HANOVER — More than 33,000 Dartmouth College athletes, alumni and other supporters have signed online petitions asking the college to restore varsity sports teams cut last week over budget concerns.
Two separate petitions, posted on the website Change.org, call for the school to reinstate the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams, as well as the men’s lightweight rowing team.
Both are part of larger efforts to exert pressure on Dartmouth, according to student-athletes, who are working with alumni to mount social media and letter-writing campaigns.
“We just want to try to get the word out and rally some support from the rowing community,” said Gabe Kotsonis, a rising junior who created the petition “Reinstate Dartmouth Men’s Lightweight Rowing.”
Kotsonis’ rowing petition received more than 8,600 signatures by Tuesday, while another titled “Save Dartmouth Swimming and Diving” had more than 25,000.
Dartmouth announced last Thursday it would immediately cut five teams — men’s lightweight crew, men’s and women’s golf, and men’s and women’s swimming and diving — reducing its varsity lineup to 30 squads.
The Ivy League school also permanently shuttered the Hanover Country Club, which didn’t reopen this spring because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The reductions are expected to save Dartmouth $2 million to help ease what college President Phil Hanlon said would be a $150 million budget deficit through the upcoming school year because of the pandemic.
“This is forcing every school and division, including athletics, to make difficult decisions to adjust to a new financial reality,” Hanlon said in his email last week.
Overall, 15 staff members, including eight coaches, will lose their jobs as a result of the move, which will also affect about 110 student-athletes.
Kotsonis said rowers were surprised by the announcement, which came in the form of a Zoom call in which athletic director Harry Sheehy read from a prepared statement and said some of them could join club teams.
Lightweight rowers weren’t given that option and were instead told they could join the heavyweight team, Kotsonis said.
“A very select few are able to succeed because, as lightweight rowers, we’re not the 6-foot-5, 220 pounds it takes to be a successful heavyweight rower,” he said in a phone interview.
“The way the school did it, it was pretty callous,” Kotsonis added. “They informed us with less than an hour notice to join the Zoom call.”
Maggie Deppe-Walker, a captain of the women’s swim team, said her fellow teammates were also “hurt” by the decision.
However, she said, they quickly began campaigning, working with alumni and parents to craft social media accounts and a website drawing attention to the cuts.
They’re partially using a playbook developed in 2002, when the college last tried to cut the swimming and diving programs. Students and alumni fought back, raising enough money to endow the teams for 10 years during a fight that garnered national attention when the boyfriend of one swimmer attempted to solicit donations on eBay.
“We’re definitely using their efforts as a model and we’re trying to learn lessons from what they learned in their cause,” Deppe-Walker said.
Unlike in 2002, students aren’t heavily leaning on fundraising efforts to save the teams.
The swimming and diving programs have received some financial pledges, Deppe-Walker said, but students are more focused on campaigning against the college’s decision. The same goes for lightweight rowing, according to Kotsonis.
College officials have said they wouldn’t accept any efforts to restore the affected programs because the savings are related to both the sports budget and admissions.
Dartmouth spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said Tuesday that “even if financial resources were plentiful, these sports would exist without any recruited athletes, making the competitive playing field extremely lopsided.”
“This would result in such a frustrating and unsatisfactory experience that it would be implausible to expect Division I-caliber athletes to choose Dartmouth over other options, or to attract and retain qualified coaches to lead the programs in such a scenario,” she said in an email.
She acknowledged that the school’s decision has been “painful” for athletes, alumni and supporters.
“We fully appreciate the passion and sentiment such efforts represent; however, petitions will not change the reality of the current circumstances, nor will they reveal anything we don’t already know — that we’ve made a decision that was unexpected, and that will impact the affected student-athletes’ Dartmouth experiences,” Lawrence said.
Kotsonis and Deppe-Walker both say that their teams maintain higher grades than the average Dartmouth student and contribute greatly to the Upper Valley community.
Deppe-Walker said swimmers and divers also have taught more than 850 children in the Upper Valley to swim over five years through Dartmouth’s swim school, while Kotsonis pointed out that lightweight rowing is largely made up of students who didn’t go through the recruiting process.
“Not everyone can walk onto the lacrosse team if they don’t have experience,” he said. “Rowing is really unique in the sense that someone with no experience can walk on a team and four years later be a key member of the program.”
Diving coach Chris Hamilton, who was two years into a 21-year tenure when Dartmouth first cut the team, said the decision doesn’t just affect current athletes but also incoming first-year students.
“I am heartbroken that these athletes have to go through this, and I feel I have let them down,” he said in an email. “I gave them my word when I was recruiting them that their experience here at Dartmouth would be the best time of their lives. I told them I would get them to the next level of diving and I would give 100% to make this experience the best it could be for them.”
“As for the 25,000 signatures,” Hamilton added, referring to the swimming and diving petition, “we need all 25,000 to voice their opinions as well, and not just sign the petition to help bring this program back.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.