"Our consciousness has been raised. What are we going to do?": Activism at Dartmouth and Beyond
"Institutional Racism and Student Life at Dartmouth"
In 1968, after Martin Luther King's assassination, the McLane report was written by the Trustees' Committee on Equal Opportunity. As stated by Stefan Bradley in Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League, the report covered race relations following World War II and how discrimination negatively impacted Black people's progress in America. The committee's report eventually focused on Dartmouth, stating that Black students encountered many harmful experiences, and suggested improvements. A few years after the release of the McLane Report, Eileen Cave, Monica Hargrove, and Judi Redding, as well as many other contributors, created "Institutional Racism and Student Life at Dartmouth." Also known as the Redding Report, it was inspired by a class that Judi Redding took about institutional racism. Once the students began applying what they learned in class to real life, they began writing the report.
The report was separated into different sections that touched on athletics, different committees in the College, admissions, internships, and the hiring of Black faculty. Cave explained that even though the document only contained three names, it was the shared effort of the Black community that brought it to fruition, with other people writing certain sections or sharing their experiences to help guide the authors.
The athletics section described the racism faced by students who played sports such as football and basketball. It outlined problems such as coaches being overly critical of Black players and a lack of communication between them and their coaches. A major issue expressed in the section on committees was the lack of representation that Black students had when facing these committees. Cave summarized this problem in the interview by saying, "If I'm going before any group and the peers are considered not to include anybody of color, there's some issues there." In addressing admissions, there was a very pointed focus on recruiting Black students, as Dartmouth's Black population was very small at the time.
In identifying some of the problems that plagued Black students, the authors highlighted issues present in academia as a whole, not just Dartmouth. However, the existence of "Institutional Racism and Student Life at Dartmouth" demonstrates the strength that Black college students had at the time to stand up for themselves and work for a campus that was more conducive to their needs.