Approximately 150 students, faculty and community members gathered on the Baker lawn this afternoon for a pro-Palestinian rally, titled “The Endowment is Political.” The rally was organized by the Dartmouth New Deal Coalition, a student activist group that advocates for divestment from companies with affiliations with Israel.
Several student speakers called for Dartmouth to divest from Israel-affiliated companies, condemned College President Sian Leah Beilock for the police response to the May 1 encampment protest and asked attendees to vote against Beilock in the upcoming May 9 student referendum on no confidence. According to previous reporting by The Dartmouth, Dartmouth Student Government announced it will hold a referendum to understand how the student body feels about Beilock’s leadership.
One of the speakers at the rally, Henry Eberhart ’24, announced that the New Deal Coalition would hold a “brave space” on the Baker lawn — a space for community members to gather and learn about divestment. He added that the brave space would demand for the administration to “disclose, divest and denounce Israeli apartheid and ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“We will be here every day until the College meets our demands, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. [and have] nine people here at all times in honor of the 90 people arrested [on May 1],” Eberhart said.
According to Harper Richardson ’27, a New Deal Coalition member and rally speaker, the name of the space is a reference to Beilock’s focus on creating brave spaces that promote diverse perspectives. Richardson said the brave space will include donated books, faculty teach-ins and a petition to the administration.
“The petition is calling for our demands to disclose and divest, to drop all the charges against [the] 90 [people] arrested on May 1 and [the] two students arrested in October and for President Beilock to resign immediately or for the Board of Trustees to remove her,” Richardson said.
According to Richardson, the New Deal Coalition had initially attempted to host a brave space that included a collection of books in the encampments last week, but it was shut down when the police removed the encampments.
“This is our second attempt, in a way,” Richardson said. “We are trying to follow regulations of the College so there’s no further harm added to our students.”
Rally speaker Virginia Snake-Bumann ’24 said she was “angry” and “frustrated” about the response to the encampment protests and called for “justice, accountability and respect” from the administration.
“The events on May 1 serve as a stark reminder about the power of peaceful protest and the brutality of those who seek to suppress it,” Snake-Bumann said. “[Beilock’s] call for the arrest of peaceful demonstrators … is a betrayal of everything Dartmouth stands for.”
Snake-Bumann added that the administration’s “investments in industries that perpetuate genocide” betrays the trust of Indigenous students at the College, which was founded through “genocidal and assimilative policies” on unceded land of the Abenaki people.
“How can we as students feel safe and supported in our education when the institution entrusted with our care invests in the oppression of others today?” Snake-Bumann said.
Solange Acosta Rodriguez ’24, who also spoke at the rally, said the event — as well as the May 1 encampment protests — served as a reminder of the administration’s “absolute moral failings.”
“I want to go to a school where dissent is welcome, [a school] whose endowment goes toward making a better future for all and a school that stands up for basic human rights,” Rodriguez said.
Marion Caldwell ’25 said in an interview before the rally that they attended because they could not “sit by while the College mistreats its students.”
“The more unsafe I feel protesting is on this campus, the more committed I am to protesting … and to making myself present,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell added that they hoped the charges against the protesters are dropped as “the bare minimum.”
“I don’t feel comfortable at this school with Beilock in office,” Caldwell said. “I don’t want her here.”
A member of the Class of 2026, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about his experiences, said he attended the rally after being charged and chased by riot police while in the spectator crowd at the edge of the Green during the May 1 protest.
“That experience fueled so much anger in me,” he said. “The school had one issue on their hands that they didn’t like, and that was the pro-Palestinian movement, and they really made it 10, if not 100, times worse.”
The member of the Class of 2026 said he was “so happy” the Dartmouth New Deal Coalition announced the brave space and is looking forward to “creat[ing] some change within [the] administration.”
“We are going to follow all of Dartmouth’s protocols to the T, and let’s see what their response is,” he said. “At the end of the day, I am a firm believer that any kind of solution rests on the premise of communication, always.”
Kent Friel ’26 contributed to reporting.
