To the Dartmouth Community,


The members of the Rockapellas stand in solidarity with the First Year Trips director, the assistant director, and the chosen directorate in the decisions their leadership has and will continue to make.


The article published in The Dartmouth on February 2nd was an unacceptable display of racism, sexism, and sheer misunderstanding of how privilege and systematic oppression operate on this campus. We will not stand for the attack on people of colour, gender non-conforming people, queer people, low-income students, women, and all marginalized communities that have been affected by the publication of this article.


The author’s assertion that “credentials matter not” and rather “skin tone, womanhood and claims of marginalized status do” operates on the offensive and inaccurate assumption that merit and marginalized identity are mutually exclusive. Lack of minority representation in leadership roles within establishments and organizations on this campus has been systematically overlooked and normalized, to the extent that any movement towards diverse representation is seen as injustice. The author’s categorization of this year’s diverse Trips directorate as “unrecognizable as representatives of Dartmouth’s student body” demonstrates a harmful erasure of minoritized students within Dartmouth’s culture.


We urge The Dartmouth to rescind the publication of this article that endangers members of the community, issue an apology for the harm that has already been done, and call upon its staff to uphold a higher standard of journalistic integrity in its future publications.


In solidarity,

The Dartmouth Rockapellas