‘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. No, we don’t wonder. Not at all. Not with idiots like you teaching (or raising!) these petulant pussies to think they are oppressed because the public toilet down the hall lacks politically correct signage.

  2. It cost about 240,000 bucks to go to Dartmouth College for four years. These spoiled brats either have indebted themselves for the rest of their lives or else are living off the largesse of their parents.

    If they got student loans and default, guess who foots the bill…us taxpayers.

    These idiots are our future leaders?

  3. You know, staging a sit-in for fewer urinals in the can and more stalls is not exactly “March On Selma” type stuff. Call me when these idiots suffer real deprivation. This sort of thing is on the level with “my filet is slightly overdone.”

  4. They were bitching about Dartmouth, not “good ole USA.” But speaking of good ole USA, is there a place on earth where these kids would fare better?

  6. Not happening.

    The principles of marxism have simply been translated from the principles of class war to the principles of gender war and race war via the nonsensical construct of third-world minds known as “Critical Theory”.

  7. They also chose to attend Dartmouth. If they hate the trappings of rich, old, white men, they could have attended any number of excellent historically black colleges or state universities. But they voluntarily applied to, enrolled at, and paid tuition for Dartmouth.

    If they really believed what they are saying, they would find a different school.

  8. Just a few of the things the white man has given the world:

    Electricity
    Cars
    Computers
    Vaccines
    Air conditioning
    The internet
    Phones
    Radio
    Space travel
    Universities
    Planes
    Democracy
    Cinema
    Antibiotics
    Trains
    The printing press
    Guns
    Bicycles
    Pencils
    Modern agriculture
    The United States of America

    White men are, on the whole, full of awesome and win. That should go without saying, except that these days apparently it does need saying.

    You’re welcome, world.

  9. Howard and Clark Atlanta are rank-and-file research institutions; I think Morehouse and Spelman are moderately selective. Xavier of Louisiana has a good reputation for preparing its students for graduate study. HCBUs are a small sliver of the higher education landscape (1-2% of all enrollments) and they have some advantages that have been remarked upon (by Thomas Sowell) but not necessarily explained. However, they are not ‘excellent’.

    Few schools are. Selective schools cream well-prepared students, but what the institution brings to the table is commonly ho hum. If there is excellence, it is in subunits like the engineering school or in places like CalTech, where they lock you in a closet and plug you in for four years.

  12. We come to various points in our life where we have to come to terms with the distinction between image and aspiration on the one hand and actual performance on the other. College is one place you have to do this, most especially institutions like Dartmouth, who corral students who were fine performers in one setting but middling in another.

    The trouble is compounded when large swaths of people give you dishonest feedback. This happens in secondary schools, chock-a-block with the fatuous issue of the teacher training faculties (“this years students represent an outstanding crew of…”).

    It is also compounded by the racial neuroses of white liberals, who make use of all sorts of artifice when dealing with blacks. One neurosis involves disabling ordinary admissions screens (which are there for a reason) in order to alter the composition of the student body (because the twits in the administration do not wish to confront the reality that the replication of the professional managerial bourgeoisie is a big part of their job and because they dislike the socially adept types they were not in secondary school).

    So, these youngsters have a problem that anyone has in a competitive society, one brought artificially to a point in higher education settings (when in previous eras most bourgeois could fail in small increments like everyone else). They are, however, terribly disoriented by the nonsense their elders have been feeding them for years if not decades. It’s hard to acknowledge that your mediocrity is your own fault (as a rule).

  13. I was too busy working while in college to meddle with such nonsense. I honestly wonder who the hell they think they are. As my dad would say, “Transformative Justice? I’ll show you transformative justice!” {commence beating}

  16. You cannot default anymore without a disability adjudication. They’ll garnish your Social Security checks.

  19. If they do anything other than expel them they are fools. Frankly, they probably are fools.

  21. I wonder why you are here, raging so much against the machine. Why not go rage against the Russians or the Chinese? I can think of a few third world hellholes you could really improve, if you weren’t such a lazy coward.

    You brave, brave radicals wouldn’t know what to do if you lived in a country with any of the problems you claim we have here. Get back to us when you man up to get the islamists to stop throwing acid in women’s faces.

  24. The types in the 60s and 70s were really of the same type. They were simply rebelling to rebel and had no real idea what they were rebelling against. Some of them didn’t want to get their pretty little heads shot at. While I don’t blame them for that, I have no truck with cowardice.

  27. Alas, the Ivies are full such fools masquerading as Profs. Krugman, just one example, is a prof at Princeton.

  28. I have that on vinyl from Dr. Demento, right after Time Warp (Rocky Horror) and King Tut (Steve Martin).

  30. There tend to be trouble makers at most schools, but you will rarely see them among STEM students. I didn’t have the time for such stunts, even if I had the inclination to engage in such idiocy.

  32. You have also failed to provide evidence of you being an “intellect”. You are, to put it candidly, a poseur. You are simply Anamika.

  35. If their punk asses were being held against their will by armed thugs in a foreign country then they would know true oppression. The awareness of your own mortality will change you forever. So if you’re lucky and a guy shows up completely out of nowhere and says, ‘Airborne Rangers you’re going home,’ you will begin to appreciate what you have. And the petty crap will bother you no more.

  37. If Dartmouth is this racist, how did all these people get in to begin with? And why would they want to stay?

    I think Dartmouth needs to rethink its scholarship process…

  43. We’re getting old…No.
    We work for a living and have a life. Yeah that’s it. We have a life.

  46. No… whenever a scion of unbelievable privilege questions the authority of an institution that no one made them attend and any number of other young people would sell their left arm to attend…. the response must be that they are a “petulant brat”, “entitle”, and “whiner”, etc., because it’s the blatant truth.

    It’s just so freaking *humorous* when the 1% start pretending they are oppressed in any way. Every one of them should be sent to someplace where “real life” happens, so they can have the character broadening experience of it… since they never have.

  47. It reminds me of that old Pete Seegar (God bless the old commie) song:
    “If you miss me in the back of the short bus I’ll be sitting up front”
    Looks like there’s a few queer, differentially disabled, undocumented black gals in the crowd. They always warm my heart.

  48. I’m in favor of “attacking” this issue also, though I hadn’t thought about giving these people beatings in their own homes. Thanks for the idea!

  49. Goodnight “DumbFuckingCons”. I suggest you go away and do your homework – thoroughly, before pitting me against your second hand political wisdom.

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