“Regretfully the history of this college has indicated that we cannot leave it entirely up to the honor of Dartmouth to correct inequities.”
Eileen Cave and Monica Hargrove, 1974
“Lest the Old Traditions Fail” is a line from the Dartmouth College Alma Mater, “Dear Old Dartmouth.” Over the past 250 years, the systematic functioning of this elite institution has reproduced patterns of racial discrimination. White supremacy, colonialism, and slavery are enmeshed in the traditions and legacies that the College hold dear.
The purpose of this visual exhibit is to reveal how a history of racism has shaped the current racial climate at Dartmouth College. The themes we have chosen illustrate the ways in which the administration has failed to protect minority communities at Dartmouth. The images and articles parallel the past and present of Dartmouth in order to challenge the narrative of progress that is constantly espoused by the College.
Our final project was formed around the following research questions:
- How is the Dartmouth institution impacted historically and presently by a legacy of slavery, colonialism, and racism?
- How does the institution repress and conceal this history?
- In what ways has Dartmouth changed throughout history? In what ways has the institution remained the same? What and who have driven or prevented these changes?
- How have student activists formed an “undercommons” at our university?
- Why does #BlackLivesMatter matter at Dartmouth?
- Can Dartmouth ever be a safe space for people of color?
Our purpose in addressing these research questions is not only to examine the history and reality of structural racism at Dartmouth, but also, to disrupt the dichotomy between how this school is sold to prospective students and how it is experienced. We want to shed light on the disillusion of “the Dartmouth experience” and the unattainability of said experience for students and faculty of color.
We chose to include photos as visuals are a powerful representation of the striking similarities between Dartmouth’s past and present. We have edited the pictures such that they are all in black and white, thus making their time periods unrecognizable. Pictures from the past could have easily been taken today while recent pictures could easily blend in with photos of Dartmouth’s past. This obfuscation of time ties into our challenging of linear time and the narrative of progress it creates. On the other hand, texts and quotes are also impactful in their illustration of the unchanging rhetoric of Dartmouth students and administrators. The header images we have included are a few of countless photographs taken throughout Dartmouth’s history.
Our project moves through individual and institutional instances of racism and hate-filled discrimination at the College. Our goal is to show that these instances are not isolated–the issues rooted in the institution’s past persist in the present as well. We begin with the College’s colonizing mission and investment in the slave economy in order to critically examine several incidents where students and faculty of color were dehumanized, victimized, and harassed by other students and the institution itself.
It is our duty as students who benefit from a university that sits on stolen Abenaki land and was built on the back of slaves to condemn, speak out against and make others aware of the legacy of systemic racism at this college.
This website was created for the Spring 2016 #BlackLivesMatter course at Dartmouth College, developed through the Dartmouth Ferguson Teaching Collective in order to bear collective thinking, teaching, research and focus on questions around race, structural inequality and violence through an allocation of dedicated institutional space to make #BlackLivesMatter.
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