Student comments on The Dartmouth's website in response to recent protests during Dimensions have been largely critical of the protesters. I contend that these critiques have missed the point. The majority of comments share three uninspired foci: first, interrupting a Dimensions event was rude; second, exposing Dartmouth's problems will only scare away good applicants and make the situation worse; and third, protesting without offering solutions is futile. These perverse arguments reveal an ignorance of the history of social movements. Perhaps the autobiographies of Dr. King and Nelson Mandela should be required reading for all students, as "Mountains Beyond Mountains" just was not sufficiently jarring to overcome our collective privilege. But alas, since most of you will not read about the very long walk to freedom, here is why such arguments miss the point.
First, yes, interrupting a presentation at Dimensions is rude. But so was a sit-in at a lunch counter in 1960. So was a march on Washington in 1963. So is any form of disobedient protest. Is drawing parallels between America's racist past and the injustices on our campus today a bridge too far? Not if you subscribe to the ethics of injustice anywhere posing a threat to justice everywhere. And certainly not if you are a victim of rape who has been silenced, or a member of an ethnic group who has seen racist slurs on campus buildings. We have been taught that our drunken social interactions are normal and that our future corporate careers as "efficient components of the consumer economy," in the words of philosopher Noam Chomsky, will be fulfilling. Thus, the problems of sexual violence, racial intolerance and rising inequality cannot possibly extend to our perfect bubble of a college campus. Rather, they must be myths propagated by feminists, homosexuals, socialists and fun-sucking intellectuals.
Second, if we come to agree about the severity of the social ills on our campus, then telling the truth to prospective students is absolutely necessary. Undertaken with enough vigor and scale, might this hurt Dartmouth's sacred admissions numbers? Perhaps. And if so, this is all for the better, as it is the only way to get the administration's attention. We are, in effect, shareholders of this College, and thus we should not allow our loyalty to blind us. Instead, we should summon empathy toward prospective students who deserve an honest assessment of the place where they are about to spent four years and a quarter of a million dollars. If Dartmouth offers such an amazing experience and if our incoming students are as intelligent and rational as we hope them to be, most will still chose to attend, even once apprised of certain ugly truths. But then, rather than pumped full of propaganda they feel pressured to perpetuate, they will be primed to act as change agents in a community finally struggling to break from the 19th century into the 21st.
Finally, critics have derided the protesters for their lack of real solutions. To be fair, I made similar arguments three years ago in response to the Students Stand With Staff campaign. I agreed that a lack of pragmatic solutions would doom the movement to failure until student protesters could provide a list of amenities they were willing to forego in order to free up financial resources to re-hire staff, their demands appeared out of touch with the financial reality of the negotiations. However, protesting social relations on this campus is an entirely different type of conflict. It is not about budget spreadsheets; it does not require structural changes or even administrative approval. Indeed, as much as dialogue has centered on changing the structure creating neutral, supportive social spaces to influence behavior, I argue that it is a well-intended but roundabout way of addressing the underlying problem: our inhumanity against our fellow classmates. As long as there is a single person on this campus who sees no problem standing by and witnessing violence or intolerance, we all are living in a community of sickness. Some truths are self-evident, and in the case of grave injustices, so are some solutions. When confronted with inequality, one need not propose a grandiose policy overhaul; one must begin by embodying the desired change, exalting every valley and making every crooked path straight. Dartmouth shall always be the College on the Hill. But it is time to humble ourselves and make it anew.
