This article is featured in the 2024 Homecoming Special Issue.
In an Oct. 16 email to campus, Dartmouth Student Government announced that the weekend hours of Baker-Berry Library would be extended — from 10 p.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and from midnight to 2 a.m. in the Tower Room — in accordance with “data and sentiments collected from students.” The change followed a virtual petition for longer hours created by Rai-Ching Yu ’27, which garnered 649 signatures.
One month earlier, on Sept. 21, Yu had sat down in Baker-Berry Library around 9:50 p.m., only to hear an announcement that the library would be closing in 10 minutes. In previous terms, the library had closed at 2 a.m. After speaking with a library attendant about the time changes, Yu said she left Baker eager for the College to adjust the policy. She decided to launch a petition.
“She said that it closes at 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays now, and midnight all the other days,” Yu said. “I was very unhappy about that, so I asked her if there was someone that I could contact who made this decision. … I got really mad, so I went and started a petition.”
According to Yu, the petition received around 100 signatures the day after she posted it to Change.org, a site dedicated to digital petitions. Three weeks later, it had amassed 647 signatures. This number was “impressive” to Yu, who thought that the petition would “burn out” after being circulated through “a few group chats.” After uploading the petition, Yu put up QR codes to access the website and spoke to students in the Baker lobby about the new closing times. The QR codes, along with Instagram and Fizz posts, were the “big signature source[s],” Yu said.
Following the petition, Yu reached out to Dartmouth Student Government as well as Dean of Libraries Susanne Mehrer to explain her concerns. DSG then emailed a form to the student body asking for feedback on the new, limited hours.
In two meetings with Mehrer, Yu said she “explained in-depth” the “main points that [she] wrote in the petition,” which included a need for quiet late-night spaces and “safety and accessibility.” Yu explained that the spaces that remained open past midnight — such as the Baker Lobby and the 1902 Room — “where people are allowed to talk or use as a passageway [are] not the most productive.”
According to Yu, Mehrer showed her a PowerPoint presentation that explained the College’s reasoning behind the shortened hours, which included staffing shortages and student “usage rates” of library services and locations.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, associate dean of libraries Jennifer Taxman wrote that Mehrer has also met with DSG president Chukwuka Odigbo ’25 to “hear their concerns.”
“The libraries have been actively making adjustments where possible to accommodate some of those concerns, particularly on how to improve our 24/7 spaces and dedicating additional 24/7 quiet study space,” Taxman wrote. “We will continue seeking improvements to meet the needs of our students.”
DSG senator Sabik Jawad ’26 said Yu’s petition was “very effective.” He added that petitions can be a “different means” for students’ voices to be heard, rather than going through DSG.
Indeed, Yu is not the only student — or broader community member — who has relied on petitions to make their voice heard. “Dartmouth College” is currently listed 104 times on Change.org, with petitions that range from “protect[ing] international students from deportation” to “bring[ing] Marvel comic writer Gabby Rivera to Dartmouth.”
Similar to Yu, some of these Change.org petitioners have faced success. In 2020, two petitions were posted to Change.org by alumni to remove and restore the weathervane above Baker-Berry Library, respectively. The original petition, posted by David Vincelette ’84 on May 26, 2020, received 865 signatures. The weathervane was removed on June 25 of that year and is currently being stored in the Hood Museum of Art.
Others, meanwhile, have fallen short. On Aug. 22, an anonymous petition was posted to Change.org to “Bring Back Core Power to Dartmouth.” The petition, which garnered 25 signatures, protested the removal of Fairlife Core Power Protein shakes from campus following the College’s switch from Coca-Cola to Pepsi products. While the petition caught the attention of some DSG members, Fairlife protein shakes remain unavailable on campus.
In addition to Change.org, Dartmouth community members have utilized other forms of petitioning, such as physical or emailed letters.
Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies professor Marcela Di Blasi has been working on a petition against the privatization of the Dartmouth College Child Care Center. She noted that “every petition is different” and “so much depends on what people are signing on for.”
“In the case of the protein petition, it seems like there’s a very clear request to bring back the protein drinks when people sign on to that,” Di Blasi said. “There are limitations around all of the people who are signing on to the petition. When it comes to the coalition [of signatures], if it’s slightly more complicated, then I think the petitions themselves get more complicated as well.”
Di Blasi added that the “best hope of being listened to” is finding “the right audience” for a petition. Jawad said he believes the “most effective” petitions do not necessarily have to target administrators.
“I see how [petitions] help students organize around issues, and that doesn’t necessarily mean communicating to admin, because for me, a lot of my experience was with petitions that I saw around the arrests of protesters last year,” Jawad said. “And I think their effectiveness came not because they were trying to communicate with admin, but more because they were trying to bring awareness not just to Dartmouth, but outside of campus as well,” Jawad said.
While petitions range in content, they ultimately provide a way to communicate with the community.
“You have to just be optimistic that people are interested in forming a community where people’s voices are heard,” Di Blasi said. “Otherwise, if that’s not the assumption that you’re operating under, then what are our values as a community?”
