(Name-mce) ListServ Dartmouth paper: cover of Indian scalper was mistake

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(http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2006/12/07/dartmout) 
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Dartmouth  paper: cover of Indian scalper was mistake

By Beverley Wang, Associated  Press Writer | December 7, 2006

CONCORD, N.H. --An independent student  newspaper at Dartmouth College says
it was a mistake to publish a Page One  illustration of an Indian
brandishing a scalp as part of a debate over the  treatment of minorities on
the Ivy League campus.

"It distracted  attention from the serious journalism The Dartmouth Review
has been  publishing, not least in the articles that came after the cover.
The result  was that people are discussing the cover, the scalp and the
offense felt by  descendants of the original Americans," editors Nicholas
Desai and Emily  Ghods-Esfahani wrote in a letter published Wednesday on The
Review's Web  site.

The offending issue was published a week earlier under the headline  "The
Natives are Getting Restless." It contained articles critical of  College
President James Wright, athletic director Josie Harper and a student  group,
Native Americans at Dartmouth.

The issue sparked a rally of  more than 500 students, faculty and staff
calling for more sensitivity to  minorities and an end to racist speech at
Dartmouth, which was founded more  than 230 years ago as a school for
American Indians.

"We certainly  agree with the statement of President James Wright that all
students at  Dartmouth, whatever their background, should feel welcome
here," wrote Desai,  the managing editor, and Ghods-Esfahani, an associate
editor.

The two  gave no ground, however, on the Review's criticism of recent
college actions  -- particularly Harper's college-wide apology for
scheduling a hockey game  later this month against the University of North
Dakota's "Fighting Sioux."  North Dakota is one of several schools whose use
of American Indian imagery  has been labeled "hostile and abusive" by the
National Collegiate Athletic  Association.

"There is such a thing as minding your own business. There  is also such a
thing as achieving a bit of perspective, even a sense of  humor," the two
wrote. "There are no `racists' or people who `hate' at The  Dartmouth
Review."

Dartmouth went on break this week after fall term  exams, but The Review's
top editor, Daniel Linsalata, forwarded the letter to  The Associated Press,
which covered the Nov. 29 protest.

In an  interview then, Linsalata said he was surprised by the furor over the
cover,  which he said was intended as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on
"unreasonable"  demands of American Indian students and faculty leaders.

"They're very  much looking to play the race card in any instance they can,"
he  said.

The week before, Dartmouth's Native American Council -- a mostly  faculty
group -- demanded a response to a series of provocations. They  included
fraternity pledges disrupting a drumming circle in October,  homecoming
T-shirts showing a Holy Cross knight performing a sex act on an  American
Indian, and The Review's distribution of Indian head  T-shirts.

Wright, the college president, publicly deplored the  incidents.

The college stopped using its Indian mascot decades ago, but  The Review
continues to sell Indian head canes, T-shirts, neckties and  other
souvenirs, calling them proud symbols of the school's past.

In a  statement last weekend, Linsalata repeated that the provocative Review
issue  -- with its cover art showing a wild-eyed warrior clutching a scalp
in one  hand and a knife in the other, reprints of old Dartmouth Indian
mascots and  satirical articles mocking those upset by a crew team formal
with a "Cowboy  and Indians" theme -- was aimed strictly at Native Americans
at Dartmouth,  the student group, and not at American Indians in general.

"The  accusation, then, that this cover was maliciously designed as a
wantonly  racist attack on ... Native Americans is patently false. All the
same, I  regret that it could have been construed as such," he wrote.

Members of  Native Americans at Dartmouth say there's no other way to
interpret  it.

"I don't think it's being oversensitive at all that I'm upset that  our
entire culture has just been taken and used as a satire by these  guys,"
freshman Shaun Stewart, a Cherokee, said last week. "To me, that's  a
blatant attack on the Native American community here at  Dartmouth."

Senior Melody Jones, a member of the Pascua Yaqui tribe,  agreed.

"Free speech doesn't mean that you can write whatever you want  and not be
held accountable. What they're asking for, it seems to me, is to  have
unaccountable  speech."

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