On Oct. 29, the Dartmouth Student Government Senate met for its seventh weekly meeting of the term. Led by student body president Jessica Chiriboga ’24, the Senate discussed the DSG response to the student arrests on Oct. 28.
According to previous coverage by The Dartmouth, undergraduate students Roan V. Wade ’25 and Kevin Engel ’27 were arrested on criminal trespassing charges on Oct. 28, related to then-ongoing protests outside of Parkhurst Hall. In response to these arrests, Chiriboga and student body vice president Kiara Ortiz ’24 released two campus-wide email statements on Oct. 28, with the first describing the arrests as “a needless escalation” that “threatens to suppress students’ freedom of expression and dissent on campus” and the second providing additional context about the events leading to the arrests.
Chiriboga and Ortiz clarified during the Senate meeting that the email statements were not sent on behalf of DSG as a whole, but rather from themselves in their capacities as elected student body president and vice president.
Senators then discussed concerns and further actions to be taken by DSG.
North Park House Senator Sabik Jawad ’26 advocated for the DSG to sign the petition entitled “Where’s the Brave Space: Statement on the Arrest of Student Activists Outside Parkhurst.” The petition “[condemns] the recent arrests of students calling for a Dartmouth New Deal.”
“We call upon students, alumni, faculty and staff to support the right to freedom of expression and protest,” the petition states.
Fosu advocated against signing the petition because he believed it would complicate future cooperation with College administration.
“Even if it is a moral prerogative, it’s hard for us to be able to do that without compromising the rather privileged position that we have to be able to advocate for students,” he said.
North Park House Senator Chukwuka Odigbo ’25 said that it is not DSG’s responsibility to “tell the College” how its policies should be enforced, as the petition does.
“[DSG] is not in the habit of signing onto anything, even if it’s […] apolitical or neutral,” he said.
On the other hand, Jawad argued that the DSG had a unique obligation to take a stance by signing the statement.
“Expressing solidarity is not something we usually do, but if we were to do it, this is probably one of the few times we should,” he said.
The senators also discussed how the arrests should be evaluated in terms of the question, “Where are the brave spaces?” posed by the title of the “Brave Spaces” petition.
Chiriboga said the petition’s assertion that “all should have the right to protest nonviolently anywhere on College grounds” made her “uncomfortable.”
“I think that the College is within its right to restrict access to it’s own private property, particularly because if you don’t have a neutral policy that, for instance, restricts … tents on a campus ground, you could have a white supremacist group choose to set up a tent on the Green or other campus grounds,” she said.
School House Senator Roger Friedlander ’27 said he does not believe that the arrests contradicted Beilock’s idea of “brave spaces.”
“You would need many more examples of random policies being applied to free speech and free expression cases,” he said. “I don’t think this one time [means] we’re automatically suppressing speech just because [the student protestors] happened to break a rule after two weeks of successfully peacefully protesting.”
Senators also considered future steps to further communicate with students and administration about their freedom of expression and dissent on campus.
Jawad criticized the College’s belief that Engel and Wade had violated the Building and Facility Policy. According to Chiriboga and Ortiz’s second email, this policy prohibits “encampments and other uses that would facilitate the continuous presence of an individual or group of individuals on college grounds or within non-residential facilities.”
“The College has a right to penalize people when they break their policies, but in this case, [the College was] essentially trying to find loopholes to stop them, and to selectively punish people who were following their party line,” Jawad said.
Jawad also said that many of the other rules established by the Building and Facility Policy are frequently broken without repercussions.
“There’s a part of the policy that says you can’t climb College buildings without permission from [the Department of Safety and Security],” Jawad said. “I know enough people on this campus who do that just for ‘funsies,’ and never have [DoSS] or anyone else stopped them or tried to bar them,” he said.
The Senate also proposed modifying College policy to more explicitly communicate the expectations of the College. Chiriboga said that the Office of Student Life and Student Affairs have different levels of detail in their respective policies about “Freedom of Expression and Dissent.”
The Office of Student Life website specifies that the College can restrict where protests occur, signage and displays, and when they can occur, as well as the difference between dissent and disruption. In contrast, the Student Affairs website only provides a general statement about permissible protest and demonstration. Chiriboga said that it is important for the College to “consolidate” these policies to ensure that students “have the most information” and to prevent “confusion.”
School House Senator JJ Dega ’26 said that the Senate should also encourage the administration to more clearly indicate to students the consequences of violating policies about the freedom of expression.
The Dartmouth New Deal, for example, says that “If the Dartmouth administration does not respond by the indicated time, those who believe in freedom will be forced to physical action.” President Beilock cited this in her email to students, faculty, and other campus members as a “clear violation of campus policies.”
“I think it would be wise to potentially add in ‘imminent threat’ of violence [to Standard I of the Standards of Conduct],” Dega said. “Under that policy, [the administration] reasonably used the ‘threat of violence’ in their interpretation of [‘physical action’] because it was next term, but in practical terms, an imminent threat of [‘physical action’] is not January of next year.”
All senators agreed on the importance of students being able to engage in protests and civil disobedience on campus.
“Our fear is that students feel like they can’t protest, which is not true,” Chiriboga said. “They can as long as they are aligned with College policies, which include being nonviolent.”
DSG Senate meetings occur weekly on Sundays at 7 p.m. in Collis 101 and are open to all students.
