Mission: Shanty Removal

By Jeff Rosenthal | Friday, April 21, 2006

Originally Published January 29, 1986.

At approximately 2:45 on the morning of Tuesday, January 21, members of the Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival (DCBGBWC) struck the first blows towards the dismantlement of the wooden structures which have defaced the historically charming Green since last autumn. Twelve members of the DCBGBWC, Dartmouth students representing every class presently enrolled at the College and including some staff members of The Dartmouth Review, gathered at shortly after midnight on Monday to discuss their course of action.

Over the next two hours, students made several surveillance trips to the Green to determine whether anyone was sleeping in the shanties, and also to survey the relative strengths of the four huts. The DCBGBWC learned that two girls were sleeping in the shanty known as Blackburn Hall. Of prime concern to the DCBGBWC was the safety of both the students sleeping in the largest shanty and the students participating in the campus clean-up effort. The committee members set out to reduce the disgraceful huts to pieces of wood suitable for transport and donation to more worthy charitable causes in the Hanover region. On the street corner between South Fayerweather and Topliff dormitories, a large flatbed truck picked up the twelve well-prepared students. The vehicle rounded the bend towards Webster Hall while the DCBGBWC members crouched in the back. After the truck stopped next to the Green where the information booth usually stands, emergency lights flashing, the twelve Dartmouth undergraduates walked toward the darkened shanty town.

For less than five minutes the students attempted to purge the Green of these unsightly yet surprisingly sturdy shacks. The dismantlement of the shanties was organized and safely executed as three students hammered inside the structures. One DCBGBWC member noticed the two girls inside the fourth shanty attempting to light a lantern. He warned them to be careful not to start a fire, and asked if they intended to leave. They said that they were not leaving, so the DCBGBWC member gently closed the door to the shanty.

Within minutes the campus and Hanover police appeared at the scene and ordered the students to cease with the destruction of the shanties. All DCBGBWC members complied and then rode together in the truck, escorted by a Hanover police car, to the campus police office, where they freely gave their names, classes, and ID numbers. After the appearance of the College Proctor, the students returned to their dormitories.

At noon on Tuesday, the Dartmouth Committee on Divestment staged a rally on the Green in response to the attempted shanty removal. The rally was attended by approximately 200 students, faculty, administrators, and townspeople, who listened to emotional speeches by members of the DCD which branded the DCBGBWC members “racists.” They also witnessed the beginning of construction of a fifth shanty christened M. L. King Jr. Memorial Hall. Later that afternoon, when DCBGBWC members Deborah Stone and Robert Flanigan appeared on the Green to speak with representatives of the press, they were subjected to a barrage of obscenities and insults from DCD members and other equally eloquent protestors.

The next day at approximately 8:00 a.m., some DCD members and their supporters entered Parkhurst Hall and staged a sit-in protest in the office of President McLaughlin. They presented the administration with the list of demands, and declared that they would not move until their demands were met. The number of faculty and student protestors fluctuated throughout the day between fifty and 250 people. At 6:00 p.m. of the same day, the daily hour at which Parkhurst Hall is closed for the night, a group of students were locked inside until morning. The Faculty Executive Committee also met in the morning, and called a moratorium on Friday classes.

Mission: Shanty Removal

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