It should come as no surprise that many people reacted with horror to the stories of students who have been arrested, beaten and tear-gassed on university campuses around the country for protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, the images of armed riot cops stationed on campuses around the country seem more reminiscent of scenes from war than of the modern university. State violence on college campuses is not without precedent. From the Tlatelolco killings of Mexican students calling for political change in 1968, to the slaughter of pro-democracy students in the Athens Polytechnic uprising of 1973, to the United States’ Kent State massacre of students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia in 1970, we have seen that, when pushed, governments are unafraid to open fire on their own citizens.
With this chilling history in mind, we now must confront the situation unfolding before us today. After two Dartmouth students were arrested in the fall during a peaceful protest against the war in Gaza, the tone was set for relationships between the College and student protestors. Students, faculty and community members from Dartmouth and the surrounding area have called relentlessly for the charges against these students to be dropped, and yet very little has changed since the hunger strikes began.
I was recently having a conversation with my friend, an exchange student from Yonsei University in South Korea, about the June Democratic Struggle of 1987 that toppled the fascist dictatorship ruling the country. Our conversation concentrated on a particularly poignant moment: the killing of Lee Han-yeol, a Yonsei student murdered by police during the protests against the dictatorship. Collapsed into the arms of another protestor, blood pouring from his head and soaking his Yonsei University crewneck, the image that immortalized the life of Han-yeol and the South Korean struggle for democracy is eerily reminiscent of the scenes we see today of students being dragged away by riot police. As the universities, schools and libraries of Gaza are reduced to rubble and students are zip-tied and thrown into prison buses across the United States, we need to ask ourselves some serious questions.
We are approaching the 54th anniversary of Kent State — Do we want to join the ranks of those seeking to crush and suppress student political expression? Or do we want to take a stand against scholasticide — the systematic destruction of educational infrastructure and the killing of teachers and students — that is occuring right now in Gaza? Do we want to take a stand against the police state and for the sanctity of human life and knowledge, our dignity and the dignity of the Palestinian people? History has not been kind to those who sought to repress the students who fought against South African apartheid or the Vietnam War. Dartmouth’s administration may want to take notes.
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