1983

We are all aware that emotions rise precipitously when the Dartmouth Review becomes a topic of conversation. Most of us chafe internally, wince externally, and have trouble discussing the Review, no matter where our sympathies lie. This month's column, as the Review moves into its second decade, constitutes a dispassionate attempt at evaluating the Revew and its contributions to Dartmouth.

If you supported the Review during its fledgling days, you were in good company. There definitely was room for a second campus newspaper. The Daily D, generally solid but nothing spectacular, could not provide adequate coverage of all facets of campus life. The Review essentially was founded on the premise of diversificationit saw a lack of attention given to important issues and an attendant ideological vacuum.

To its credit, the Review's staff initially offered Dartmouth some exceptionally high quality, sometimes brilliant writing. Articles were thoughtfully assembled, diligently researched, and refreshingly candid. The Review was particularly effective in its coverage of Dartmouth's administration. It offered depth where The Dartmouth did not.

Since the Review's inception, though, it has increasingly gained attention through slurs and attacks. Everyone remembers the Review's lobster-and-champagne feast during Oxfam's annual food-raising drive on campus. In 1981, the Review published the names of individuals in the Gay Student's Alliance. Then, a year later, appeared the stunning piece entitled "Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive, Bro', " written entirely in uneducated black dialect. This article, and the controversy it triggered, captured the national media's eye. In one way or another, the Review has been famous ever since, although rarely for positive reasons.

Over the years, we have read about the Review in many contexts, including its harsh treatment of certain professors, the thumbbiting episode between a Review staffer and a college administrator, the relentless and venomous attacks on Professor Bill Cole, the destruction of shanties by Review personnel, and various blatantly anti-Semitic references, including several directed at President Freedman. More recently the Review's masthead carried a quotation from Hitler about the importance of killing Jewish people. None of these powerful events remotely qualify as good or positive things. All of them accumulate in the public record and wound Dartmouth badly.

How do we objectively measure the Review after ten years? How can we evaluate its contributions to Dartmouth, to helping make the College a better place? When you send a financial contribution to the Review, what do the past ten years suggest you are supporting?

Ten years is plenty of time to objectively evaluate the Dartmouth Review. The evidence is as nasty as it is clear. Dartmouth has not been improved by the Review's presence. The Review's most telling imprint is a sordid blend of pain, racial slurs, bigotry, and vicious personal attacks. There certainly is merit in supporting the right to free speech. But there has to be a reckoning of sorts when the First Amendment is used as a cloak for the ongoing destructive activity that has become the Reviews's trademark.

People who contribute financially to the Review are subsidizing a small organization that since 1980 has deliberately brought much harm to Dartmouth, become more and more combative, and exerted an unwarranted but powerful role in shaping poor public opinion of the Big Green. I would suggest respectfully that Review contributors consider withdrawing their support. Your names may not show up in the Review's masthead or its by lines, but your dollars have helped underwrite a decade of disservice to a College that we cherish.

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