(Name-mce) ListServ Dartmouth Protests a Slur

[NativeVillage500 at aol.com]

Greetings,
 
This article was shared by a Native Village reader.  It is certainly worth 
reading. 
 
As an added bit of interest, Dartmouth was  founded in 1769 by Eleazar 
Wheelock, with funds partially raised by the efforts  of a Native American preacher 
named Samson Occom. The grant for the College,  given in 1769 by King George 
III of England, highlighted Native American  education as the purpose of the 
institution: "...for the education and  instruction of Youth of the Indian 
Tribes in the Land in reading, writing &  all parts of Learning which shall appear 
necessary and expedient..."  Unfortunately no more than 71 Indians attended in 
the years 1770-1865, and in  the century between 1865 and 1965, only 28 
Indians enrolled at Dartmouth. 
 
Warm Regards,
Gina Boltz, Director
Native Village Publications
_http://www.nativevillage.org_ (http://www.nativevillage.org) 
Member, Link Center Foundation
 
 
 
 
Dartmouth Protests a Slur
Cover of ‘Review' Incites 500 
By Peter Jamison
Valley News Staff Writer
Hanover -- Shirtless and long of hair, the unidentified man was all  over 
Dartmouth College, carrying a knife in one hand and in the other  brandishing a 
bloody scalp.  
He drew a quick response -- albeit from protesters, not police. 
About 500 Dartmouth students and faculty rallied yesterday in response to the 
 latest cover of a conservative student newspaper: a drawing of an American  
Indian holding a scalp and knife, next to the headline, “The Natives are 
Getting  Restless!” 
On the last day of classes, the rally brought to a close a term fraught with  
tensions at Dartmouth, where in the past two weeks college President James  
Wright has twice sent e-mails to the student body bemoaning insensitivity, or  
outright bigotry, toward the school's minority groups. One of the letters  
specifically discussed intolerance to Dartmouth's American Indian students.  
“We thought we had been making progress, and then suddenly this comes out,”  
said Danielle Strollo, a member of the college's Inter-Community Council. “
This  is not Dartmouth.”  
Carrying the incendiary cover art was The Dartmouth Review, the  independent 
student publication notorious for its self-avowed efforts to skewer  
liberalism's sacred cows. Tuesday's edition features several articles on the  recent 
controversy surrounding American Indians on campus.  
“I honestly was not trying to stir the pot on this one,” Dartmouth senior  
Daniel Linsalata, the Review's editor-in-chief, said in an interview. “I  
think, by the same token, the reaction that has precipitated has kind of proven  
our point. That gives me some kind of satisfaction.” 
Linsalata said there were several motives driving him to select the cover: he 
 wanted to make a joke about what he says is the overreaction of the 
college's  American Indian leadership to certain events this fall, and also to 
communicate  that those same leaders are “out for blood at all costs, getting angry 
at  anything that incites them.” He said the denunciation of his newspaper has 
shown  him right. 
“I don't read the Review, I never have, and I don't intend to start  now, 
because they're the lunatic fringe,” said Michael Hanitchak, a member of  Oklahoma
’s Choctaw tribe who graduated from Dartmouth in 1973 and now heads the  
college's Native American Program. “I think they know the effect that they want  
to have is to hurt people, and they are hiding behind their freedom of  speech.”
 
