In a recent study from The Dartmouth, two thirds of student respondents said they do not feel protected by the College from external prosecution for expressing their opinions.
As the one-year anniversary of the May 1 approaches, The Dartmouth set out to gauge whether Dartmouth students feel comfortable engaging in visible political action on campus. The results of the survey show many students feel hesitant to protest.
Amy Conaway GR, a member of the Graduate Organized Laborers of Dartmouth — the College’s graduate student union — criticized Beilock’s relationship with student protesters.
“President Beilock’s administration has called the police on peaceful protestors, pressed charges against peaceful protestors and refuses to protect international students and workers,” she wrote in an email statement. “These actions are attempts to silence dissent and free speech on campus.”
When asked about their political engagement on campus, 35.43% of surveyed students reported that they have actively protested at least once on campus.
That percentage jumped to 45.35%, however, when asked about participating in protest off campus.
Comfort protesting on campus
The Dartmouth asked students how comfortable they felt about protesting on campus. For students who said that they have not protested on campus, the plurality — 42.94% — felt strongly about an issue but didn’t feel comfortable advocating their views.
Paul Yang ’25, a member of the Palestine Solidarity Coalition says that he definitely does not feel comfortable protesting, citing “what has been going on across the country,” including international students’ visas being revoked.
Maya Beauvineau ’26, a member of Fossil Free Dartmouth, said that while she wouldn’t say she feels comfortable protesting, she feels it is “still important.”
“I wouldn’t say [I feel] comfortable, but I feel like it is still important,” she said.
Close to a third of surveyed students, 31.15%, said they didn’t feel strongly enough about an issue to protest.
The remaining 25.90% used the opportunity to write a response, explaining why they didn’t protest. Some such write-in responses included “fear of arrest,” “student visa” and “felt strongly about an issue but will get cancelled if I voice my opinion.”
Despite freedom of expression and discourse being a key pillar in the College’s mission, the majority of surveyed students do not feel safe protesting on campus. About 22.07% of surveyees reported feeling very unsafe protesting on campus, and 36.50% reported feeling somewhat unsafe, while only 27.51% and 13.92% report feeling somewhat safe and very safe, respectively.
The Dartmouth asked students how the Beilock administration may have affected their ability to feel safe protesting. 60.01% of respondents do not believe that President Beilock has created a safe space for discourse on campus. Of those students, 40.40% said they feel very unsafe expressing their views, and 19.61% feel somewhat unsafe. The remaining 39.98% of respondents feel either somewhat safe or very safe.
Beauvineau criticized the administration’s new freedom of expression policy, which was announced on April 3.
“Since the Beilock administration has come in, it has been very clear that dissent and disagreement and protest is, from what she says, allowed and is even encouraged through things like Dartmouth Dialogues,” she said. “But, only on her terms, only on the administration’s terms. That’s what I think the Freedom and Dialogue policy really illustrates.”
Protection by Dartmouth
The overwhelming majority — 72.28% — of students feel like the Trump administration has created a very unsafe space on campuses for discourse and expression. A further 12.25% feel somewhat unsafe, and 5.84% and 9.62% feel a somewhat safe space and a very safe space has been created, respectively.
The plurality, 45.42%, of respondents reported feeling very unprotected by the College from external prosecution, and another 22.03% reported feeling somewhat unprotected.
Conaway wrote that she has “never felt protected” by the Dartmouth administration when expressing her opinions.
She added that “no students or student-workers I have spoken to have any faith that Dartmouth would protect them from any external pressure.”
Yang criticized the Beilock administration for its comments on its potential cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We are constantly asking the administration and President Beilock to make a clear statement to not cooperate with Immigration Customs Enforcement, and they have been avoiding answering those questions and they have been avoiding making any clear statements about issues of immigration and safety of students,” Yang said. “If there could be any improvement on that part, I would feel much more comfortable.”
In a statement on April 21, a College spokesperson wrote, “As required by law, it is Dartmouth’s policy to cooperate with outside agencies while also protecting the rights and privacy of our students, scholars, faculty, and staff.”
The spokesperson directed The Dartmouth to the College’s protocol for U.S. Government and Law Enforcement Agency Site Visits.
Methodology Notes:
From Tuesday, April 5 to Monday, April 15, The Dartmouth fielded an online survey of the Dartmouth student body. The survey was sent out to 4,480 undergraduates through their school email addresses. Two hundred and eleven responses were recorded, resulting in a 4.7% response rate. Using administrative data from the College’s Office of Institutional Research, responses were weighted by gender, class year and race/ethnicity. Weighting was done through cell-based demographic upscaling. Survey results have a margin of error +/- 4.2%.
