When a Wall Street Journal opinion piece (“Oppressed by the Ivy League,” April 4, 2014) came to Dartmouth’s defense following the student protest last week, many students expressed enthusiastic relief. It is interesting that the author of the article and its on-campus supporters find the protesters’ demands absurd primarily because Dartmouth already has quite a number of students from minority backgrounds. Yes, Dartmouth is more diverse than it used to be — the institution’s demographics have radically transformed in the past few decades. The Class of 2002, for example, comprised only 20 percent students of color and 4 percent international students; nearly 39 percent of the Class of 2017 identified as African American, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American or multiracial, and 9 percent came from outside the U.S. If Dartmouth has been so open to admitting more students from diverse backgrounds, how could it possibly be as oppressive as protesters claim?
However, increasing diversity is not as easy as simply increasing the number of students identifying with different minority groups. In fact, historical examples show that societies that diversify without adequate preparation often experience social upheaval. The fall of the Roman Empire is a good example. While the Empire was already in decline, the mass migration of Germanic Tribes exacerbated the situation by creating conflicts between those tribes that wanted to integrate into Roman society and the Romans who refused to take these “barbarians” seriously, which in turn accelerated Roman disintegration. Centuries later, the urban areas in the U.S. became centers of protest as the Great Migration radically transformed urban demographics to include vast numbers of African Americans rightfully distressed by unjust systems that were slow to provide them with well deserved equal rights. In other words, the price of increased diversity without adequate structural reform can be steep.
Dartmouth has been unwilling to acknowledge its diversity bills, slow to implement radical structural changes to reflect the radical transformation in student demographics. The College intended a mass migration of peoples previously considered foreign to this institution and thus had ample time to prepare for its consequences. Yet, when I matriculated, I found myself in a school where, because of my race, I found I had a significantly lower chance than my white peers of fitting in, particularly into the prevailing College-condoned, male-dominated social hierarchy called Greek life (not to mention that it is abominable that such a social stratification exists); where the heritage of different Asian Americans has been largely excluded from intellectual discourse although 16 percent of the enrollment of last fall’s student body self-identified as Asian American; where legitimate academic disciplines such as African and African American studies, Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies, Native American studies and women’s and gender studies have remained programs, not departments, for decades, reinforcing the notion that these are not legitimate academic disciplines; and where the ratio of minority faculty remains so low that professors of color are almost invisible. This is my experience with oppressive systems at work here as a woman of color; others’ experiences may differ in their details. But the larger point is that these grievances were sure to arise when the school decided to add “diversity” as a core value, and that these grievances remain to this day, unrecognized and unaddressed.
Many students believe that the discontented, a large portion of whom come from minority backgrounds, should simply transfer if they are so ungrateful for the privileges of a Dartmouth experience. However, we must note that minority groups help the College as well, providing perspectives critical to intellectual vibrancy that puts Dartmouth on par with other prestigious academic institutions. But instead of being treated as full citizens of Dartmouth as promised, minority groups have been relegated to second-class citizenship for decades, their presence a matter of numbers rather than a matter of the voices and concerns they bring to campus. The school must now make its stance clear. If it does not mean to implement long overdue structural changes to reflect the radical transformation of the face of Dartmouth, then the college should stop pretending that it is no longer an old white-boy’s club.
Si Yon Kim '16 is a guest columnist.
