers and the censorship of their paper, as many did before winter break, they also give it the moral and intellectual high ground and strengthen its resolve.
My father gave me the best advice for dealing with a bully. He said, "Ignore him." If students truly want to hurt the Review they simply must not give it the attention it so desperately craves. Imagine what would happen if it published an issue with an offensive cover and no one said anything. Sure it might empower the Review's staff to publish even more offensive covers, but it would send the message to the Dartmouth community that no one pays attention to the Review. Advertisers might then realize their money is best spent elsewhere.
There are issues of race, tolerance and offense that go beyond the dealings of the Review. In the wake of the campus eruption, they must be addressed. Protests and awareness are not ends in and of themselves. The demonstrated power and activism of the student body shows great promise and if it can be harnessed the student body will be able to push for lasting and effective results. The only question is, Where do we start? The mascot is the most obvious and visible one.
In his "patently ridiculous" article ("Mascot Madness," Jan. 5.), Jacob Baron '10 criticizes my facetious article ("Dartmouth's Mascot Void," Nov. 13), for advocating the establishment of an official mascot to replace the vacuum left by the Indian. He wonders aloud, "Why must the mascot be official?" while completely missing the point of the mascot debate and the Dartmoose campaign. The reason why it has become essential to create an official mascot is because the whole debate over what should fill the void has frequently and unnecessarily divided our campus. Even the editor-in-chief of the Review recognized that "no logical person believes that [the Indian] will ever return as part of the official or prominent iconography of the College" but correctly pointed out that "in the absence of a suitable replacement for more than three decades now, the Indian remains a tangible symbol of Dartmouth for generations of students." It is time to fill the void.
The backlash against the Review cover and the Indian mascot has given us the mandate to act, but some among us (who are apparently very, very busy) have commented that the mascot campaign is a "waste of time." Obviously it's not because even those people have taken the time to comment; many others have protested it. Student Assembly has already put the issue on its schedule, which is not so impossibly full that such consideration will grind student government to a halt.
We have within our power the ability to resolve this issue that has nationally embarrassed and locally embittered us for so long. It would simply be a misuse of power and the collective trust given to us as the caretakers of Dartmouth if we chose not to act.