Some 400 attended the rally, which took place from 2 to 4 p.m. yesterday.  
Campus organizations including Native Americans at Dartmouth, the Afro-American  
Society, the Gay Straight Alliance, La Alianza Latina and the College 
Democrats  planned the event, “Solidarity Against Hatred.” It featured a dozen 
speakers,  some of them students, others administrators and faculty.  
President Speaks
“Today, this community is hurting,” Wright, the college president, said to  
the assembled students. “My Dartmouth -- our Dartmouth -- is one that condemns 
 the deliberate mean-spiritedness that was demonstrated in the publication  
yesterday.” 
While the demonstration was organized in response to the Review's  cover, 
organizers said it came against the backdrop of a number of incidents  this fall 
that demonstrate what they said are undercurrents of racism on  campus. 
The Dartmouth Native American Council, composed of faculty members and staff  
as well as students, last week took out an advertisement in The  Dartmouth, 
the daily student newspaper, describing grievances of the  college's American 
Indians.  
The group said in the ad that a group of fraternity pledges disrupted an  
American Indian drum circle on Columbus Day, and that a formal put on by the  
crew team had an insensitive “cowboys and Indians” theme. The ad also mentioned  
a dining-hall mural that shows American Indians drinking with Dartmouth's  
founder, Eleazar Wheelock. 
The ad kicked off a series of public statements drawing attention to American 
 Indian issues at Dartmouth.  
There was Wright's first e-mail, in which he reaffirmed the college's  
decision, now three decades old, to abandon its Indian mascot, and stated that  
American Indians on campus “deserve more and better than to be abstracted as  
symbols and playthings.”  
Public Apology
Next came a public apology from Athletic Director Josie Harper, who said she  
should have thought twice before inviting the University of North Dakota, 
with  its Fighting Sioux mascot, to a college hockey tournament. 
Other minority groups have also complained of racism. In an e-mail to  
students Tuesday, Wright wrote, “three non-Dartmouth individuals, driving  through 
campus, threatened and verbally abused a student. It is not clear  whether this 
incident is related to events reported by other students this  term.”  
Strollo said the incident, as she understood it, had involved a black  
student, and that those in the car had shouted racist slurs. She said that in  
another incident, a black student had been confronted with a racial epithet at a  
Dartmouth party. 
After these events, the Review cover was “the last straw,” according  to 
rally organizer Soralee Ayvar, a senior. 
“To imagine that that image is supposed to be a portrayal of myself or any of 
 my Native American friends, it's insulting,” said Samuel Kohn, a sophomore 
from  Montana and member of the Crow tribe who is active in American Indian 
affairs at  the college.  
Hanitchak said that caricatures of American Indians are “damaging” to  
American Indian students because they reinforce “the notion that Indian people  can 
be used somehow for people's entertainment.”  
Dartmouth was founded, in part, to educate American Indians, but only 19 of  
them graduated from the college during its first 200 years. Since 1970, when  
Dartmouth began an active campaign to recruit more American Indian students,  
more than 500 have graduated -- more than at all the other Ivy League colleges 
 combined, according to the school's Web site. 
Dartmouth senior Frank Gutierrez called the reaction to the Review  cover “
kind of ridiculous.” Gutierrez, whose father is Puerto Rican, said he  doesn't 
think racism is a problem at Dartmouth. Some impassioned students “don't  
really make a distinction between saying something insensitive and implying  racial 
superiority,” he said -- a view also forwarded in Linsalata’s editorial  on 
Dartmouth racial issues in the Review. 
“The people on The Dartmouth Review, they're not white supremacists or  
whatever,” Gutierrez said, standing outside Dartmouth's Hopkins Center  yesterday. “
They’re just lashing out against political correctness.” 
Following a meeting among student groups Tuesday night where yesterday's  
rally was planned, posters were taped up around campus with the names of the  
30-odd writers who work for the Review. Linsalata said it was “clearly  meant to 
be a blacklist,” he said. The angry reaction is “just as intolerant, if  not 
more, as they accuse us of being.” 
While this debate rages on, some at the college are merely bystanders. One of 
 them is Aaron Martin, a sophomore member of the crew team, who stood at a  
distance yesterday afternoon while students gathered for the demonstration. “
I'm  just here to hear what they have to say,” Martin said. 
Martin said he had attended the much-discussed “cowboys and Indians” crew  
party, but wasn't even aware there was a theme.  
“Out of my own experience, I feel that people on this campus are a little too 
 sensitive to what's been going on,” he said. “The crew formal has been kind 
of  blown out of proportion. It was no big deal.” He glanced about, rocking 
back and  forth on the balls of his feet. “I would like to say more,” he said. 
“But I feel  like anything I say would be misconstrued.” 
_http://www.vnews.com/11302006/3622171.htm_ 
(http://www.vnews.com/11302006/3622171.htm)