Column: Calling police to campus is always a tough decision

As a retired public-school administrator I have tremendous empathy for Dartmouth College President Sian Beilock.

Throughout my career I faced many contentious and complex decisions that I knew would be popular with some constituent groups but unpopular with others, decisions that might divide the faculty, the community, and the board that hired me. Some involved issues like whether to allow students to sing Christmas carols at school performances, the redrawing of school attendance zones, or banning reading materials that some parents and board members found offensive.

Decisions about how and when to engage police, though, were most difficult. Should I report a student who possessed drugs to the authorities? What if the student had a large bag of drugs and a wad of bills? Should I involve the police in the investigation of alleged teacher misconduct? What about the investigation of misappropriation of funds?

Readers might recall a decision I made 17 years ago to involve the Hanover police in the investigation of the theft of final examinations at Hanover High School, a decision that was widely reported in the local media and, when the investigation was completed, highly controversial. Like all the tough decisions I faced, it was made in consultation with trusted advisors and after careful deliberation based on the facts at hand.

On Oct. 27, Beilock faced a similarly complex and potentially contentious problem. Two students, Roan Wade and Kevin Engel, pitched tents on the lawn outside her office. Based on media reports and her letters to students and faculty, Beilock decided to engage the Hanover Police because she was concerned about their impact on the safety of the campus. Reporter Vidushi Sharma recounted the events leading up to this decision in her Nov. 6 article in The Dartmouth, the student newspaper. She reported that a vigil was held for victims of the Israel-Hamas War by Al-Nur and the Palestine Solidarity Coalition on Oct. 19 and at the end of the vigil, student demonstrators walked from the Collis Center lawn to Parkhurst Hall, which houses the college’s administrative offices, where they planted 100 black flags into the ground, each flag representing 300 lives lost in the Israel-Palestine conflict over the years. The students then held a sit-in in front of Parkhurst to draw attention to the then emerging Israel-Hamas war and asked the college to divest from “apartheid,” purporting that the college profits from the war.

Following this sit-in, Sunrise Dartmouth, a student group of climate activists, presented Beilock with the Dartmouth New Deal, which The Dartmouth reporter Alesandra Gonzales described in her Nov. 3 article 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, which included this phrase that led to the arrests of Wade and 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 the two students, Beilock cited the threat of “physical action” as the rationale for involving Hanover Police. Upon learning of this interpretation, Wade and Engel issued a statement explaining their understanding of the phrase “physical action,” emphasizing that “Sunrise is a completely nonviolent organization and physical action is something that all activists do in terms of forcing things to be visibly present.” They viewed sitting in a tent, holding a vigil, holding a protest, and “doing literally anything that is not on social media” as taking physical action. The pair said they had no idea college officials found their actions threatening until reading Beilock’s email the next day.

The initial reaction to the arrests 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, an approach that appeared to be bearing fruit. NBC cited the forums led by Jewish and Middle Eastern studies professors that drew 700 attendees and profiled Jewish and Palestinian students who felt safe on campus because of the college’s willingness to talk about it. NBC’s report mentioned the arrests of the two students who pitched tents on campus and reported on their fear of speaking out as members of the Palestinian Student Coalition, but their report focused on the positive results of the campus dialogues.

But in the months that followed, and especially in the past weeks, Beilock’s decision to bring trespass charges against the students has been called into question. The protracted legal proceedings kept the decision to arrest the students in the forefront locally. Meanwhile, the conflict in Gaza increased tensions on campuses across the country. When Dartmouth students announced their plans to create an encampment on the green like those on other campuses across the country, Dartmouth’s earlier decision to treat the pitching of tents as “trespassing” emerged as a complicating factor, one that predictably led to police intervention. Given the scale of the planned encampment, that intervention required the involvement of police from other communities as well as State Police. The resulting police violence led not only to the arrests of the “trespassers” who pitched tents, but also of those gathered to show their support for the protesters and of bystanders wondering what the commotion was about.

I will not weigh in on Beilock’s decision to engage the police. At the time she made the decision, it seemed reasonable to expect that the trials of the two trespassers would be completed expeditiously. In late October, it seemed plausible that some kind of ceasefire might be negotiated between Israel and Hamas. Indeed, as noted above, a month after the arrests the national media was praising Dartmouth’s “novel approach” to abating the tensions that were beginning to emerge on campuses across the country.

Earlier this week, in a statement issued to the press, Beilock accepted responsibility for the decision to call for the police to intervene and apologized for “the harm this impossible decision has caused.” She concluded with the hope that “we can focus on supporting each other, on always making space for dialogue when we disagree, an on moving forward in collaboration.”

Despite the harm, it is possible for the campus to create space for dialogue on disagreements. In NBC’s report on the relative calm on Dartmouth’s campus in late November, Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish Studies who was a panelist at the student forums, hoped she could explain to students that “we can’t be reductionist, we have to think in complexity, that this is not a single narrative.” She wanted the students to appreciate that they “can condemn” but that they also “have to understand.”

As the faculty, community, students and politicians examine the “impossible decisions” college administrators make as they deal with student protests, I hope they heed Heschel’s message and realize that what we are witnessing is not a single narrative. Most importantly, I hope that those who condemn Beilock seek first to understand and that all parties realize that understanding and lasting peace begin with open-minded dialogue.

Wayne Gersen is a retired school administrator. He lives in Etna.