Are Conservatives Being Silenced?
Critics complain that speakers have been stymied; the reasons appear to be more bureaucratic than political.
"The College is censoring the only conservative views available to Dartmouth students," proclaimed the independent group, the Ernest Martin Hopkins Institute, in its newsletter. "The web of regulations spun by Parkhurst curtail the lively debate at the College," said The DartmouthReview. At issue was a new policy issued last spring by the McLaughlin administration which gave College officials more say over events sponsored on campus.
The paper and the Institute, both of them conservative, off-campus groups that have co-sponsored speakers with official Dartmouth organizations, see the policy as a form of censorship. The Hopkins Institute printed allegations of harassment and censorship that the sponsors of theologian Michael Novak and Governor Pierre du Pont were said to have suffered at the hands of the College.
Is Dartmouth's policy "a new and powerful form of censorship" as charged by the Hopkins Institute? Or do the rules merely protect the College from exploitation by outsiders, as the administration claims? An investigation by the Alumni Magazine indicates some partial answers:
• Contrary to public statements given by College officials, the Hopkins Institute seems to be the main inspiration behind new restrictions on sponsorship of campus events.
• Ideology does not appear to be a motive behind the officials' actions, which seem more bureaucratic than political.
• Claims that conservative speakers were barred from speaking on campus could not be substantiated; in one case the preponderance of evidence shows the allegations to be untrue.
The Policy
To the chagrin of the Institute and Review editors, their groups now need administrative approval of co-sponsorship before they can work with a campus organization. Until last spring, such permission was not required. Both groups have had stormy relationships with the very same administrators who now would process their co-sponsor ship applications.
"No event may be co-sponsored with an outside Organization or individual," states the policy, "unless such co-sponsorship is approved in advance." The policy offers no guidelines as to what are grounds for approval or disapproval. The only clue offered is in the cover letter that was distributed with the rules on campus. The letter states that approval will be granted if the administration "has determined that affiliation with such outside party is in the interests of the College, its faculty and students."
A second provision of the co-sponsorship policy requires a campus group seeking funds from an outside organization to get the prior approval of the vice-president for Development and Alumni Affairs. Such a stipulation is common at universities, according to administrators at other schools. It allows for coordination and monitoring of fundraising efforts.
"The danger of the rules is in the potential to stifle free speech by the person who applies the policy," argued Chris Baldwin '89, editor of The Dartmouth Review. The Review is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the college and former president David McLaughlin. (For an update, see page 15).
At the opening of fall term, Baldwin said he felt more optimistic than he did last spring about being able to sponsor campus speakers. "Freedman's stance on free speech totally changes the situation," explained the Dartmouth junior, who met with the president early in the term. Baldwin reported, "He told us we could go directly to him" with co-sponsorship requests. Although Baldwin applauds the president's stance, the Review editor said he opposes the policy in principle because of the power it places in the hands of administrators who might not share Freedman's attitude.
Why the Rules?
The rationale behind the drafting of the new co-sponsorship policy is twofold, according to Cary Clark, the College's chief counsel. First, he said, the regulations force campus groups to establish responsibility and liability. In the past, according to Clark, off-campus organizations obtained free use of College facilities by having a student group front for them. Student participation in these events was minimal at best, he said
Clark maintained that the new policy will also protect Dartmouth's name. He cited past incidents in which administrators of the Dartmouth College Athletic Council (DCAC) co-sponsored events with a national fast-food chain, an ice cream company, and local businesses. Under the new co-sponsorship policy, similar tie-ins must be approved at a higher administrative level. The new policy will "keep assistant coaches from making business deals," Clark explained. Ironically, the first group that violated the new policy was an arm of the DCAC.
Critics question whether assistant coaches were the main catalyst for the co-sponsorship policy, however. The rale requiring administrative approval of co-sponsorship does not seem to be common to other schools. Renee Romano, Associate Director of Student Affairs at the University of New Hampshire's Memorial Union, said student groups hosting a speaker must get approval only for space availability and a determination if security is needed; no special approval is needed for co-sponsorship. Yale's Dean of Student Affairs, Betty Trachenberg, said she was not aware of any policy similar to Dartmouth's. When asked if Brown had such a rule, Tom Forsberg, Director of Student Activities, replied, "I don't know of any rule per se," but he added that Brown had similar restrictions on fundraising.
