College President Sian Leah Beilock wrote in her apology to the Dartmouth community after 89 people were arrested on May 1 that she had no choice but to “ask the Hanover Police Department for help taking down the encampment” in order to “put the safety and wellbeing of students first.” Yet, by comparing the current administration’s militarized response to student encampments with that of previous administrations, it is evident that Beilock’s suppression of protest is unprecedented and dangerous.
By putting the history of the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s and the May 1 encampment side by side, one can see an example of community growth and administration-student collaboration that Beilock’s administration must heed.
On Nov. 15, 1985, a shantytown was erected on the Green by the Dartmouth Community for Divestment with materials donated by members of the Upper Valley Committee For A Free South Africa — what some now would call “outside agitators” — to pressure the College to divest the endowment from South African apartheid. Students occupied the shanties 24/7, including through winter break, and some Dartmouth professors began holding classes inside the shanties as a show of solidarity. The shanties remained up for roughly three months, until Feb. 10, 1986.
In contrast, on May 1, encampments were erected by students and deconstructed by local and state law enforcement the very same night. Students were arrested within two hours of the first tents being built. In an authoritarian blow, Beilock turned her back on her students while discarding debate and student voices.
Back to the South African apartheid protests: students escalated their protests on Jan. 9, 1986 when 30 students engaged in a 234-minute — one minute for each dollar allocated by Pretoria to the education of Black South Africans per capita per annum — sit-in at the President’s office. Four days later, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to divest all financial holdings of companies doing business in South Africa and asked the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America and College Retirement Equities Fund to similarly divest.
After May 1, arrested students were banned from Parkhurst, the Green and Beilock’s residence — prime protest areas.
On Jan. 21, 1986, the morning after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — during a gap between Safety and Security check-ins — the shanties were attacked by 12 students with sledgehammers while two underclassmen female students were sleeping in them. The attackers, 10 of whom were members of The Dartmouth Review, called themselves the “Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival,” according to the March 1986 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine edition. On Jan. 22, 90 students and faculty held a 30-hour sit-in in the office of College President David McLaughlin, with more than 300 students and faculty occupying Parkhurst Hall. The sit-in resulted in a two-hour meeting with the President and a cancellation of class the next day.
Students this year weren’t attacked by fellow students with sledge hammers but charged by militarized law enforcement in riot gear and with batons.
In 1986, by contrast, no arrests were made, neither during the sit-ins nor during the three months the shantytown stood. Instead, the President and faculty openly engaged with student activists. In his announcement canceling classes, McLaughlin cited the demolition of the shanties as an act of “racism, violence and disrespect for diversity and opinion” and held College-wide teach-ins all day to conduct “the humane work of learning and understanding.” According to past reporting by The Dartmouth, the College held an educational forum from Jan. 31 to Feb. 1 titled “U.S. Corporations in South Africa: Apartheid, Divestment,” planned by the administration, the Dartmouth Community for Divestment, faculty, students and the Board of Trustees. The final session explored the responsibility of a liberal arts college in promoting change through its endowment.
The statement that the endowment is inherently political was not in question, as it was in the “campus protest” email sent from the Office of The President on May 2, 2024. Beilock also did not collaborate on a teach-in of this degree. In 2024, activists and administrators do not reach across the aisle as they once did.
The Board of Trustees, which today is largely elusive, was receptive to the idea that the endowment is political and more open to student voices. Additionally, Trustees had, in the words of anti-apartheid activist Howard Hawkins ’75, a “much more human relationship [with students].” The Board’s then-chairman, Walter Burke ’44, applauded Dartmouth’s Jan. 31 to Feb. 1 educational forum for “raising community awareness of the deplorable conditions in South Africa that are the consequences of apartheid” in a letter to the Dartmouth community on Feb. 3, 1986. He instructed Trustees who attended the forum to share with the Board what they learned, and assured the campus that “companies operating in South Africa will periodically be reviewed.” The Board openly communicated, worked with and listened to student activists.
According to the current Chair of the Board, Liz Lempres ’83 Th’84, each Trustee “unequivocally supports” Beilock. I question why now, in the face of lacking communication, students are not treated as stakeholders.
Again, back to 1986: After a series of successful negotiations with students, the Town of Hanover threatened the College with an injunction and a fine for the remaining shanties standing outdoors on town land. In response, Dean of the College Edward Shanahan proposed the final shanty be moved to College Hall instead of Parkhurst. Some students protested this on Feb. 11 and assistant College counsel Sean Gorman informed students at the protest they would be subject to arrest if they continued blocking the removal. Eighteen students were arrested by Hanover and local police, 17 for criminal trespass and one for simple assault for resisting arrest.
Thirteen days later, the day before their arraignments, the prosecutor dropped charges against the 17 and the College referred the case to the Committee on Standards instead.
This history I have compiled through archival research at Rauner Library and interviews with alumni offers us precedent of our institution treating student protesters as stakeholders in the College. But we have come a long way since 1986. As Hawkins puts it, the current “repression from Dartmouth administration is like night and day.” Hawkins believes that “an institution like Dartmouth is supposed to stand for discussion and academic freedom and they call in the state police.” Instead of ignoring May 1, Dartmouth’s administration must rebuild its relationship with students by acknowledging them as stakeholders and listening to their demands.
As the permanent exhibit in Dartmouth Hall shows, the College postures pride in its history of anti-apartheid protest. The Dartmouth community cannot forget this history or allow it to be warped. Beilock’s response on May 1 was unprecedented and atrocious in the history of the College. It must not become normalized.
Harper Richardson is a member of the Class of 2027. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
