We, a group of Dartmouth students outraged by our administration's inadequate and oppressive response to the Freedom Budget, are staging a sit-in of President Hanlon's office that began at 4:30pm on Tuesday, April 1 and which continues this morning Wednesday, April 2. As stated in the original press release and numerous times to President Hanlon and Dean Johnson, we will not leave until the president provides a point-by-point response to each item in the Budget, including first steps of how to enact the Budget.

 

Yesterday, President Hanlon refused to give a point-by-point response, citing that he would rather have a "conversation" with campus. For those of us who have been having conversations since we arrived at Dartmouth, only to have further physical and emotional violence enacted against us by the racist, classist, sexist, heterosexist, transphobic, xenophobic, and ableist structures at Dartmouth, physical action has become a necessity. In the memory and spirit of all revolutionaries who have ever put their bodies on the line in a struggle for justice, we remain in President Hanlon's office until our demands are met.

 

 

Original press release, emailed to campus on April 1:

 

 We, a group of around 30 Dartmouth students outraged by our administration's inadequate and oppressive response to The Freedom Budget, are staging a sit-in of President Hanlon's office until he provides a point-by-point response to the items in the Budget, including first steps of how to enact the Budget.

We delivered The Freedom Budget to campus and the administration on February 24, demanding "that President Hanlon, affiliated offices, and those addressed in this letter reply to us via The Dartmouth newspaper by March 24, 2014." President Hanlon's and Interim Provost Martin Wybourne's op-ed response in Dartmouth Now on March 6 was inadequate in scope, did not address the vast majority of points in The Freedom Budget, and was released the day before finals, upon which The Dartmouth stopped printing, such that student response was virtually impossible.

Our sit-in is our response; our physical, vigorous, and positive action. The burden should not lie with systematically oppressed students (affected by racism, classism, imperialism, nativism, sexism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, and ableism) to ensure our own well-being, safety, and continued existence at Dartmouth College: yetour lived experiences at Dartmouth have been so violent that we were driven to write a plan for such assurance -- The Freedom Budget. The least the College must do is seriously address the points that our communities found most essential to our health and indeed our survival.

Our bodies are already on the line, in danger, and under attack at Dartmouth. We are now using them to occupy the President's office until he accords us the basic respect of serious, point-by-point, actionable response.

No justice, no peace.

 

 Twitter: @Gossip Gangstah

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sit-In-of-Dartmouth-President-Hanlons-Office/274481856060668​