As many as eight-hundred people crowded Dartmouth Green for a rally in Hanover yesterday.
The students, faculty and alumni were there to protest the latest issue an off campus newspaper that they found offensive.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman was there, and files this report.
The demonstrators were protesting the latest issue of the Dartmouth Review.
The cover featured an illustration of an Indian brave holding a scalp in one hand, and a knife in the other.
The headline read, "The Natives are Getting Restless".
That image and the accompanying articles got Michelle Davis and other African American students out to the rally.
In her speech to the crowd, Davis said she had simply had it with the Review, and with other insensitive acts that had happened during the term.
screaming hateful, racist slurs out of windows is unacceptable. punching young, black men in the stomach and re-appropriating terms that should have been abolished with slavery is unacceptable. making a mockery of rape is unacceptable...whooo
Native Americans also spoke at the rally.
Michaeal Hanitchak directs Dartmouth's Native American program, known as NAD.
He told the protesters he'd been at the college for decades.
And he said during much of that time, the atmosphere at the campus has been tense for minorities.
i got here in 1969. i count it as privilege to have been among the first native students here when these issues first came up. i find it ironic that i stand here again 30 something years later addressing these same issues.
The lead editorial in the Review takes a mocking tone against student outrage over incidents that have happened at the college.
In one incident, NAD has charged students who were pledging to a fraternity disrupted a sacred Indian gathering held on Columbus Day.
NAD members were also offended by an obscene t-shirt that was sold by a different fraternity, which featured the college's former mascot, an Indian.
The college retired the Indian mascot several decades ago.
Jeffery Hart of the Review's Advisory Board says the paper was founded as a conservative voice.
Even though its writers and editors are typically Dartmouth students, the paper is privately owned. But Hart says he's told the editors at the paper that the latest issue is inappropriate.
i think this indian stuff is silly kid stuff and they ought to cut it out. ...i wasn't at all pleased by this fuss about the cover ....which again is a distraction.
Dartmouth President James Wright also spoke at the rally.
He reminded the protesters that when the college was founded in the eighteenth century, it provided an education to Native Americans.
Black students were first admitted more than 150 years ago.
Wright said that history shouldn't be overshadowed by recent events.
there are those among us unfortunately, who substitute insult for ideas and who have no sense of our history and yet they claim it as their own. we need to reclaim our history. this is dartmouth. this is your dartmouth. we need to insist that ours is a welcome and an open community.
Despite President Wright's comments, one Native American student said he thought Review editors ought to face some kind of punishment from the college.
But Jeffery Hart of the Review's Board says he didn't think that should happen.
The editors, he says, have first amendment rights just like anyone else.
Hart did say, though, that he thought the college had seen the last of the divisive issue that had just come out.
i'm sure that the dartmouth review will not get involved in anything like this again. its counterproductive. its a distraction and not in keeping with the serious journalism of the newspaper.
Hart also said the paper might soon be issuing an apology.
