Martha Hennessey ’76 lives in a small house nestled on a quiet street just off Webster Avenue. It’s a cozy space with a palpable history, filled with family photos and Dartmouth prints.
A vocal advocate of eliminating sexual assault at Dartmouth, Hennessey grew up in this house, nearly a century old, as a “faculty brat.” Her father worked as a professor and dean of the Tuck School of Business, while her mother was the first director of the Dartmouth Institute on Canada and the United States.
“I used to walk down frat row to go to school every day,” she said. “Now, it also reminds me every day as I drive down the street about what I’m fighting for.”
Hennessey was a member of the first class at the College that included women at matriculation, and her connection to Dartmouth didn’t end with her undergraduate education. She married a fellow alum (in the BEMA, no less), and two of their children graduated from Dartmouth. When her parents moved from the Hanover home in 2001, Hennessey and her husband returned to campus.
Since she graduated, Hennessey participated actively on multiple alumni committees, including the alumni council.
This connection to and love for the College drives her to make it a better place, she said, sipping coffee in the breakfast nook of her kitchen as two white dogs — Teddy and Alice, named for the Roosevelts — played at her feet.
“It’s my legacy. It’s my kids’ legacy. It’s very much a part of the air I breathe,” she said.
Still, Hennessey’s years at the College were not idyllic.
As a member of the Dartmouth Distractions, an all-female a cappella group now known as the Decibelles, Hennessey said she would often face backlash at performances from alumni who were opposed to coeducation.
“At dinners afterward, alums would look at me and say ‘You’re the reason we’re not giving money to Dartmouth,’” she said. “You have to go through some of that for change. That’s the nature of the beast. And, in fact, if it’s not hard, it’s probably not worth it.”
After she was assaulted in a Dartmouth fraternity in January 1976, Hennessey discovered, both during her time as a student and as an alumna at reunions decades later, that almost every female student she knew had similar experiences but did not talk about them.
In 2012, theater professor Peter Hackett ’75 asked Hennessey to appear in his second production of “Undue Influence.” During the performance, Hennessey acted out and relived her memory of the assault. She said that the experience of performing, while exhausting, equipped her to discuss her assault with others.
Hennessey’s participation in “Undue Influence” opened her eyes to the prevalence of sexual assault at the College and motivated her to work with other alumni to form Dartmouth Change, an organization that raises awareness and issues recommendations about sexual assault at the College. Dartmouth Change, founded in spring 2012, aims for a “continued insistence” on getting the College to remain forthright and transparent in efforts to combat sexual assault, said Gretchen Spalding Wetzel ’77, a fellow founding member who knew Hennessey while they were students.
Working with former College President Jim Yong Kim was “very frustrating,” Hennessey said. She said she had a difficult time communicating the need for sexual assault to be addressed as a systemic problem instead of an isolated incident, and she felt that issues were often swept under the rug.
College spokesman Justin Anderson said that Kim, a medical doctor, understood the complexity and urgency of sexual assault on campus. Kim launched the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault in the first six months of his tenure and hired a second Sexual Abuse Awareness Program Coordinator.
“I was and remain cautiously optimistic about Phil Hanlon,” Hennessey said, emphasizing her desire to see a thorough external review and subsequent report about sexual violence at the College. “If this were a major organization, which it is, and it was on a downward slope, which it has been with admissions and everything else, a major corporation would bring in an unbiased consulting team that would come in and analyze every single aspect of this college.”
“Unless we have something that we have to hide, why not do that?”
Administrators need to be willing to put every single aspect of the College on the table for analysis, said Hennessey, and that includes the Greek system. She stressed that Dartmouth displayed that sort of bravery when it bucked tradition by accepting women — a decision, after all, that allowed her to attend the College.
Spalding Wetzel recalled a Dartmouth Change meeting, at which an organization member suggested that a dean call all students after they report sexual violence and inform them that they have the College’s resources at their disposal. Upon hearing this suggestion, Hennessey emphasized she would have benefited tremendously from such a demonstration of support from the College during her own years as a student, Spalding Wetzel recalled.
These personal experiences have made Hennessey so invested in ending sexual violence on campus, but these same incidents have made it difficult to continue her advocacy when classmates and administrators make light of the situation.
“It hurts too much to be told that I’m making it up or that people are disappointed that I’m angry,” she said. “There are many times I’ve almost given up.”
Hennessey’s continued push for change at Dartmouth has taken an emotional toll. Many classmates have told her, both recently and when she was a student, that if she really loved her alma mater, she wouldn’t criticize it. Hennessey said she does not enjoy the anger and discouragement that come with fighting against sexual assault, and she has taken time off from Dartmouth Change. But her love for the College keeps her in the fight.
Bob Wetzel ’76, another founding member of Dartmouth Change, said that Hennessey’s proximity to campus gives her insight into the school’s daily challenges as well as events like the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault meetings. At the same time, he said, being so close to the issue of sexual assault on campus and yet feeling unheard can often feel like banging one’s head against the wall.
“We all have our own ways of dealing with that frustration,” Wetzel said. “We have to.”
In times of discouragement, Hennessey said, she focuses on the activities that sustain her, like talking to current Dartmouth students and visiting her young granddaughter.
“But then I see my granddaughter and think, ‘Well, the only way you’re going to Dartmouth is if we get this fixed!’” she said, laughing.
Ultimately, family underpins Hennessey’s dedication to improving Dartmouth despite the demoralizing periods.
“What makes me feel most validated is when my daughter, who’s a ’09, tells me how proud she is of me for fighting for Dartmouth,” she said. “I’ll continue the fight even though there are many moments I don’t want to. I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t.”
