Jokes Stuffy People Don't Like

Here is a minute mystery: On a recent winter day, I watched a single student walking in front of Parkhurst Hall several steps behind three other students who walked together. The door to Parkhurst opened and a well-known professor came out. He quickly passed the first student and caught up with the other three, whom he obviously knew. For a moment the single student looked scared to death. Who was this student, and why was he afraid?

Time's up. Did you guess it? I didn't really expect you to. Let me fill in some of the gaps. The frightened student was one William Cattan '83, editor-in-chief of a newspaper calling itself the "Dartmouth" Review. Emerging from Parkhurst Hall was Professor William Cole, who chairs the Music Department. In that week's issue of the Review, Cattan had attacked Cole as "crazy, black and tenured" the most recent in a series of racial attacks printed by the paper. The fact that there was no confrontation between the two suggested to me that the professor didn't recognize Cattan. But Cattan recognized Cole.

Many of my contemporaries at Dartmouth misjudged my riddle, too. They answered that the single student was black, and that the professor was Review guru Jeffrey Hart of the English department, walking with three Review editors. The fact is that the story can go in either direction. There is a lot of racial tension on campus these days. In my opinion, most of it can be laid at the feet of the Review. It has printed, among other things, a staged photograph of a black student being lynched at Occom Pond accompanying an article on the Ku Klux Klan; an article imitating black dialect and implying that black Dartmouth students are uniformly unintelligent; a photograph of several blacks in a ghetto holding copies of the Review appearing over the caption, "Who reads the Review? Welfare kids."

For most alumni, I think, the Review's brutal racism isn't news after three years of it, they are probably as sick of hearing about it as I am of talking about it. Others, I believe, need to hear about it, and need to understand what it means to this college.

Racial tension on campus is building. Many black students understandably resent the tendency of the white community to ignore the attacks and assume that the problem will just go away. A large proportion of them, indeed, project the racist attitudes of the Review editors onto the rest of the white students because of their failure to react.

Sam Smith, a black administrator who became something of a Review scapegoat last year when he was involved in a scrape with a Review editor, believes that his own physical act might have diffused tension somewhat, but that it has grown again. There is among the many black students with whom I spoke a feeling of impending conflict. As one senior put it, "This institution is at a break point. The integrity of the school is being threatened." Said an English professor, "People are being provoked. I would hate to see any violent eruptions here at Dartmouth."

The Review s brand of racism is an evasive one, operating by implication rather than outright statement. Dinesh D'Souza '83, who chairs the Review, claims that the paper "likes blacks" and refers to the paper's racial slurs as "jokes stuffy people don't think funny." It is the principles of affirmative action that are under attack, he claims - not blacks.

The editors of the Review are being obtuse. The implications of a quotation such as, "Affirmative Action: This explains your son's stupid friends," should be obvious.

The fact that the Review will not acknowledge its own bigotry adds insult to injury. In a recent letter to The Dartmouth, senior Kim Selmore '83 wrote: "In March I will return to the South after my short stay in the 'promised land,' and there I won't be called 'Affirmative Action student' or 'Malfactor,' but 'nigger.' I will welcome that encounter because there people will reveal honestly who they are and what they stand for, and not hide behind the guise of the conservative cloak."

Selmore is living proof that the paper's presentations of black students are outrageous: a government major, Selmore was recently accepted by two prestigious law schools, and in her spare time she has been prominent in bringing Dartmouth three consecutive Ivy League championships in women's basketball. "I love Dartmouth," Selmore recently told me, "but when I leave here I won't have anything more to do with it." Neither, she says, will she encourage black students to come to Dartmouth. (Minority matriculation at the College has, in fact, dropped 33 per cent in the last year. Hardly surprising. What kind of culturally aware black student would want to come to a school becoming nationally linked with racism?)

I wish every alumnus who receives the Review against his or her wishes would write to the paper expressing whatever objections are held. To Review subscribers and supporters, I offer the following longconsidered opinion: you are supporting an occasionally insightful, often well-written, and consistently bigoted voice which has caused extreme racial tension at the College and has smeared us nationwide.

Like so many members of this community, I am outraged at what is taking place at Dartmouth. I am also depressed by seeing the College's image subjected to the whims of a few egotistical and immature young men. We are trying hard to heal ourselves, to become a diverse and caring community. I hope the alumni will help.