We, alumni of the College, were horrified to see our alma mater on the front page of the Washington Post today — not because of its careful teaching or tolerant educational environment, but because a 65-year-old professor was violently thrown to the ground by New Hampshire State Police. Her crime? Trying to protect peaceful student protesters from police officers in riot gear. In horror, we learned that — as they chanted, “There’s no riot here/Why are you in riot gear?” — students were arrested en masse with disproportionate force. In even greater horror, we learned that student journalists were arrested while covering the events.
Whatever one’s views may be regarding the tactics of the protesters, it is both embarrassing and contradictory to the College’s mission that the administration elected to place its own students and faculty in the path of violence. To do so compromises both the academic freedom and physical safety of students and staff.
In her spineless letter to the Dartmouth community on May 2, College President Sian Leah Beilock wrote that the College’s “long-standing policies limit the time, place and manner where protests can occur. They prohibit encampments or the occupation of buildings that interfere with the academic mission or increase safety risks to members of our community.” As many of this letter’s signatories have experienced directly, Dartmouth selectively enforces these prohibitions. Without calling the police, Dartmouth endured a two-day long occupation of the President’s Office to protest the College’s reaction to their Freedom Budget in 2014, a disruption of the Dimensions Show to protest the College’s handling of homophobia, sexual assault and racism in 2013 and a three-month long Occupy encampment, modeled closely after similar Occupy Wall Street protests, from October 2011 to January 2012.
Surely Dartmouth’s academic mission is not merely to corral students into classrooms but to also prepare them to participate in democratic life. Indeed, Dartmouth’s website describes its mission as preparing students and faculty to respond to “the most pressing challenges of our time” and for “responsible leadership.” It is essential to this mission to allow students to dissent publicly. The students were not the ones throwing each other or their professors to the ground. It is essential to intellectual life that students be allowed to voice their dissent and articulate their political beliefs. There is no greater goal of an education than its application in the world.
In her email, Beilock wrote, “We cannot let differences of opinion become an excuse for disrupting our amazing sense of place and the lived experience of our campus.” Protests such as the one on Wednesday help to create the dynamism and difference of opinion that flourish in any open and democratic community. A place has a sense only because people give it one. Student protesters deserve to be congratulated, not censored, for making the Green a forum for dialogue.
Our not-so-fearless leader also wrote, “Dartmouth’s endowment is not a political tool.” In fact, that is exactly what it is, by the College’s own admission. Per the College website, the stated purpose of the Dartmouth College Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility is to ensure that Dartmouth’s investments are aligned with the values of the College by “avoid[ing] selection of investment positions that could be deemed inconsistent with Dartmouth’s mission.” When it urges Trustees to divest from particular holdings, the ACIR should “describe in writing, with appropriate documentation, concrete and detailed evidence of how the Dartmouth community, including students, faculty, staff and alumni, has come to consensus to support the proposal.” These claims function as implicit recognition of the College’s responsibility to make ethical investments — and the College’s responsibility to ensure that its investments are aligned with the values of its community, including its students and faculty. The question remains: does investing in war align with the College’s values?
The policy regarding the ACIR also raises an important question regarding democratic consensus. The College instructs the ACIR to ascertain the community’s thoughts about the College’s holdings. The Committee cannot learn what the community thinks if all expressions of dissent regarding Dartmouth’s portfolio are quashed. Given that the members of the ACIR are not elected but “appointed annually by the President” — a shocking and disappointing affront to democratic principles in its own right — and that the names of its members are not public, the only effective means for students and faculty to express discontent with their decisions is vocal, public protest.
Moreover, there is precedent for the student protesters’ strategy. Under pressure from student protesters, the College decided to divest from South African holdings in 1989 and investments propping up the fossil fuel industry in 2021. What could be more undeniably and patently political than funding an apartheid, a climate catastrophe or, as in this case, a war with more than 30,000 casualties?
In light of all these considerations, we, the undersigned alums, call on the College to:
- Drop all charges against Dartmouth students and faculty, including against history professor Annelise Orleck, who should be commended rather than punished for protecting students at great personal cost.
- Commit to allowing student journalists to cover important College events, especially those that may be critical of the College and its administration.
- Commit to fostering greater transparency about the ACIR by democratizing the process of selecting appointees and publicizing the names of the appointees.
- Commit to reforming the investment process so that students, faculty and other community members have a greater say over the causes Dartmouth is materially supporting.
- Commit to allowing peaceful protests to resume on the Green, following the impressive example of colleges like Wesleyan.
It is our hope that Dartmouth will continue to function as a site of learning and engagement, not a place where dissent is suppressed and discussion is forcibly silenced. Whether our hopes come to fruition is up to you, Beilock.
Anna Winham ’14
Amith Ananthram ’14
Genevieve Mifflin ’14
Shayla Mars ’11
Adam Mehring ’14
Semarley Jarrett ’14
Guillermo Rojas Hernandez ’13
Tausif Noor ’14
Crystal Ye ’14
Katie McKay ’16
Lily Brown ’15
Stephanie Tsz Yan Ng ’16
Hui Cheng ’16
Brenna Gourgeot ’18
Maryam Arain ’11
Elaine Richards ’14
Jessica Weil ’21
Danielle Forastieri Short ’13
Ijeoma Nwuke ’20
Alice Zhang ’21
Elizabeth Nguyen ’20
Andre Alcon ’10
Cecilia Dalle Ore ’13
Autumn Chuang ’16
Aileen Zhu ’16
Kang-Chun Cheng ’18
Anonymous ’14
Matthew Garczynski ’14
Ellen Nye ’14
Allison Puglisi ’15
Vivien Tejada ’16
Nic Tejada ’16
Eve Ahearn ’11
Silpa Raju ’16
Anonymous ’17
William Gerath ’11
Christina Reagan ’19
Jane Handorff ’17
Zonía Moore ’16
Jose Rodarte-Canales ’16
Alexander Procton ’15
Singer Horse Capture ’17
Gabriel Rodriguez ’13
Erica Westenberg ’15
Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
