Dartmouth rejects its protest history

As a member of Dartmouth College’s class of 1977, I was shocked and disappointed to hear about the arrests of 90 students and community members, including two professors, the evening of May 1 in a violent action by law enforcement. I had hoped that Dartmouth College, in this beautiful and safe community, would be a model to the nation and other university communities by allowing peaceful discourse through non-violent protests and good communication between students and the administration.

I am saddened that Beilock ignored the history of protest at Dartmouth in her deliberations about a response to the protesters. Other non-violent protests, some including encampments — shanties on the Green to protest apartheid in South Africa and the Occupy Dartmouth encampment in front of Collis — did not end badly and students were supported in their actions. Even the takeover of Parkhurst Hall to protest the Vietnam War did not end in violence.

But Beilock introduced the violence of police officers, including State Troopers in riot gear, onto our campus rather than riding the wave of history with the students and working with them with patience on their legitimate concerns. She did not model her own initiative of Brave Spaces, and her written explanation to the community placed the responsibility for the arrests solely on the students. Many opportunities for true discourse have been lost.

Meeting non-violence with violence is never productive and certainly does not advance Dartmouth’s academic mission.

Elizabeth Bullard Morse

Plainfield

Beilock should step down

I am incensed by the callous disregard of loss of life in Gaza by President Biden, and our own Dartmouth president, Sian Beilock. Her militaristic approach to nonviolent protest is a cowardly way to avoid a conversation about what is happening in Israel and Gaza, and how to stop the genocide. All of us who are heartbroken by the violence in the Middle East need a way to say, not in our names! The fact that we choose to say it nonviolently underlines the fact that we know that there is no way to peace: Peace is the Way. Beilock is out of step with Dartmouth students and staff, and with a large number of Upper Valley residents of all ages and persuasions. It is time for her to step down, and for Dartmouth to find someone of reason, heart and courage.

Bess Klassen-Landis

Windsor

A stained legacy

I have tried to understand what motivated President Sian Leah Beilock to call in armored vehicles and riot police on the evening of May 1 to violently end a peaceful protest of just a few hundred students and faculty. In a letter on May 2 she claims the occupation of the Green had interfered with the shared space enjoyed by the rest of the college community.

In that letter she did not mention that one of the college’s most senior and respected faculty members, history professor Annelise Orleck, who had done nothing to provoke her brutal assault, was roughly knocked to the ground and dragged off by riot police. In her letter, Beilock did not mention Orleck’s name. Beilock did not express regret about Orleck’s treatment, nor is the college doing anything to have charges against her dropped.

Also in that letter Beilock did not mention the arrest and detention of two reporters for The Dartmouth. She did not express regret for what happened to them, nor is the college seeking to have criminal charges against those students dropped.

When Beilock was chosen as the 19th president of Dartmouth, she seemed to me the right person for the job. But now, for me at least, May 1 will always be a stain on her tenure as Dartmouth’s president.

As a friend and classmate said to me yesterday, “I hope this event will be the low point of her administration.”

Thomas Watkin

Bradford, Vt.

The writer is a member of Dartmouth’s class of 1974.