National Police Week, centered on Peace Officers Memorial Day, has come around every mid-May since President Kennedy dedicated the yearly remembrance “in honor of those peace officers who, through their courageous deeds, have lost their lives or have become disabled in the performance of duty.”
But at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, honoring fallen officers during National Police Week sparked controversy.
Last week, after reserving a centrally located bulletin board far in advance, students belonging to the Dartmouth Republicans posted a display reading “Blue Lives Matter” that featured facts and slogans. The following morning, Black Lives Matter protesters took down the display and replaced it with fliers that read, “You cannot co-opt the movement against state violence to memorialize its perpetrators.” The protesters vandalized the authorized display despite having already received expedited authorization to post an adjacent display of their own, the Dartmouth Review reported.
An open letter from the College Republicans dated May 13 was included in coverage by the daily Dartmouth and the conservative Dartmouth Review. It reads:
And on May 14, an email from college president Phil Hanlon to all undergraduates concluded, “Freedom to dissent lies at the heart of freedom of expression, and Dartmouth will always protect it. We encourage those who dissent to assert a counter perspective openly through one of many communications avenues available.”
This fracas over bulletin boards comes at a tense time for the college, and with only one full week of classes left in the spring term. Dartmouth was rocked by a Black Lives Matter protest this past November, during fall term exams and shortly before students left for the long winter break. A group of students who hijacked Baker Library’s lower stacks shouted down bystanders and physically grabbed and pushed against a wall one who attempted to walk away rather than “stand with” Black Lives Matter.
Today it seems that, just as in Baker Library last fall, peaceful dissent may not be worth the risk. Coverage by the regional Valley News highlights an opinion common on campus that the Dartmouth Republicans’ “Blue Lives Matter” slogan was deliberately indiscreet:
The idea that the display may have been intentionally provocative is not unlike whispered allegations about Erika Christakis, former co-master of Silliman College and education professor. Rumor has it Christakis emailed Yale students her response to Halloween costume guidelines last fall just to pump up publicity for her book—a scholarly work proposing “let children make their own mistakes” theories of pedagogy, which became a bestseller.
But whether or not the Dartmouth Republicans, and Elaina Christakis, for that matter, anticipated reactionary challenges to free expression, the object lesson stands.
