‘Diversity’ Debacle at Dartmouth: ‘Transformative Justice,’ Really?

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Dartmouth radicals after their protest last week.

To understand what is wrong with America’s elite institutions of higher education, we need look no further than the manifesto issued by radical students at Dartmouth College:

The Plan for Dartmouth’s Freedom Budget:
Items for Transformative Justice at Dartmouth
The document, sent to 13 Dartmouth administrators on Feb. 24, lists demands that seek to eliminate systems of oppression including racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism. . . .
We, the Concerned Asian, Black, Latina, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled students at Dartmouth College, seek to eradicate systems of oppression as they affect marginalized communities on this campus. These systems — which include racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism — are deployed at Dartmouth and beyond as forms of institutional violence. We demand that Dartmouth challenge these systems by redistributing power and resources in a way that is radically equitable. We believe that dialogue and resistance are both legitimate and necessary ways of disturbing the status quo and forcing parties to deal with the roots of the issues. . . .

Simple question: Where did these Dartmouth students learn to write such turgid and lifeless jargon? Even if one were sympathetic to these petulant brats, isn’t their rhetoric kind of tedious?

If Dartmouth has failed at nothing else, it has certainly failed to teach its students effective techniques of persuasive prose. The minute any responsible adult sees a phrase like “Transformative Justice,” the skeptical eye-roll reaction is reflexive.

The “marginalized communities” rant continues:

This Freedom Budget focused on redistributing power and restoring justice for communities who suffered economic oppression at the hands of rich, white power structures. This budget was not a proposal for better interpersonal interactions, but a proposal to transform oppressive structures. Dartmouth epitomizes power being isolated to rich, white males. As such, there is no better place than this campus to campaign for a Freedom Budget that will address the consequences of white male patriarchy today.

OK, let me intrude a few helpful points here:

  • As for “rich, white power structures,” exactly who the hell do these kids think built Dartmouth College and is currently footing the bill for their Ivy League education? Permit me to suggest that these “marginalized” students research who are the top 100 donors to the Dartmouth alumni fund in the past decade. If it weren’t for “rich, white males,” these kids wouldn’t even have a college to complain about.
  • These punks whine about “oppression” — did somebody kidnap them at gunpoint and force them to attend Dartmouth? No, they were among many thousands who applied to attend this elite school, and were fortunate enough to be accepted. Rather than being grateful for the opportunity thus afforded them, however, the miserable ingrates expect Dartmouth to throw them a pity party because of how they’re victims of “oppressive structures.”
  • Why are these kids so obsessed with white people? First, it’s “rich, white power structures,” then it’s “rich, white males” and “white male patriarchy” — white! white! white! The repetition conveys the intensity of their fixation, but why? Let’s see: Dartmouth College is in Hanover, N.H., and the census says New Hampshire is 94.4% white. So if you have a problem with white people, maybe Dartmouth isn’t the place you want to be, but since you decided to go to Dartmouth, whose problem is this? It’s as if you moved to Tijuana and then started complaining, “Hey, why are there so many Mexicans around here?”

Anyway, you can go read the whole list of silly “demands” issued by the Dartmouth radicals, but last week a few dozen of the aggrieved students “occupied” the administration building:

A group of about 35 students from a range of campus communities entered College President Phil Hanlon’s office during his open office hours on [April 1], stating their dissatisfaction to the administration’s March 6 reaction to the “Freedom Budget.” They demanded a point-by-point response to each of the student-authored document’s 70-plus demands for change regarding issues of diversity and inclusivity.
Equipped with poster paper, sleeping bags and pizza, many students displayed the intention of spending the night. As of press time, about eight students planned to remain in Hanlon’s personal office overnight and about seven others intended to stay in the outer atrium of Parkhurst Hall.
As students filed in to Hanlon’s outer office around 4 p.m., they were greeted by administrative assistants, who noted that they had been expecting them. Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson then told the students that she and Hanlon would be available to talk in a few minutes.
When Johnson asked why the group was there, Dondei Dean ’17 spoke first.
“We’re here to see President Hanlon. You probably know most of us already, but, just to sum up, we are extremely dissatisfied with the response that he issued,” Dean said. “It was not on our terms. We are here to see him and demand a point-by-point response, and we are not going to leave until we get one.”
Approximately 10 minutes later, the entire group was invited into Hanlon’s office. Dean, acting as primary spokesperson, told the president that the students were “deeply enraged” by Hanlon’s response to the “Freedom Budget,” stating dissatisfaction with both the length of the administration’s press release, which they said encompassed only three points, and their choice not to respond through The Dartmouth.

