Around 11:45 a.m. on May 1, two bathrooms in Parkhurst Hall were filled with 10,000 ladybugs. Each bathroom contained bags of ladybugs left open, as well as cardboard signs with pro-Palestinian messaging.
On the sink in a gender-neutral bathroom a few paces from President Beilock’s office, two cardboard signs contained drawings of ladybugs and several messages. Messages included “10,000 ladybugs!,” “Divest from apartheid and genocide,” “Protect int’l students,” “protect higher ed” and “Free Palestine.” Two paper pamphlets containing Dartmouth Divest for Palestine’s official divestment proposal were also left on the sink.
The sign also said “Our administrators are aphids!!!” Aphids are insects that suck sap out of plants and cause excessive crop damage, and can be contained by ladybugs which prey on aphids.
In the basement of Parkhurst, a second gender-neutral bathroom was filled with ladybugs and vandalized. “Divest” and “From the river, to the sea” were written in black on a wall of the bathroom. Similar cardboard signs were left in the bathroom.
A Safety and Security officer at the scene declined to comment.
On the sidewalk outside Parkhurst, three messages were written in chalk — near North Main Street, “Eradicate Hamas” and “Stand with Law Enforcement” while at the foot of the steps, “Arabs vote, Jews get bombed.”
The vandalism inside Parkhurst and messaging outside come on the one-year anniversary of the arrests of 89 students during a pro-Palestinian protest on the Green.
By 12:30 p.m., both bathrooms were fully clean.
