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.