There Is No Lack of Concerned Students

"Let me tell alumnus Ferry ..."

DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE RELIGIOUS LIFE

MR. W. H. Ferry '32 could only conclude from the incomplete evidence presented him by The Undergraduate Chair of last June that Hanover "is a bywater of glassy calm amidst the growing turbulence on American campuses." Many of us here at Dartmouth were sickened by the actions of and the publicity given to the Florida-bound students who went to Selma on a lark. It has been made clear to Dartmouth students that they should not go to "the South" except by responsible invitation and then only after careful screening and training. In general, these responsible students are incompletely reported on and their activities are no longer considered "news" by The Dartmouth. An irresponsible and frivolous lark is news; so is weenyism.

But let me tell alumnus Ferry - and all other alumni - about Dartmouth students beaten, jailed, bombed, half-starved, living in rags, hungry, under imminent threat of torture and emasculation, insulted, spit upon, labeled white-niggers, living sleepless nights of fear, losing beloved worker friends by southern murder, enduring scorn and contempt not only of southern rednecks but also of some of their fellow Dartmouth students, of students undergoing almost unbearable mental and emotional stress. These Dartmouth students are indeed a minority, as alumnus Ferry suggests they well might always be—but not too small a minority, and one loyally supported by a rather large minority of fellow students who, not having' themselves the vocation to participate in the flesh in the Freedom Movement, do support with money and every possible aid and sympathy their fellows bodily involved in the events that are rocking the world.

Alumnus Ferry's college days coincide with this writer's; ours were troubled days, those days of the Great Depression and a struggling labor movement, and many of us were then in revolt. But we students were very few who gave up months or years of our college lives to stand with the unemployed in their soup lines and to eat their doled charity bread, to sell their apples on street corners, to live in their miserable homes, or to picket with Detroit auto workers and be beaten by company goons. We were sympathetic and supportive, our small minority. Today's student - Dartmouth men included - his small minority stands alongside today's disinherited, personally shares his bitter bread, and physically undergoes his beatings and torture, suffers his dehumanization.

It is impossible, without devoting an entire issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, to present all the evidence. But alumnus Ferry and others deserve at least a summary listing, inadequate to be sure, and like any listing undramatic and all but feelingless. The beginning was more than a year ago when a call came for students to help register Negroes in Alabama and Mississippi and the beginning centered in the Dartmouth Christian Union then and it still does, students of all faiths and no faith responding alike. More than a score first responded. They were carefully screened, some rejected (no beards, no misunderstanding about facing possible death). They were carefuly instructed; in the DCU quarters they were taught how to be kicked, beaten, insulted, - this was their training by others who had "been there before" in how to defend their bodies, their lives, in non-violent acceptance. They were to register voters, not defend their lives. They drove south in small groups, left their cars hidden on out-state Negro college campuses, and entrained, bused, or flew across the guarded state borders. Their names? Allan Coggeshall '64, Paul Stetzer '67, William Burton '65, Dirk DeRoos '68, Sean Hennessey '68, David Presberg '64, Jonas Liutkus '65, Peter Muilenburg '67, Roger Daly '67. Anthony Beaulieu '64 worked in Mississippi during the entire summer of 1964.

Before them, and after them, came many others. In St. Augustine, Florida, Bruce Lawder '66; Allan Coggeshall imprisoned and held in a hotbox, a heat treatment in a cell pit. This for tutoring Negro children. Richard Bathrick '66 (of Darien!) on night guard duty lying below window level, which is below shotgun level. Gary Inselman '6B and Edgar Hirst '65 registering voters in Sun Flower County, their Freedom House bombed and burned to the ground.

Answering an emergency call to help in the dirty work of preparing the way and caring for the Selma-Montgomery marchers were Richard Joseph '65 and James Bopp '66, and Bruce Lawder was there too.

Jonas Liutkus '65 now in his second year in Selma and Lowndes County, Alabama; Peter Muilenberg '67 now returned from a year in Jackson and Natchez, Mississippi; Roger Daly '67 had four months in Jackson. Count has been lost of their jailings and beatings; nor can their hunger (live on popcorn and vitamin pills for weeks!) be described, their nights of terror when bombs or bricks sounding like bombs were thrown on front porches to prevent their sleep.

