Dartblog

In a world of partisanship dominated by the College Republicans and College Democrats, some student groups have attempted to claim a middle ground of nonpartisan voter turnout programs. Oh how wonderful the world would be, they claim, if only more Dartmouth students were registered and voted in New Hampshire. The question of voting in a state to which you have no attachment or intention of returning set aside, can these voter turnout engines truly ever be non-partisan?

Not the way they are run at Dartmouth.

Vote Clamantis, the “non-partisan” student group charged with registering students to vote and helping transport them to the polls has proven itself to be completely incapable of acting in a non-partisan manner. The first registration drive they held in October invited student groups to set up tables at the event to advertise for their candidates as students left the voter registration place. I imagined that a non-partisan group would have imagined the importance of equal representation and limited these tables to the College Democrats, College Libertarians, and College Republicans. Not so of course. The College Libertarians were not present at all and in their place were environmental groups, the NAACP, historically black fraternities, and a group devoted to raising awareness about women’s suffrage and women’s issues. The last group had the best shot at appearing non-partisan until you saw the Obama stickers covering their backpacks and purses which were sitting in plain view next to the table. Six Obama tables to one College Republicans table simply does not jibe with a non-partisan approach in my book.

Perhaps more egregious a violation occurred during their second “non-partisan” voter registration drive. They billed this event as a low key, in and out make-up registration drive. College Republicans who arrived to table at the event were turned away, with the assertion that they would not have partisan representatives at this event. Not twenty minutes later they emailed the entire campus advertising the presence of Justin Long, movie and commercial actor on campus stumping for Barack Obama, at the event. Certainly having an Obama-supporting celebrity could never be viewed as a partisan maneuver.

But then, I suppose it does not matter if one is blatantly partisan when the school newspaper finds itself uninterested in such a story. This is what The Daily Dartmouth said about this boldly partisan maneuver:

“Long’s visit to the College coincided with a voter registration drive organized by Vote Clamantis, a nonpartisan student group.”

Insightful only when it suits them, this characterization of the event besides from being completely biased and missing the point, demonstrates a fundamental failure on the part of The Daily Dartmouth’s editorial staff to hold their reporters to standards of reporting campus politics.

More to come on Student Assembly’s complicity in these and other “nonpartisan” events.