Signs are being posted all around campus, posts are being shared on Facebook and other social media outlets, and emails are being sent out about inclusivity and diversity on Dartmouth’s campus as part of a week-long #DoBetterDartmouth campaign. Started by the Dartmouth chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the campaign is occurring in conjunction with a petition started by the organization demanding mandated inclusivity and diversity education at the College.
The petition is addressed to College President Phil Hanlon, executive vice president and chief financial officer Rick Mills, vice president for institutional diversity and equity Evelynn Ellis, provost Carolyn Dever, Dean of the College Rebecca Biron and vice provost Inge-Lise Ameer.
As an anonymously accessible social media site, Yik Yak has been used as an outlet to post comments that contain racial slurs or other derogatory messages. The #DoBetterDartmouth campaign printed some of these yaks on flyers and posted them around campus to spur a discussion on race and inclusivity.
Believing that many students graduate this institution without a basic understanding of race and inclusivity, the NAACP’s petition calls for an additional distributive requirement, which must be taken in order to graduate, that would challenge students’ understanding of institutional injustice. The group differentiates their proposed requirement from the College’s existing cultural identity distributive requirement as a course that would facilitate responsibility and student leadership, according to the petition. Just as Dartmouth requires high risk behavior and sexual assault education through online courses, the #DoBetterDartmouth campaign wants the College help provide the same level understanding of racism and inequality, the petition states.
Valentina Garcia Gonzalez ’19 said she chose to get involved with #DoBetterDartmouth after last fall’s Black Lives Matter protest in Baker-Berry Library.
“I saw how ugly Dartmouth can be, verbally eviscerating one another, how people can turn on one another, how people can speak on something that they don’t know, and how people can, when they aren’t at the protest or weren’t involved, quickly convey or denounce the protest and the movement solely on the acts that may of transpired,” she said.
The campaign is aimed at the administration and the Dartmouth community, hoping to foster an open dialogue to discuss what needs fixing and ways we can better ourselves so these kinds of verbal attacks do not occur, Gonzalez added.
“What I’ve been seeing is that people say ‘They’re just 10 yaks that don’t even have enough up-votes’ or ‘These don’t represent the entire community,’” Gonzalez said. “Students gloss over the fact that these 10 yaks happened, but how can we be okay and still deny the fact that there are students in this community that feel this way about their peers?”
Carlos Tifa ’19, who signed the petition, said the campaign was important to him because it showed the College’s inefficiency when dealing with problems surrounding diversity. While pamphlets and other admissions materials put forth an image of diversity, the reality does not always match that promise, he said.
“[Diversity is] something they say that they have on their admissions page but when you get here you have a hard time finding it or its not here at all,” Tifa said.
This story will be updated as more information is reported.
Alexa Green is a junior from Boca Raton, FL. She is majoring in English, with minors in Arabic and Public Policy. After joining the newspaper her freshman winter, she served as a beat reporter covering Hanover & the Upper Valley. Following this position, Alexa became the associate managing news editor. Outside of the newsroom, she is a tour guide on campus, works for the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, and conducts research in the English department. During her off term, Alexa worked for I.B.Tauris, an independent publishing house in London, U.K., editing and publicizing international relations and politics books. She is passionate about the ways in which policy, current events, history and journalism have interconnected roles in defining global issues.
