HANOVER — Roughly 30 faculty members and students at Dartmouth College marched into Parkhurst Hall on Thursday to deliver a petition urging the President Sian Leah Beilock to reject the White House’s higher education compact.
“The compact, in attempting to assert state control over admissions, tuition, grades, hiring, teaching, and research, is a direct threat to the beating heart of the university: free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge. It is flagrantly unconstitutional,” the petition read.
Some 500 faculty members and graduate students signed the petition, which was drafted shortly after the Trump administration sent its offer, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” to Dartmouth and eight other major universities on Oct. 1.
“Obviously, it is easier for (President Beilock) to do the right thing if we make it clear that we stand up for academic autonomy,” said Bethany Moreton, a Dartmouth history professor who was among the group of faculty and students to deliver the petition.
The proposed compact asks schools to commit to the Trump administration’s goals for higher education in exchange for priority access to federal funding.
The conditions of the proposal include requiring that universities disregard race and gender when admitting students and hiring staff and faculty; enforce single-gender bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams; and define “male” and “female” according to reproductive function.
The compact also requires that schools transform or abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Given the compact’s threat to Dartmouth’s independence, “there is no happy medium to negotiate to,” Moreton said.
The Trump administration has given the schools until Oct. 20 to respond.
On Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, became the first university of the nine to reject the compact.
“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” Sally Kornbluth, MIT’s president, wrote in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
On Oct. 2 , Kevin Eltife, the chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents issued a statement saying: “Today we welcome the new opportunity presented to us and we look forward to working with the Trump Administration on it.”
The next day, Beilock released a statement to the Dartmouth community saying she is “deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence.”
Students on Monday voiced mixed reactions to Beilock’s address. First-year student Sarah Hedgecock noted that she wished the president “could have been a little bit more forthcoming,” although she’s “really happy that (Beilock) expressed a negative response.”
Meanwhile, Dartmouth senior Grace Payne described the statement as “so vague.”
As of Friday, Dartmouth’s administration had not publicly responded to the petition.
“We are actively engaging with faculty across the university through Dartmouth’s shared governance framework and working closely with the Board of Trustees,” Jana Barnello, a college spokesperson, told the Valley News on Friday.
