Rave Reviews?
Early in the morning of Tuesday, January 21, 1986, a group of students calling themselves the "Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green before Winter Carnival" stepped off of a flatbed truck parked alongside the Green, walked over to the cluster of shanties built to urge Dartmouth's divestment from companies with holdings in South Africa, took out sledgehammers, and knocked the sides out of the shanties except the one where two members of the Dartmouth Community for Divestment (DCD) were staying. Some members of the Dartmouth community have alleged that this was an act of terrorism, because these students then issued a signed letter making a statement to the effect that, as DartmouthReview writer and sledgehammer-wielder Teresa Polenz '87 later said, the Committee was merely "picking up trash that was on the Green." As Prof. Nancy Vickers remarked, "Vandals don't identify themselves; terrorists do." It did not surprise me to learn that many members of the sledgehammer gang were associated with The Review that paper that has become a source of divisiveness.
Many Dartmouth students and faculty members charged that the destruction of the shanties was a racist act, since, they said, it was committed on the night of the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King's birthday. I don't think it was a racist act. First of all, it was not actually committed on the King holiday, but several hours after. Secondly, the perpetrators asserted that the fact that the attack was made so close to the observance of King's birthday was "purely coincidental. It was a severe oversight on our part." (That statement, by the way, is my nomination for the understatement of the Year Award.) Perhaps it was an oversight; but it was an oversight, as Prof. Robert Oden observed, that was catastrophically consequential. As a result of this poor timing, many black students were outraged. I saw it as yet another example of The Review's absurd lack of sensitivity. Furthermore, when it was so obvious to the campus that the perpetrators were anti-divestment, their sarcastic statement about beautifying the Green was offensive to the entire community. Why this obvious facade? The outrage would have been stemmed a bit, perhaps, if this cocky attitude had not been assumed.
Like many Dartmouth students, I am not as involved as the DCD with the debate over whether Dartmouth should divest. However, like many Dartmouth students, I am angered at this violence and am troubled about what The Review has become. Those who committed the act are many of the same people who tirelessly prate about upholding the "great Dartmouth traditions." Yet they violated the tradition that should be most sacred to any educational institution the tradition of rational, intellectual discourse. The Review delights in calling the DCD members "radicals." Yet, if we define radicalism as the desire to subvert existing institutions, then the students who swung the sledgehammers are the only perfect radicals at Dartmouth. Instead of expressing their views through established channels of communication and action such as calling a forum on the divestment issue, or a debate between them and the DCD-they planned and carried out a violent action.
However, I also have some reservations about the Parkhurst sit-in that followed the shanty attack. The protesters' two central demands were responded to but they decided nonetheless to occupy Parkhurst. Dean of the College Edward Shanahan had promised them that the students who destroyed the shanties would be brought before the Committee on Standards in a few days (to ensure their right to due process); and Dean of the Faculty Dwight Lahr called an emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Faculty and told the protesters that he was confident the Committee would call a moratorium on classes and would organize a forum on the issues raised by the shanty attack. Nevertheless, the two hundred protesters decided to occupy the building. However, I think that the issues had become so confused and the frustration level had risen so high, that a sit-in was hardly a bad thing even if it only let two hundred angry people blow off steam in a non-violent way. Apparently, the sit-in was an important learning experience for those involved: negotiation, communication and consensus were the dominant themes. It certainly did a lot more to strengthen the Dartmouth community than did the ambush on the Green.
But, let's return to the source of all this -The Dartmouth Review. As a moderate, I welcome a conservative newspaper. The problem with The Review is that it is not a valid representative of the conservative students or alumni. In its political positions, perhaps it is; but in its presentation, it can be obnoxious and cruel and it often thrives on petty, personal attacks. For example, it calls liberal Assistant Professor of English Ivy Schweitzer "poison Ivy"; it very often makes innuendos about professors reputed to be homosexual; it refers to many black faculty members as "affirmative action professors" and to female faculty members as "professorettes." Granted, The Review gets its opinions across, but it does so by using the journalistic equivalent of "SEX!!! Now that I have your attention..." As Randolph Bourne said of World War I, these kinds of strategies are "the apotheosis of small boyism."
At its founding, The Review was a wellwritten, conservative publication. Testifying to what The Review has become is the fact that some of its original advisors, wellrespected and prominent conservatives such as Professor of English Jeffrey Hart (a senior editor of The National Review) and Congressman Jack Kemp, have resigned from The Review's advisory board.
I, along with many students and faculty, deeply resent the fact that because of the extensive national media coverage The Review's sensationalism and exploits receive, many people regard The Review as representative of Dartmouth. I cannot begin to count the times when a prospective applicant or someone in my hometown or at work has said to me, "You go to Dartmouth? Well, aren't you all racist reactionaries up there? I always hear about your paper, The Dartmouth Review." Like it or not, The Review has come to misrepresent responsible conservatism and to symbolize Dartmouth.
The Review is its own worst enemy. There is a curious word, "animus," that describes the way in which The Review keeps sparring with itself. "Animus" has two meanings: 1) animating spirit or purpose; intention; and 2) feeling of hostility; enmity; animosity. Expression of strong conservative opinions was once The Review's animus its intention. However, like the shanties, The Review no longer carries out its original purpose. Like the shanties, it now symbolizes a divided community and the hostility attendent upon that division. In this respect, oddly enough, The Review is similar to the shanties as in Leonardo da Vinci s Buttleof Anghiari, opposing forces are joined at this juncture. The Review's animosity has become its animating spirit. I am not suggesting that either the shanties be demolished or The Review be abolished. I am only urging a clarification of the issues and a return to the authenticity of the original purpose.
Why don't the students who, at the Forum, called themselves conservatives and condemned The Review, start another conservative newspaper? Better yet, why doesn't The Review shape up? Some of its articles are witty, many are pungent and pithy, most are provocative. How unfortunate it is that people with such deeplyheld and often well-articulated beliefs feel compelled to resort to innuendo and yellow journalism to make these beliefs known. If The Review does not stop raising the sledgehammer or its literary counterpart the fist of insinuation and sensationalism it will be forever with its fists raised, like the schoolyard bully, bellowing insults and daring the Dartmouth community to "Put 'em up." As H. G. Wells wrote, "He who raises his fist is he who has run out of ideas.
Dorothy L. Foley 'B6, one of the Magazine's Whitney Campbell interns, is an English major.She wrote an honors thesis on American elegiesand is currently a Senior Fellow, writing andproducing a play about the poet Edna St. VincentMillay.