The story could go on. Thousands of dollars raised by Dartmouth students and faculty and townspeople to support them. The College administration always supportive and proud of their involvement and courage, of their identification with their Negro brothers, Dean Seymour granting "leaves of absence" without a moment's hesitation, faculty and students raising thousands of dollars for bail, President Dickey proud of them and giving encouragement in word and deed.

But the Dartmouth student's identification with his generation takes many other forms and can be only briefly noted. They marched silently through Hanover streets to demonstrate their dislike for Governor Wallace's racial attitudes and activities when he spoke at Dartmouth - but filed in orderly and respectfully to hear him speak. The DCU and the Tucker Foundation "piped in" to the campus the national Vietnam teach-in from Washington - and on Green Key Weekend! The large Vietnam teach-in in Dartmouth Hall was arranged by students and supported by the faculty. The Undergraduate Council, with the DCU assisting, held an all-New England College Conference on Civil Rights, bringing to Dartmouth the national leaders of SNCC, SDS, CORE, SCLC, MFDP, NSM, COFO, and others. In the summer just past, Richard Joseph '65, James Bopp '66, and Stephen Posniak '66 worked in Washington, D. C., on the Mississippi Challenge, seeking to unseat the illegally elected Mississippi congressmen. The St. Augustine tutoring project entered its second year with Dartmouth students responsible for screening tutors from all New England colleges.

Voluntary "poll taxes" are collected by students each election day in Hanover and Norwich. Not permitted to use Hanover sidewalk or street, they stand on narrow store steps, to reach out to people going to the polls. Students helped organize a Selma sympathy march in Lebanon, more people marching that day than in a similar and much-publicized march in Cleveland at the same time. Carloads of Dartmouth men drove to Washington, D. C., to participate in Mississippi Challenge and Vietnam demonstrations last April. They attended dozens of Civil Rights and Freedom Movement conferences in many cities and states throug-out the year.

Less spectacularly, under the DCU Negro Application Encouragement program, strongly supported by the College and admission officers, scores of students spend their holidays in their hometowns in a countrywide search for promising Negro sophomore and junior-high-school students, encouraging them and their parents and their schools to help prepare them not just for Dartmouth, but for any Ivy League college. Hundreds of students tutor, in a DCU program, the high school students of Lebanon.

Nor should it be forgotten that Dartmouth is the first college in the country in which the students themselves voted an end to fraternity discrimination. National houses go local each year. This is not without its own kind of agonizing struggle for upper-middle-class Ivy students, and it is no less than a bold step — at last! - for SAE of all houses to pledge a Negro this year at Dartmouth. The National will certainly be heard from and that is expected. Not yet mentioned are the many who take time out of their college years for the more middle-class, liberal, respectable Peace Corps, VISTA, and other similar national programs.

And now? We are in session less than a week, but already groups of students are meeting daily and long into the night getting ready for who knows what they have in the works to express without delay their feelings about their world and their time. It is my opinon that President Dickey is pleased, indeed grateful, that a large minority of Dartmouth students thus identify themselves with their generation and its social, political, economic turmoil.

Certainly for some students the Freedom Movement is not so much a struggle for integration into society as it presently exists, as it is a movement against racial alienation by overcoming (not passively entering into) the society we know until now. Today's students are not inclined to play checkers with their government. Their search for ways of direct action where legislative action fails to really meet the poor and discriminated-against means that this student generation has learned from poor cotton-picking Southern Negroes to be an insurgent, community-level acting generation. They seek (witness the Vietnam and Santo Domingo demonstrations) some measure of control over the decisions affecting their lives. In Mississippi and Alabama they have seen the anguish of unrelieved oppression. The small minority Mr. Ferry hopes for is here at Dartmouth too, even though the majority here as everywhere are liberals whose hallmark is respectability in their obligations to society.

The small minority (even one here and there from Darien or the Main Line) are the new abolitionists who, from their experiences, are now suspicious that their upbringing in many respects has been based on a framework of lies. The American Dream? The real American Dream is and always has been one man - one vote. They now make political issue out of alienation and abuse. Perhaps fewer at Dartmouth than elsewhere; but they are here and they are men of a strong new consciousness.