As police arrested student protesters at Dartmouth College, a 65-year-old professor ended up on the ground.
Two student journalists reporting that night ended up being arrested themselves.
And a bystander, visiting his father who lives near Dartmouth College, was found with a fractured shoulder.
That was some of the collateral damage after Dartmouth College President Sian Leah Beilock took unusually swift action and authorized police action on May 1 to clear a camp set up by students just two hours earlier on the college green. .
Dr. Beilock, a cognitive scientist who studies why people choke under stress, has been facing a campus upheaval ever since.
Presidents faced a plate of unappealing options for handling the student encampments that have recently sprung up across the country to protest Israel’s war on Gaza.
Some colleges, such as Northwestern University, made deals with student protesters and found themselves criticized for being too lenient. Others, such as Wesleyan University, said protesters would face discipline but that officials would not use force to clear the scenes if students remained nonviolent.
And at places like the University of Chicago, administrators had warned about encampments and watched them expand for days before calling the police.
Dartmouth College has been singled out for its near-instant response to a nonviolent protest.
Students there set up tents at about 6:45 p.m., protectively surrounded by more than a hundred supporters, linking arms. After warnings to leave, campus security officials deferred to the Hanover Police Department, New Hampshire State Police and other local agencies. The arrests began around 20:50
In an email the day after the arrests, Dr. Beilock said that allowing the occupation of university commons for ideological reasons is “at best exclusionary and at worst, as we have seen on other campuses in recent days, it can change. quickly into hateful bullying where Jewish students feel unsafe.”
Moshe L. Gray, the longtime executive director of the Dartmouth chapter of Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish group, said Dr. Beilock has taken “a very fundamental stance” since Oct. 7, setting her apart from her Ivy peers.
“He has an obligation to keep this school safe,” Rabbi Gray said. “The Jewish students feel that he did this for them.”
But for some faculty members, using law enforcement to arrest nonviolent protesters broke the agreement that should exist on college campuses.
“We’re supposed to be a living example of how we manage divisive issues, and the most important thing in that process is that we don’t engage each other as enemies,” said Udi Greenberg, professor of history. “Sending the police against the protesters is the exact opposite of engaging each other in good faith.”
There was also the issue of injuries.
Andrew Tefft, visiting his father from out of town, took a walk on the green as the police arrived. He said he was not affiliated with the college or the protesters, so when a police officer ordered him to move, he was confused.
“I guess I was dumb enough to say, ‘Where?'” Mr. Tefft, 45, said in an interview. “I feel my phone get knocked out of my hands and fly and I feel my arms being pulled. I can feel the metal cuffs going on. I was like, “Oh, they’re arresting me.”
He said he broke his shoulder during a fight with police. An arrest report stated that Mr. Tefft did not comply with commands and acted aggressively during the arrest.
“I grew up in this town,” said Mr. Tefft, who has fond memories of seeing fires on the green, “and this is the craziest story that’s ever happened to me.”
Annelise Orleck, the former head of Jewish Studies at the university, said she began filming the arrests when she was thrown to the ground as she tried to grab her phone from a police officer.
Alessandra Gonzalez, a student reporter witnessed the professor’s arrest. Then she was also arrested. She called another student reporter, Charlotte Hampton, a senior news editor who also ended up zipped. In an interview, both said they had a press ID.
Local and state police officials declined to be interviewed.
The last time so many campuses turned to police to deal with student protesters was in 1970 during the antiwar movement, said David Farber, an American history professor at the University of Kansas who has studied the 1960s. Students then were much more militarized than today, he said, noting that they bombed campus buildings across the country.
“What’s different about this period is that there were so many confrontations so quickly, so many administrators calling the police so quickly,” he said.
On May 6, at a raucous online meeting with faculty that quickly surpassed the 500-person mark, Dr. Beilock tried to explain her quick reaction.
“An ongoing encampment is not something we can guarantee the safety of,” he said, “especially if people outside of Dartmouth decide to participate with their own agendas.” He cited Columbia University, where some foreigners had joined the protests, but they were certainly not the majority.
Many professors were not appeased. They said the violence came from the police, not the protesters.
“Five scenes,” Carolyn Dever, a former Dartmouth professor, wrote in comments on the conversation as Dr. Beilock spoke, echoed by several faculty members.
“This is not Columbia,” wrote another faculty member.
“Drop the charges,” wrote another.
Matthew J. Garcia, professor of history, said Dartmouth used a big-city solution for the quiet, rural town of Hanover.
“It’s like a place out of time,” he said, adding, “It’s absurd to suggest that this is a hotbed of revolution.”
The student newspaper also criticized the university in an editorial, demanding that the university urge authorities to drop charges against their reporters.
“The college should be ashamed,” he said. “We expect an immediate and public apology from College President Sian Leah Beilock.”
University administrators initially responded defiantly, saying they supported the right of student reporters to clear their names “through the legal process.”
But as the backlash grew and press freedom advocates slammed the university, Dr. Beilock backed down, saying in a column in the student newspaper that the journalists should not have been arrested. “We are working with local authorities to ensure this error is corrected,” he wrote.
The charges against the journalists were dropped.
Some on campus may not be angry about calling for their resignation. In perhaps a measure of the high social cost of supporting Dr. Beilock, the student council publicly voted in favor of a no-confidence measure, 13-2, with three abstentions. After the student body president vetoed the public vote, citing insufficient debate, another vote, held in private, overturned the decision, 9-8, with two abstentions. The entire student body now votes on a no-confidence vote.
The school is divided.
“Our president is Jewish herself, and she understands how Jewish students on campus feel,” said Sergey Kahn, professor of anthropology. He said students at the demonstration were shouting offensive, “borderline anti-Semitic” slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. (Many Palestinian supporters say the phrase is a rallying cry for Palestinian dignity.)
“When they surrounded the tents and held hands, they were ready for battle,” Dr Khan said, adding that the green “belongs to all of us”.
Dartmouth’s board of trustees has also supported the action. Liz Cahill Lempres, president of Dartmouth’s board of trustees, said in an email to The Times that she had spoken with all board members and “every one unequivocally supports” Dr Beilock.
In any case, the arrests cannot deter the protesters. Months before the tents became a symbol of pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses across the country, Kevin Engel and other students erected two outside Dartmouth’s administration building to demand divestment from Israel.
Mr. Engel, a freshman, and another student were arrested on trespassing charges, an early sign that Dr. Beilock was serious about cracking down on policy violators.
Dr. Beilock’s decision, Mr. Engel said, sent student activists into overdrive.
“We’re not going to stop,” he said. “Palestine will be free in our lifetime. The students take on the burden of doing this work because no one else really is.”
