When I read co-interim deans Ann Hudak and Eric Ramsey’s letter to the student body about the Parkhurst Hall sit-in, I had the same reaction that much of the student body did. The email described an unruly and chaotic scene in which members of Safety and Security and the president’s staff were injured and where property was damaged. I agreed with the interim deans’ conclusion at the end of the email – that escalation like the events of May 28 cannot be tolerated on our campus. What I didn’t know at the time was that the statement made by the deans was misleading, according to a letter from House professors to senior administrators recently obtained by The Dartmouth.
To start, it’s worth noting that student journalists were not let into Parkhurst Hall to observe the protests, already giving the administration the ability to control what the public sees. Four house professors, however, were allowed into Parkhurst Hall at the May 28 sit-in to support de-escalation and mediation. I believe that they are the closest witnesses we have to fair, impartial observers of the events that took place in Parkhurst. The day after the statement from the deans, all six of these house professors co-signed an email to Hudak and Ramsey expressing disappointment in the statement, stating that the email’s account “does not match [their] experience.”
Most notably, the house professors state that they did not witness or hear about any property damage, a claim which the email statement explicitly makes. They also state that from their perspective, the sit-in “did not represent a significant escalation from what happened on May 1 and 2 of this year.” The professors also disputed the claim made in the email statement that there were protesters opening desk drawers, stating that they did not see this “even though we were in the room at the time.” Furthermore, the professors stated that there was a sense of “mutual understanding” during the entirety of the time that they were in Parkhurst, and that they heard “no threats of harm from students.”
The statement from administrators mentions that there were two injuries of a Safety and Security officer and a college administrator, and the email from the house professor corroborates this point. Obviously, this is unacceptable, and should not be a tolerated escalation. Omitted from the email, though, was that one of the student protesters also was injured after a Safety and Security officer allegedly pushed him. By neglecting to mention this, the statement made the aggression seem far more one-sided than it actually was.
The deans’ email concludes by making a general statement about how escalations like this one will not be tolerated on Dartmouth’s campus. However, administrators again neglect our College’s history in this condemnation. In 2014, students sat in former College President Phil Hanlon ’77’s office in an effort to promote the Freedom Budget — a student-led policy proposal meant to address systemic inequities at the College. Many aspects of this very same budget are now college policy today. In 1969, student protesters staged a multi-day Parkhurst sit-in advocating for the end of the Reserve Officer Training Corps’ presence on campus that prompted serious consideration of their demands by college administrators. In 1986, anti-apartheid protesters took over Parkhurst Hall in order to force administrators to meet with them.
In fact, in terms of Dartmouth history, the May 28 sit-in was quite tame – protesters left the building at 6 p.m. when it closed, contrasting with the Vietnam protests, in which activists barricaded themselves inside the building. Declaring that a sit-in of Parkhurst Hall that ended at the time of the building’s closure is unacceptable ignores the importance of Parkhurst as a symbolic building on campus and erases Dartmouth’s rich history of protest.
Although the way the administrators’ email misrepresents the events of May 28 is concerning on its own, it represents a disturbing pattern of abuse of public statements by college administrators. As I previously wrote in October 2023, a letter to campus from College President Sian Leah Beilock stated that two peaceful protesters had “threatened in writing to ‘escalate and take further action,’ including ‘physical action,’ if their demands were not met.” In reality, the situation on the ground was far more complicated than what the statement portrayed, as I previously wrote.
Statements sent via our entire campus listserv are extremely powerful. In the busy life of a Dartmouth student, they’re often the only news source a student will take the time to read. I detest the Dartmouth administration’s twisting of facts in these statements — not only because the propagation of falsehoods is unbecoming of any institution of higher education — but also because these falsehoods seem to have been manipulated to breed contempt towards student protesters. The activists who staged the sit-in have no ability to send a mass email to all of campus and tell their side of the story, so a majority of our campus is now left with an inaccurate, one-sided narrative. Agree with the protesters or not, Dartmouth administrators must stop abusing their power to create dominant narratives, immediately correct these inaccuracies and promptly apologize to campus for their lies.
Opinion columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He is from Connecticut, and studies government and creative writing.
On campus, Eli is an active member of the Dartmouth Political Union and Dartmouth Army ROTC. He attends Dartmouth on an ROTC scholarship, and upon graduation, he will commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He has been an active writer and political organizer from a young age, working on over 15 political campaigns varying from local to presidential races, and publishing both fiction and nonfiction on various platforms.
First and foremost, Eli loves to write, and he intends to make some form of it his full time career after his time in the Army.
