Pro-Palestinian Protesters End Hunger Strike

Dartmouth has long seen its fair share of campus political activism. From mounting anti-war protests in the 1960s to undertaking sit-ins that pushed the administration to cut ties with apartheid South Africa, Dartmouth students have a history of demonstrating for change. Our current era of political turmoil is no different. With the Israel-Hamas conflict ongoing, campus has not escaped the rash of polarization and outcry that has swept the country. In the 2023 fall term, pro-Palestinian activists held several protests, the largest attracting perhaps two hundred attendees. While vigils for Israel may fairly be said to have attracted far greater sympathy among students across campus, there were undoubtedly more Palestinian events held overall, and passing observers noted that such events attracted more zealous supporters.

Certainly, Palestinian activists were far more publicly and consistently ardent in their protests, willing to skip classes to stand outside in the cold and demonstrate before unsuspecting passersby. We at The Review found ourselves wondering what exactly their majors were to be able to skip class so often.

Much like in the rest of the country, with the coming of the new year, the wind seemed to go out of the sails of the pro-Palestinian movement on campus. The few protests hosted in the current winter term attracted fewer students, and activists’ calls to action became ever more shrill and desperate. Perhaps the arrest of two students last October scared off the fair-weather revolutionaries. 

This term, what brought perhaps the most attention to the remaining pro-Palestinian protesters was when a contingent embarked on “hunger strikes,” which they declared at noon on February 19 during an ongoing demonstration.

Unlike the crowds that gathered during last term’s rallies, the winter term gatherings, including on the 19th, mustered only a scant few dozen protesters. But what they lacked in number they made up for in sheer volume per person. 

Chants of “free Palestine” could be heard from across the Green on February 19. Eight protesters announced that they would be beginning a hunger strike in protest of, in their words, Dartmouth’s inaction regarding the Dartmouth New Deal as well as the ongoing court case against the two protesters who were arrested last term (see “Dartmouth Students’ Trial Begins Following October Arrest” opposite).

In their statement, the hunger strikers cited a perceived powerlessness and frustration at the administration’s failure to acquiesce to their demands. In their words, they thus elected to seek to use the last tools available to them, their bodies, as tools of protest.

Inherent to this statement is the idea that the protesters possess a right to have their demands met—that the administration has some obligation to do what they dictate. Perhaps the administration’s history of acquiescing to demands for progressive reform has spoiled these activists? But rather than caving to their demands this time, the administration responded appropriately, cautioning the protesters against endangering themselves while committing to no concrete action whatsoever. 

Campus’ broad reaction to the strike was, overall, one of muted sarcasm. Most students were simply too busy to pay much attention to a few students electing not to use their daily lunch swipes, occupied as we were with taking midterms, preparing for finals, and involving ourselves with other things that have an actual impact on our daily lives. 

While undoubtedly a major occurrence for the portion of campus that is very involved in pro-Palestinian activism, that segment is very much isolated within its own, tiny bubble. Students in that group see themselves as the center of the world; campus to them is a battlefield rather than a place of learning. Not so to the rest of us.

Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to entirely escape strikers’ political messaging on social media. The standard rogue’s gallery of on-campus activists all posted the same stories, operating under the false assumption that those outside of their own circle would take interest in a rather poorly designed slideshow. 

Thankfully, the internet demolished them. Their posts’ comment sections featured repeated calls for some of the more rotund members of the Palestinian group to join the hunger strikes. Some commentators proposed that these particular members combine dieting with activism. 

In the pages of The Wall Street Journal, which addressed the strikes in brief, one letter writer appropriately described the protesters as engaging in more of a “fast” than a hunger strike. So it was.

Putting ourselves in the leftist mind for a moment, we can criticize the hunger strikes from the ideology of their own practitioners. If we still had the ever-pliable Hanlon in office, the strikers probably would have pursued a more 1968-type strategy, such as attempting to seize Collis rather than refusing to eat. 

But in their own form of “pragmatism”—seeking to appeal to the more confident and competent President Beilock—they undertook a less on-the-nose, more out-of-the-stomach approach. 

Of course, all this means to us is that those self-proclaimed far-leftists fail to follow their own so-called principles. In another, similar bout of inconsistency, they decided not to eat during eating-disorder awareness week. That the strikers would exhibit such behavior as that time is insensitive!

A salient feature of the hunger strike that left us chortling was play-by-play coverage from that great mouthpiece of melodrama The Dartmouth. When one hunger striker woke up with “back pain and a shortness of breath,” the paper in question covered his trip to the hospital like he was some sort of wounded veteran in need of a blood transfusion.

But of course all such concerns were rendered moot on Friday, March 1, when the two students still on strike ended their fasts in the parking lot of the courthouse in which the trial is taking place. In what came as no surprise to anyone, their demands be damned, they got hungry! 

In response to the end of the, uhm,“hunger strike,” the administration sent out an email containing platitudes about health and making vague promises for future discussion. Some strikers claimed victory, but this was clearly a last-ditch effort to justify their pointless undertaking. 

While we don’t think Dartmouth was ever going to make any concessions, we’ll never know, as the protesters got nowhere near real starvation. Regardless, the administration was not, and should never, be moved by a handful of misguided students. Count another victory for sanity.