Uh, “Dondei Dean ’17”? This kid’s just a freshman. He only arrived at Dartmouth in September, and already he’s issuing demands? The Wall Street Journal took notice, and the Dartmouth Review editorializes:

 If there is any lesson to be learned from the sit-in, it is that the Freedom Budgeters are dead set on an approach that is not friendly to collaboration and compromise. Their hostile response to overtures of reason from President Hanlon, Dean Johnson, and their fellow classmates has made that abundantly clear. Instead, they intend to maintain their “struggle” by any and all means necessary, even if it takes them beyond the limits of civil discourse expected of Dartmouth undergraduates.

 Expel these brats. Let ’em be “oppressed” somewhere else.

In other words: Fetch My Latte.

(Hat-tip: American Power.)

 

 

171 comments

  1. Nobody whines quite so exquisitely about oppression as a millennial twit who lacks absolutley nothing except self-awareness.

  4. Our centuries-long social habits have always permitted oppression (or worse, much worse) of powerless “segments” (how I love that word! Not!) and thus those “segments” are the rank and file of the “galley slaves” whose work (or inertia) empowers their very own oppressors. And there is no irony in this depressing picture.

    “No Irony” means what? It means that the “situation” is too deeply rooted, too permanent, and passes for “inevitable”, and thus does not yield to any ironic overview. Any humor seen in it, is gallows humor. It is “dead serious” and must be taken as such. There is no “small tweaking” that will change it; for it is rooted in our primate brain, and in fact, forms the background for all of our assumptions about life, society, and everything.

  5. I attended college fresh on the heels of the great and powerful “sit in” era of the VIetnam debacle. You know, where smelly hippies (and rock musicians) thought they managed to get Vietnam turned off.
    helpful hint to aged hippies everywhere:
    you had nothing to do with it; you were
    just background noise. At least we musicians
    knew we were background noise.

    In those days of the Jimmy Carter gasoline shocks, I observed college activists trying to find some way to restore the relevance. Even though I attended a few meetings, I realized it was all a huge waste of time.

    If you want to change the world, start a business and hire people. You’ll see more change by doing that than all the sit-ins and protests ever held in this country since 1965.

  6. Would it be wrong of me to suggest that, from their writing and their positions, they do have some real concerns here, given the evidence that they are all ” differently-abled?”

  8. Let us take it as a given that Dartmouth, and virtually all colleges, were started to educate the children of rich white men. The fact ought to be obvious: the very presence of “Asian, Black, Latina, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled students at Dartmouth College” means that Dartmouth has already changed, and is perfectly willing to educate the “Asian, Black, Latina, Native, Undocumented, Queer, and Differently-Abled” to join the ranks of rich, white men as intellectually and economically successful individuals.

    Except, of course, it seems that while a Dartmouth education might help them to join the ranks of the economically successful, joining the ranks of the intellectually successful seems beyond them.

  11. These are our “best and brightest?” Apparently, the fact that their arguments are self-refuting inasmuch as they are students at an Ivy League institution, doesn’t speak well for the current iterations of the SAT and ACT.

  12. White men are a tiny fraction of the population of the world. They’ve, in general, been extraordinarily successful at improving their (and everyone else’s — yeah, I’m looking at you, hipster with the iPhone) lot in life.
    Don’t hate! Emulate!

  18. President Hanlon to aggrieved entitled protestors – We can easily fill your spots here at Dartmouth. Next?

  19. How exhilarating if they were all expelled. A one paragraph letter to them and their parents. Goodbye. We don’t want you. But of course this would never happen. College administrators share with GOP leaders the title of most gutless human beings on the face of the earth.

  20. Were I a parent of one of these cretins, I would immediately cut he or she* off from all financial support, demand a refund of all college expenses to date, and offer a hearty, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass!”

    *: As a long standing member of the heteronormative patriarchy, I hereby denounce myself for the use of these old-fashioned, insensitive, and non-inclusive pronouns.

