A rally was held at Dartmouth College last Wednesday to show support for the school's American Indian community.

The rally, called the Solidarity Against Hatred Rally, was held in response to a series of events at the college since the beginning of the school year that have been viewed as racist and have targeted the American Indian community.,”By Kaitlin Kovach

A rally was held at Dartmouth College last Wednesday to show support for the school's American Indian community.

The rally, called the Solidarity Against Hatred Rally, was held in response to a series of events at the college since the beginning of the school year that have been viewed as racist and have targeted the American Indian community.

The most recent of the events involved a controversial illustration running on the front cover of The Dartmouth Review, a student run newspaper not affiliated with the college.

According to an open letter dated November 20 by the college's Native American Council printed in The Dartmouth (the school's student newspaper) the events included the sale of T-shirts with an Indian symbol to freshmen during orientation by The Dartmouth Review (Dartmouth abandoned their Indian mascot in year?), fraternity pledges disrupting a drum circle and a dance with the unofficial theme of "Cowboys, Indians, and Barnyard Animals" held by the crew teams where some attendees came in Indian costumes.

The Dartmouth Review's November 28 cover and editorial content became the final straw for students, said Elizabeth Sherman, a junior at Dartmouth and student organizer of the rally.

"We expect these kinds of things from The Review for shock value. They just went too far this time," Sherman said.

The paper ran an editorial on November 28 with the headline "'Indigenous Peoples' Cause Outrage" that criticized the way Dartmouth's Native American community had reacted to the incidents despite the fact that the Native American Council's open letter stated, "As Native people, the right to decide what offends us belongs to us and us alone. It is arrogant for non-Native people to presume that they somehow have this right."

The cover of that issue featured an illustration of an Indian waving a scalp with the headline "The Natives are Getting Restless!"

Daniel Linsalata, editor in chief of The Dartmouth Review posted an explanation for the story on the paper's website on Saturday.

"The cover was intended to be a hyperbolic, tongue-in-cheek commentary upon the reactions to the events this term by the self-styled leadership of Dartmouth's Native American community. I regret that the cover may have precipitated further feelings of offense within Dartmouth and overshadowed the more thoughtful discussions of these matters presented in the articles within the issue itself," Linsalata said in his response.

Linsalata went on to say he was fully behind the overall content of the issue.

"The Dartmouth Review is an independent paper. The college respects their right to free speech, but we expect tolerance of all people," Haas said.

Sherman said organization for the rally started almost immediately after The Dartmouth Review's release and was put fully put together in less than 12 hours. It featured a series of speakers that ranged from administrators to faculty to students.

"The rally was held as a way for the Native American community to show solidarity and unity," said Genevieve Haas, a spokeswoman for the college.

Haas said that the rally was very positive and constructive.

"The rally doesn't take the place of any administrative or institutional action that needs to happen, but it was a moral statement and was really empowering," Sherman said.

Dartmouth College was founded in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock with the intention of educating the area's native population. The school's charter states that it is a college "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land.and also of English Youth and any others." However, the college only graduated 19 American Indian students in its first 200 years of existence.

"Dartmouth didn't exist in the way it was originally intended for very long, but rededicated itself to that in the 1970s," Hass said.

Dartmouth currently has one of the largest numbers of Native American students in the country with 157 students enrolled that have Native heritages.

It should be noted that Native Americans are not the only group that has been targeted. There have been incidents of black students being called inappropriate names on campus as well.

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