Dartmouth Student Petition Demands Sanctions Against Conservative Newspaper

A petition circulated by students at Dartmouth College demands that administrators sanction the college’s conservative student newspaper over its publication of “hateful ideologies.” The petition calls on administrators to end the college’s official relationship with the paper.

According to a report by the College Fix, nearly 1,000 students at Dartmouth College have signed a petition that calls for sanctions on the college’s conservative student newspaper, the Dartmouth Review. Famous conservatives including Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham wrote for the paper during their undergraduate education.

The petition calls on the university to disassociate with the conservative newspaper. “At this time, we call on Dartmouth to decisively and publicly dissociate itself from the Dartmouth Review and to hold student staffers accountable for their bigotry,” the petition reads. “We further demand that the College compel this publication to cease and desist from using the Dartmouth name as part of its brand.” 

The petition references several pieces published by the Dartmouth Review that have been criticized by leftist students and faculty. The petition specifically mentions columns published as far back as the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the petition criticizes the paper for using a controversial Dartmouth symbol as part of its branding. The symbol, a 90-year-old weathervane, was removed in June after leftist students criticized its depiction of a Native American.

The Dartmouth Review and its associates have consistently spurned the College’s mission to embrace diversity and build a community of mutual respect. Their methods include divisive articles (see Keeney Jones’ blatantly racist 1982 piece “Dis Sho Ain’t No Jive, Bro” or any of these insidiously racist pieces of recent years), engagement in anti-LGBTQ bullying, antisemitic statements (including the portrayal of President Freedman as Hitler), harassment of Black professors, and repeated offenses against indigenous students. Even the Dartmouth Review’s current logo flaunts this position, featuring a scene from the recently-removed campus weathervane deemed by President Hanlon to “represent an offensive portrayal of a Native American.”

In a response to the petition, Dartmouth Review writer Brian L. Drisdelle argued that the petition is a form of “intellectual cowardice” that destroys academic freedom.

“It’s unfortunate that this type of intellectual cowardice has come about on campus, and I would argue that it is antithetical to the pursuits of liberal institutions such as our own wherein debate ought to be a fundamental in the search for higher truth,” Drisdelle wrote. “I guess in the post-modern age, truth no longer matters much.”

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