Another Motive
Administrative sources explained in private that there is another motivation behind the policy: to distance the Hopkins Institute from the College. A number of administrators privately maintain that the Institute could do harm to Dartmouth if donors thought of it as an officially sanctioned organization. "We don't want alumni to think giving money to the Institute is the same as giving money to the College," explained one administrator, who asked to remain anonymous. Several officials say it is thus no coincidence that the policy was drafted at the same time that the group was seeking a higher profile on campus.
Institute Secretary S. Avery Raube '30 countered that the administrators' fears of harm done by his organization to Dartmouth were groundless. "The Hopkins Institute wants to work with the College," he said. Raube added, however, that the organization also wants to remain autonomous: "The College would like to envelope the Institute and get control." At stake is a significant amount of money. Raube said that the Institute's budget for last year was some $300,000. From the Hopkins Institute's perspective, campus liberals "directly control where money is spent," and could siphon the group's funds away from conservative causes if it were brought into the College fold.
Liberal Bias?
Whether Dartmouth as an institution allows an anticonservative bias to silence conservatives is an academic question-literally. Each department, endowment and student organization controls its budget independently and establishes its own criteria over how the money is spent. "The speaker's program at the Rockefeller Center responds to the interests of students and faculty within the confines of the budget," maintained Richard Winters, the Center's Director. "One reason there are few conservative speakers on campus," said Winters, "is that Conservative speakers are few in number and in high demand, and accordingly charge high fees. Conservative speakers who have come to the College typically have charged between $2,500 and $12,000. The average amount paid by a lecture series administered by the Center runs well below that," said Winters.
While the McLaughlin Administration might have had the Hopkins Institute in mind when it wrote the co-sponsorship policy, the documentary record shows that a number of officials made a considerable effort to enforce the rules fairly. Last summer, after off-campus conservatives charged individuals on campus with trying to keep Novak and du Pont from visiting the campus, the Office of Alumni Affairs assembled College documents relevant to the incidents. The papers seem to indicate that high-level administrators made a personal effort to help the Hopkins Institute work within the guidelines of the new policy. Other documents reveal that some of the difficulties encountered by the Institute were either of their own making or were caused in part by middle-managers who were unsure of how to implement the policy.
A report written by John Heston Jr. '54 in early fall, before he left his post as director of Alumni Communications, disputes charges of harassment and censorship leveled at the College by the Hopkins Institute. Raube, who received a copy of Heston's report just before being interviewed for this article, disagreed strongly with Heston's report. "I am shocked and appalled," he said, "by the wide divergences from the facts that were fed to John Heston's people by the perpetrators who, under President Freedman's admirable pronouncements regarding freeom of speech, may be scrambling to a safe position." Because the Institute was in the process of assembling documentation for a formal rebuttal, Raube deferred further comment on the matter until the Institute's response was completed.
The Upcoming Year
Whether free speech should emerge as a major campus issue depends on how the new administration chooses to interpret the co-sponsorship policy. Although the factfinding report of the Alumni Affairs Office appears to clear the College of allegations of organized opposition to conservatives, there are some Catch-22-style provisions in other regulations relating to free speech. These may create easy targets for critics who want to see censorship on campus. For instance, if an off-campus group cannot get an on-campus sponsor, it can rent a room. If the group rents a room, it is forbidden to advertise the event on campus. Administrators, charged with drafting and implementing the regulations said the co-sponsorship policy and related regulations need further revision.
As this issue went to press, neither the Hopkins Institute nor The Dartmouth Review had tried to co-sponsor a fall campus event. But Raube and Hopkins Institute Chairman George Champion '26 have already met with President James O. Freedman early in the term. "Cordial" was the word Raube used to describe the session. He noted that Freedman "accepted [the Institute's autonomy] in an understanding way.
"The best hope for the College," Raube concluded, "is that Freedman means what he says on the freedom of speech issue."
