Empathy for Dartmouth President
College Presidents and Public School Administrators Have Two Things in Common: Second Guessers and Multiple Constituencies with Contradictory Expectations and Values
As a retired public school administrator I have tremendous empathy for Dartmouth’s President, Sian Beilock. Readers may not appreciate the fact that public school administrators, like college Presidents, face several decisions that are ethically complicated, decisions that will be second guessed by constituencies they serve, and can be impacted by circumstances beyond their control.
Throughout my career I faced potentially contentious decisions that required me to seek the advice and counsel of others, decisions that would be popular with some constituent groups but unpopular with others, decisions that could divide the faculty, the community, and the Board that hired me. For example:
As the newly appointed Principal in a rural Maine high school in the late 1970s, should I forbid students to bring rifles to school after they had been hunting in the early morning? Should I close a smoking area that had been in existence for a decade? Should I support the school librarian’s decision to not display the Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue? Should I report a student caught with drugs to the local police? Should I impose a dress code on students? on teachers?
As Superintendent from 1981 through 2011, should I appoint a longtime local substitute teacher with mediocre credentials over a recent graduate from a prestigious out-of-state college? Should I allow the continuation of a longstanding practice of student jazz bands to raise funds by performing in venues where alcohol was being served? Should I sustain the practice of assigning students residing in public housing to a distant elementary school in the city instead of a nearby suburban elementary school? Should I allow school choruses to continue including Christmas carols in their school assemblies? In their public performances? Should I ban a book that has vulgar language? Should I support a Principal who is unpopular with some parents in the school and the school board but strongly supported by the faculty? How about a Principal who is popular with parents and school board but not supported the faculty? Should I insist that beloved but offensive school mascots be replaced by “politically correct” ones?
I’m sure my fellow public school administrators have equally long lists of contentious decisions they faced during their tenure, decisions that were second-guessed by one or more of the constituencies they served when they were made and were always second-guessed if they do not turn out well in the end.
I am certain that in late October, before Sian Beilock decided to engage the Hanover Police to intervene when two students pitched tents adjacent to her office, she sought the counsel of others and made the decision based on a combination of their advice and her own personal convictions.
Before anyone second guesses the President, I would encourage a review of the context of her decision to arrest the two students for trespassing. As reported by Vidushi Sharma in the November 6 edition of The Dartmouth, the college’s student newspaper:
On October 19 a vigil was held for victims of the Israel-Hamas War by Al-Nur and the Palestine Solidarity Coalition. At the end of the vigil, students walked from Collis Center lawn to outside Parkhurst Hall, where they planted 100 black flags into the ground that each represented 300 lives lost — or 3,000 in total — in the Israel-Palestine conflict over the years…
The Dartmouth reported that this vigil was followed by a sit-in in front of Parkhurst Hall, which houses the colleges administrative offices. The sit-in was intended to draw attention to the then nascent “Israel-Hamas war” and asked the college to “…divest from “apartheid,” purporting that the College profits off of the war”. Following this sit-in, Sunrise Dartmouth, a student group of climate activists, presented the Dartmouth administration with the Dartmouth New Deal, a document Roan Wade described as “a collaborative effort by many student organizations that began last winter”. In her November 3 article, “The Breakdown of the Dartmouth New Deal” The Dartmouth reporter Alesandra Gonzales described it as a “14-page document (that) covered topics ranging from Dartmouth’s alleged complicity in the war in Gaza, the College’s need to make reparations to Native students and the push for a College-funded transit system throughout the Upper Valley.” Gonzales concluded her article with a summary of the “Moving Forward” section of the New Deal, the part of the document that led to the arrests of two students, Roan Wade and Kevin Engel:
If the Dartmouth administration does not respond with a comprehensive plan to meet the demands by Jan. 3, 2024, Sunrise Dartmouth stated they will resort to “physical action” as outlined in the Dartmouth New Deal”. In her email to the College following the arrest of Engel and Wade, President Sian Beilock said that this threat prompted the administration to involve the Hanover Police.
Engel and Wade disagreed with the College’s interpretation of the phrase “physical action” in their recent statement in The Dartmouth.
“I think it is really important to emphasize that Sunrise is a completely nonviolent organization,” Wade said. “Physical action is something that all activists do in terms of, you know, forcing things to be visibly present. By sitting in a tent, we were taking physical actions. By hosting a vigil, by hosting a protest, by doing literally anything that is not on social media — that’s taking physical action.”
The pair said they had no idea the College found their actions threatening until Beilock’s email the next day. Even if they were to threaten violence, Engel said he didn’t think the administration’s response was warranted.
“Even if we were to consider physical action — a quote which was taken from the 2014 Freedom Budget — to mean violent action, I do not believe that the way they behaved was appropriate,” Engel said.
The document requires the administration to provide a timetable for when they will respond to each demand. The Sunrise Movement insists that any financially-related demands must be included in the fiscal budget by the 2024-2025 school year.
The initial reaction to the arrest was relatively muted. True, 50 campus organizations and over 600 individuals — including alumni, faculty and students — signed a petition condemning the arrests and demanding an apology from the administration in early November, but by the end of November, a month after the arrests, Dartmouth was described by NBC news as having taken a “novel approach” to the tensions generated by the Israel-Hamas war through their forums led by Jewish and Middle Eastern studies professors that drew 700 attendees.
Ultimately, Ms. Beilock’s decision to engage the police meant that they determined the charges and the local judiciary, who move much more slowly than the college administration, set the pace for the proceedings. The decision to engage the police when only two tents were pitched, in turn, made it difficult to act differently when the student protests mushroomed in April and Dartmouth students decided to institute an encampment like those on other campuses. When more tents appeared on campus last week, Dartmouth’s earlier decision to treat the pitching of tents as “trespassing” that warranted police intervention meant that the college would be required engage police from other towns and State Troopers. This expanded police presence, in turn, resulted in the arrests of not only the “trespassers” who pitched tents, but also those who gathered on campus to show their support for the protesters or to find out what was going on.
I will not second guess President Beilock’s decision, because I am confident that it was well thought out and based on the best information available at the time. Anyone who has faced a tough decision realizes that many of the unintended consequences of that decision are, by definition, unpredictable. For example, it seemed plausible in October that some kind of cease fire could be negotiated between Israel and Hamas. It seemed plausible in October that the trials of the two trespassers would be been completed within six months. Indeed, it seemed plausible a month later when the national media was praising Dartmouth’s “novel approach” that tensions on campus were abating. I empathize with President Beilock because she knew whatever decision she made on how to manage the crisis that unfolded in October would be second guessed by at least one constituency she serves. Like most leaders of organizations, I am certain Ms. Beilock knows that a bell cannot be un-rung. She will carefully examine where she and Dartmouth are now, confer with members of her leadership team, and determine a course of action that will restore or reinforce her constituents faith in her and in the the college she leads. I wish her well.