2016 Blue Lives Matter Display

Freedom of Expression and Dissent at Dartmouth

In April 1969, the Committee on Freedom of Expression and Dissent wrote a statement to the members of the Dartmouth Community in which they reinforced Dartmouth’s policy on freedom of expression and dissent. In May 2016, President Hanlon, Provost Dever, Dean Biron, and Vice Provost Ameer sent out an email to undergraduate students condemning the removal of the Blue Lives Matter display as a violation of freedom of expression. In a time when there is a pervasive narrative around how “coddled” current college students are, we chose to compare these two examples because they demonstrate how Dartmouth fails to draw a line between freedom of expression and hate speech. This lack of distinction allows the administration to use freedom of expression to justify racist actions. In the 2016 example, the fact that the administration supported the College Republicans and their display shows the College’s power to grant, and deny, freedom of speech to certain organizations. President Hanlon encourages “free exchange” and “open engagement” regarding “views with some of us disagree or which we find hurtful,” yet fails to acknowledge “Blue Lives Matter”’s inherent co-optation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in order to honor its perpetrators. The physical removal of the word “Black” is both disrespectful to the movement and another erasure of Black bodies and their disproportionate stopping, frisking, and murder by the police. Furthermore, “Blue Lives Matter” wrongly creates two diametrically opposed viewpoints, forcing people to be either for the police or against the police. Yet, focusing on the individual level abdicates all responsibility to discuss the greater institutional and systemic issues at play, which the #BlackLivesMatter movement aims to address. Meanwhile, when the Afro-American’s Black Lives Matter display was vandalized in November 2015, Dartmouth’s administration did not punish those who were guilty of its destruction, nor did it step in to remind students of the same right to freedom of expression.

For further reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rini-sampath/the-myth-of-the-coddled-c_b_8760620.html