Dartmouth's Carnival of Protest

HANOVER, N.H.--As the Winter Carnival ice sculptures begin to melt and the most hallowed Dartmouth tradition draws to a close, the remote New Hampshire campus remains impassioned and chaotic.

A series of skirmishes this winter among rival student and faculty factions at the Ivy League college has drawn national media attention, climaxing in yesterday's arrest of 18 demonstrators on the Dartmouth Green see story, page one).

What began as a small but vocal movement protesting Dartmouth's $61 million in South Africa-related investments has embroiled an increasing number of students and faculty in a heated debate over the administrative structure of the college and the broader issues of bigotry and intolerance on campus.

The first visible signs of strife appeared in November. The Dartmouth Community for Divestment (DCD), a heterogeneous group of '60s-style activists, built four shanties in the center of the picturesque Dartmouth Green to symbolize the plight of Black South Africans and to protest the college's South African-related investments.

The DCD, an non-hierarchical organization that decides all of its policy by consensus, agreed that years of forums, speeches, and referendums were not enough. "We had gone through the proper channels, but nobody had opened their ears," says Rajiv Menon, an outspoken member of the DCD.

The Dartmouth administration's initial response to the construction of the shanties was swift and seemingly stern. After the Town of Hanover declared the unsightly structures a violation of town ordinances, Dartmouth Dean Edward Shanahan asked the protesters on November 17 "to remove the shanties from the Green today. If you do not, it will be necessary for the college to remove the structures."

No Response

The protesters did not remove the shanties, however, nor did the college. The administration, bowing to student sentiment and the fear of unfavorable media attention, allowed the plywood symbols to remain for "educational purposes."

Until yesterday--when police and university officials combined to force the removal of the structures--all four shanties were still standing. But even as early as mid-January, the campus was growing impatient about the continuing presence of the unsightly cabins.

"When people see the shanties on the Green, they don't think `divestment' anymore. They think about when those ugly things are going to be taken away," said Joseph Leake, president of the Dartmouth Afro-American Society.

On the day after the nation's first observance of Martin Luther King's birthday, The Dartmouth, the daily student newspaper, called for the removal of the structures because "the shanties have defeated their own purpose."

Before the campus daily came off the presses, however, 12 students took matters into their own hands. The Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival (DCBGBWC), equipped with four sledgehammers and a flatbed truck, attempted to tear down the shanties. Calling themselves "environmentalists" and "trash collectors," the anti-shanty dozen planned to donate the debris to local charities "to help provide fuel for heating stoves," according to a statement they handed to policemen arriving on the scene five minutes after demolition began.

"It wasn't like a mob of 12 sledgehammer-swinging students. It was well organized and cooperative," says senior Robert W. Flanagan, a member of the DCBGBWC. "I was very serious about what I was doing. I knew the dangers of letting the situation carry me away." Two women were spending the night in one of the shanties, Flanagan says, but "their safety came first."

Nonetheless, Flanagan and three other vandals were yesterday given indefinite suspensions by the Dartmouth Committe on Standards, the college's disciplinary board. Eight of his cohorts were handed one-and two-term suspensions.

Campus observers called for strict punishment of the DCBGBWC. "If these people don't get severely punished, it is going to be ugly around here," said Jeffrey A. Blatt, publisher of The Dartmouth, last week. Although Blatt denies inconsistency, the campus daily called for the expulsion of the 12 students only one day after its editorial pages had called for the shanties to come down.

Student activists reacted just as vehemently. More than 200 staged a sit-in at McLaughlin's office and forced classes to close the following day. Although the demonstrators were deemed to be in violation of college standards, they were not punished because of their "moral convictions."

Flanagan denounces the disciplinary treatment doled out by the college, which he says upholds "one standard for liberals and another for conservatives."

Fueled by Review

The DCBGBWC moniker was a thinly disguised front for the notorious Dartmouth Review. Ten members of the demolition crew were staff members of the Review, including Flanagan, who is vice president of the outspoken journal. All 12 say they are adherents of the paper's controversially conservative ethic.

Funded almost entirely by national interests including columnist William F. Buckley and supported by 3000 right-wing alumni, the weekly Review has a short but controversial history of political stunts.

In 1982, the fledgling paper printed an article written entirely in Black dialect entitled "Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive, Bro," which implied that Dartmouth had lowered admissions standards in order to accomodate Blacks. Recent articles have also questioned admissions policies pertaining to Jews, challenged the morality of homosexuality, and lampooned the admission of women into the college.

