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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Dispatch from our spook

Late last eve there was a Student Assembly meeting where members convened to discuss what to do about perceived racism at Dartmouth. The sober-minded public, of course, is fully apprised of events courtesy of every major New Hampshire and North Dakota newspaper as well as the wire services. And the public is laughing at the deep well of political correctness into which a small sect has succesfully drawn us. (How deep a well? Yesterday Dartmouth president James Wright sent a rare e-mail to the entire campus, warning—and asking that information be called in to a tipster line—that a student had been “verbally abused” by three non-Dartmouth students who were driving around town last night.)

At the meeting, the anger and ire was unrelenting. Since those juices have no real target here in sleepy Hanover, the enemy became The Dartmouth Review. Dartblog had a professionally-trained espion at the meeting. He or she or it reports:

Meeting Progression:

—Calls for any Review members to identify themselves
—Further calls for Review members to identify themselves, as “we know who you are anyways”
—Condemnation of the Review’s “racist attack on Native Americans”
—Some administrator’s expression of support
—Distribution of the Review to be scorned
—Calls for Dartmouth to stop funding the Review
—Outrage when it becomes apparent that this can not be done
—Calls to boycott advertisers and get alumni to stop funding us
—Calls to trash any Review copies on campus
—Discussion on best way to get media attention—the AP will be present tomorrow [Which is to say, today. -jm]
—Snapping of fingers to acknowledge good ideas
—[SA president Tim] Andreadis’ announcement of [Review editor Dan] Linsalata’s current location (SAE basement)
—[This article] being labeled as “hate speech.”

UPDATE: By the way, it appears that all issues of the Review have indeed been stolen and trashed.

UPDATE: A few folks have written in to claim that the above-mentioned meeting was not a Student Assembly meeting. However, the weight of the evidence so far indicates that it was considered an SA meeting. An e-mail invitation from SA president Timothy A. Andreadis sent last evening instructs recipients to “MEET IN CARSON L01 at 11:30pm,” because “people are meeting to discuss a response to,” and then he provides a link to the website of The Dartmouth Review. In attendance was the president of Student Assembly as well as the Vice President, the chairman of the Diversity Affairs Committee of SA, members of the class councils, and at least one member of the Dartmouth administration.

UPDATE: Tim Andreadis e-mails in to advise that the above was not a Student Assembly meeting but rather a meeting of the Inter Community Council (ICC), and that the Vice President of SA, Jacqueline Loeb, was not present. Dartblog regrets the error, and wonders who, then, did all the work necessary to produce the rally?

UPDATE: Dean Dietrich ‘88 writes:

I’m a Dartmouth alum and an occasional reader of Joe’s Dartblog, and after having read this entry, I must say that I feel like I went to sleep and woke up back at Dartmouth in the 1980s. I’m glad that I’ve grown enough in the last twenty years to recognize this sort of silliness for what it is, but I can’t say that I’m as pleased to see that this element of Dartmouth life has remained essentially unchanged.

Posted on November 29, 2006 11:54 AM. Permalink | E-mail This