(Note: This post has been updated. See below.)
Last Friday, a group of roughly 150 protesters at Dartmouth marched around town carrying banners that read “Black lives matter,” “We can’t breathe” and “Where are our black profs,” and chanted phrases like “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these racist cops have got to go.”
The following day, a smaller cadre of around twenty demonstrators crashed the Alpha Chi Alpha frat’s “Pigstick” party and the Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority’s “Derby” event.
These Greek socials were met with chants of “’There are two Dartmouths, and they’re right here,’ and ‘Single-sex organizations like your fraternity are part of the problem, Alpha Chi Alpha is part of the problem.’”
Two protesters held a banner which read “Bitch you thought we weren’t going to f*** up your day.”
Officially titled “March in Solidarity with Baltimore Uprising and in Protest of Dartmouth’s Willful Ignorance: Let’s fight police brutality and complicity/complacency at Dartmouth,” the demonstration was advertised by several campus groups on Thursday and Friday. The participants gathered in front of Filene Auditorium at 5:30 p.m. before passing by Baker-Berry Library and Dartmouth Hall. They continued down Main Street, then Lebanon Street toward Hanover High School before returning to campus.
Sadia Sheikh-Hassan ’13, who participated in Friday’s march, said that her motivation to join was not just a single episode that has happened in Baltimore but “continued assaults on black lives in America.” She added that she thinks the College does not sufficiently protect students of color from these kinds of assaults.“We come to this place and we are supposed to be convinced that things are better or that we matter now because we go to an Ivy League institution,” she said. “But this Ivy League institution in particular continues to remind us that we don’t matter and what we want to study does not matter.”
Hassan addressed the lack of resources for African and African-American studies and the continued departure of professors from the African and African-American studies program as examples of the struggles that students of color face on campus. She said that the College seems to invest its time and effort in issues such as alcohol policy and Greek life instead of the issues of academic interests and safety of students of color.
Irony missed: Dartmouth is home to the black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha and black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
In addition, one will find the following at the school: the Afro-American Society, the African and Caribbean Students Organization, the Women of Color Collective, and the Black Student Advising office.
UPDATE: The link above to Dartmouth clubs/organizations is a bit out of date, it seems. Currently, the historically African-American Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and Delta Sigma Theta sorority are no longer at the school. However, the (black) Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority does maintain a chapter at Dartmouth.
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IMAGES: Matthew D. Britt/Flickr, Katelyn Jones/The Dartmouth
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