One of the Review's favorite targets is the president of the college, David T. McLaughlin. Throughout this winter of political crises, faculty and student groups alike have vocally criticized the laid-back style of the president of this traditionally sleepy Ivy League school.

McLaughlin, previously a successful businessman, had no prior experience in academia before he became president in 1981. Although almost universally praised for his ability to increase the college's endowment, the president's handling of the current campus strife has generated harsh criticism from all fronts.

Last month a faculty report questioned McLaughlin's ability to lead Dartmouth, specifically citing his strained relationship with the Dartmouth faculty. A significant, if not overwhelming, number of the Ivy League school's professors believe that McLaughlin's leadership style is too businesslike for effective action in the face of strife.

The Dartmouth faculty two weeks ago endorsed the findings of the report, and several professors called for a vote of no-confidence in McLaughlin's ability to govern the college.

At the faculty meeting one professor publicly attacked McLaughlin for allowing Dartmouth to become "the laughingstock of the nation," while another claimed that "bigotry, racism, and intolerance" have characterized the McLaughlin administration, The Dartmouth reported.

There has been an unprecedented amount of administrative and faculty turnover in the five years of McLaughlin's tenure. Typical of administrative confusion was this fall's firing of football coach Joe Yukica, who subsequently sued Dartmouth to regain his position.

One college official, who recently resigned because of the "stifling" atmosphere of the McLaughlin administration, told The Dartmouth that "I've never seen more managerial intimidation as Dartmouth under this president."

Students on both sides of the political spectrum are equally disgruntled with what they call McLaughlin's wishy-washy administrative response.

The Review's Flanagan says that McLaughlin "has to get some backbone." Sitting beneath a framed photo of Richard M. Nixon, the conservative student leader and former shanty-buster told The Crimson that the President's lack of leadership and "inability to lay down a law and stick by it" typified his administrative policy.

Liberal faculty members have a similar gripe with McLaughlin. "[McLaughlin] has to make it clear what is and isn't tolerable activity. You don't go around kicking chairs from under people. Everybody's mother told them that," says Thomas Roos, one of McLaughlin's most severe faculty critics and a supporter of the DCD.

Renewed Outcry

On the afternoon of the shanty attack, hundreds of students gathered on the Green to rally against the vandalism. Early on the morning of January 22, two hundred activists occupied Parkhurst Hall, the college's main administration building, to protest McLaughlin's inaction. The president was traveling in Florida on a fundraising trip when the attack occured.

The sit-in was much larger in scope than an occupation that had occured only three weeks earlier, in which twenty-nine students staged a four-hour sit-in calling for the college's divestment.

This time students formed an alliance decrving not only South African apartheid, but racism and intolerance on the Hanover campus. Calling themselves the Dartmouth Alliance Against Racial Oppression, the protesters forced the cancellation of classes the following day. In place of classes, college-wide forums were held to discuss racism, violence, and disresepct for diversity.

Although the majority of Dartmouth students are "apathetic," according to both leftist and rightist students, most activists credit the moratorium with forcing Dartmouth students reflect on the issue of intolerance.

"The destruction of the shanties set off a whole lot of issues related to racism," says DCD member Menon. The moratorium was the stage for a variety of student groups--women, homosexuals, and racial minorities--to denounce intolerance. "At the moratorium, everyone had their own personal agenda," says Leake of the Afro-American Society.

Last weekend's winter carnival--a traditional extravaganza of ice sculptures, barrel jumping, and fraternity parties--was only a temporary reprieve from the recent tension.

But even the carnival was affected by the heightened consciousness of Dartmouth students. The design of the giant ice sculpture in the center of the Green, which is the centerpiece of the midwinter celebration, portrays a "wild thing" modeled after a character created by children's author Maurice Sendak. Originally the design had the creature holding ski poles in his hands, but that design was modified to represent a creature with its arms "outstretched to the community for someone to help it up," a spokesman told The Dartmouth. A bust of Martin Luther King was considered by carnival organizers, but was finally deemed inappropriate.

Despite the changes in the Winter Carnival, however, some students still see it as a celebration of the less tolerant side of Dartmouth. "In my opinion, because of [the Carnival's] focus on tradition and community, to a certain degree it negates the importance of the issues for a lot of people in the Dartmouth community," says senior Michael R. Williams, a DCD member and former president of the Gav Student's Association.

"Dartmouth tradition is oppressive to those who are not white, male, and heterosexual, and who are not self-acknowledged as such," Williams says.

That tradition has begun to change.

Tomorrow: What student and faculty factions on the Dartmouth campus say about its winter of discontent.