It is never easy to draw attention to the failures of this school I have come to love so much. It is harder still to hold my fellow students responsible for such failures. But hardest of all is to see these same students fight one another, so insistent in their quest to be right that they refuse to see the school for anything else. Nonetheless, when basic civil liberties are violated and when so few have spoken against their transgressions, I cannot and will not remain silent. Thus I must turn to the students of the Black Lives Matter movement and roundly condemn their actions in the Collis Center.
By now, it is a story so widely circulated around campus that it scarcely needs repeating. The College Republicans placed a memorial on the Collis billboard commemorating America’s police forces under the name of “Blue Lives Matter.” On April 13, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement tore down that memorial and replaced the College Republicans’ posters with ones that read “You cannot co-opt the movement against state violence to memorialize its perpetrators.” Even as the College Republicans made attempts to place their memorial back on the board — a board they had already reserved following the College’s protocol — a cluster of Black Lives Matter supporters were perceived as enough of a safety concern that they were unable to do so until much later that night. The controversy has since prompted the administration to decry the movement’s “unacceptable violation of free exchange.” In the wake of Green Key’s ecstasy, the controversy has scarcely died down.
Before anything else, we must uphold the sanctity of responsibility. The same rules apply to all students of Dartmouth, regardless of identity or creed. Such is as it should be, for in an equal society all must uphold equal responsibilities to one another. Just as freedom of speech is a core tenet of an equal society, so too is denouncing unnecessary destruction. I therefore applaud — if reservedly and begrudgingly — the administration’s email acknowledging such responsibility. Only time will tell if it will be followed by any tangible action.
Regardless, such radical behavior is wholly unnecessary whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether or not the College Republicans “co-opted” the Black Lives Matter movement’s slogan is, likewise, irrelevant. There are plentiful opportunities for productive dialogue and countless resources exist on campus to allow such dialogue to take place. Unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter movement has not availed itself of these opportunities. Instead, it has seen fit to mash its fists against that which it dislikes and then hide behind a curtain of hashtags as if that could make the consequences go away. The whole thing would almost be amusing, were it not laced with such genuine hatred and unveiled intolerance.
I say intolerance because of the way Black Lives Matter has presented itself. I cannot associate guarding the halls of Collis to silence dissent with any other word. Such an action constitutes a literal policing of free speech and the weaponization of fear, which are hardly the tools of a peaceful organization. Where Lincoln pleaded for malice toward none, instead I see malice toward all. Where Martin Luther King Jr. begged for a table of brotherhood, instead I see fists raised in a cry for war. Former champions of equality would indeed find little in common with such efforts to shun all reconciliation, as they continually mirror the very hatred they supposedly oppose so much.
These are not standards based on political ideology or belief, but on the very standard of equality Black Lives Matter purportedly advocates. People should not be spared the consequences of their actions, regardless of who they are or what they believe in. Even when rules must be bent to prove a point, they must not be broken with the purpose of frightening others into silence. Aggression and bullying have no place at Dartmouth, and they should not be the language of activism. Nor are they sustainable tactics — organizations that take up such naked hostility are usually doomed to fail. History is unkind to radical voices and deals harshly with its sympathizers; just as society has condemned the segregationists of older times, so too will it one day revile the extremism that pervades so much of the activism we see today. Black Lives Matter must disavow the radical aspects of its movement that have plagued its ranks since last November, lest it face its own extinction.
Ours is a narrative that must be built together, for all of us. The community of Dartmouth transcends race to encompass all of its students, to allow us to pursue our convictions without fear of one another. When such alienating tactics and intimidation take root in our community, the division they engender can do no good. When we attack one another, when we tear each other’s messages down and insist that ours is the only one worth hearing, in many ways we are also attacking ourselves.
The foundation of this college must not be built on a legacy of mutual hostility, nor does it have to be. Either we must all stand together to address the issues within our community, in good faith and with compassion, or we must risk seeing it all fall.