  24. Also, while Napoleon Bonaparte is a historical figure I’m not terribly fond of, I do think his treatment of protesters was quit correct: a whiff of grapeshot.

  25. “Enablism” is what this is. I only count 30 protesters in that picture, out of 6,144 students at Dartmouth. That’s not to say that the 30 are all Dartmouth students but, if they were, that would be a mere .49%.

  26. Dear Everyone Holding Up Their Fist Like They’re Oppressed,
    Let me introduce you to a new word. A word you’ve almost never heard. The word is: NO.
    No, you are not oppressed.
    No, you are not victorious.
    No, you do not look cool.
    No, this should not count for academic credit.
    No, your opinion is not relevant to anyone other than your friends.
    No, you are not “special.”
    No, you do not have “special” insight. Into anything.
    No, future employers will not be impressed by this.

  28. I too attended college during Viet Nam and after four years in the Army. I never was in Viet Nam. I spent three years in Germany (no Purple Heart for German beer hangovers). Yet these loving flower children spat on me and called me a baby killer.

    Same children different generation. At least the protesters of the 60’s and 70’s were on about a real world problem where people were being killed. These children are on about themselves and only themselves.

  29. Well, I just read the demands of this group. May I suggest that they would get a different, shall we say, perspective if they were tossed into a large room with all the young people who didn’t get accepted to Dartmouth College. It gets about 20,000 applications per year and accepts less than 10 percent. I’d pay to watch these twits complain about being oppressed to all those who didn’t make the cut.

  30. The “students” aren’t the problem. The problem is the heinously off-kilter professors on campus who are spoon-feeding them this nonsense.

  31. Yes, the university campus has become a strange place, where people who don’t know what they’re talking about don’t hesitate to talk.

  33. Yup, and we “oppress” all others… except all others are so busy oppressing, they don’t have time to realize how stupid they look blaming the white man. But, there are always a few white men willing to spoon-feed “oppressed” minorities, never mind how un-oppressed those minorities actually are.

    LOL imagine telling these fearless flotsam that they are oppressing the white man by demanding he spend his money on them!

  35. Well, yes, they can’t claim to be an oppressed minority if there’s a whole crowd of the, can they?

  36. Mm! Pleased to meet you! I hear your name mentioned almost every day! You should collect royalties!

  37. I am in favor of “attacking” this issue where it lives, which is in our own hearts; for it is our complicity, which allows it to continue. Truthfully, there is much that simply cannot be done, in integrity and good conscience; I mean, that if one lists permissible activities and who is profited and harmed, the list of can-do is quite short. Obviously, this would call for massive reform, and reformulation of much of our laws and statutes, and it looks to me as though such changes are not scheduled to occur any time soon.

  38. Stop kidding yourself Anamika, and get off that high horse of yours. You are not a sociologist. You don’t have a degree. You will have to be content with the courtesy title ” pretentious”, though most I suspect will continue to address you here as “imbecile”.

  39. This is Anamika using a different name, but the same icon. Click on “Modi Revolution” and you’ll see her past nonsense.

  42. These little ingrates really chap my butt. I worked a full time job and a part time job while I went to college part time for 8 years, in order to pay my own living expenses and tuition. No way I was going to saddle my parents with that (or myself with student loans.) Graduated 4.0, too. You know, if you have to do that, you don’t have time for silly-ass showing off, hey-look-at-me stunts like this. Reminds me of the toddler at the kiddie pool: “Mommy, watch me swim! Mom! Mama! Mommy, watch me! Mom, look! Mommy! Mommy! Mom!”

  43. Heh. I’m sure my son at Fort Bragg wouldn’t mind an extended discussion with these kids of how “oppressed” they are.

  46. Of course! Whenever some young person questions authority, or institutions, the default response must always be “petulant brat”, “entitled”, “whiner”, etc. because as we all know the good ole USA is just perfect, uncorrupted, and fair to all.

    And you idiots wonder why over 75% of people 18-30 don’t support conservatives, and hence why you will never win another national election again?

  49. Yeah, he can put those wusses through an extended PT session, including a 20 mile hump with full gear. *THEN* they’ll have a teensy tiny glimmer of what “oppression” is really like.

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