Dartmouth students protest swimming cuts

The Dartmouth student community is not letting the elimination of its swim team happen quietly.

On Friday afternoon, between 500 and 700 students crammed into the stairwell of Parkhurst Hall -- the administrative office building at Dartmouth -- protesting the Nov. 25 decision to eliminate the men's and women's varsity swimming programs effective in March.

Led by the swim team and class board members, the Dartmouth students chanted "We want rights" and sang the school's alma mater in the Parkhurst stairwell.

"It was unprecedented in the sense that about 700 people showed up," Dartmouth Vice President for Student Life, Amit Anand said. "There was a lot of anger there. People just took over the building and chanted for President Wright and Provost Scherr to come out.

Both Dartmouth President James Wright and College Dean James Larimore addressed the crowd.

The "decision has been made, and we are standing by that," Wright said to the crowd, The Dartmouth reported.

Junior swimmer Priscilla Zee said that Wright discredited Dartmouth Athletic Director JoAnn Brislin's claims that the team is not competitive enough to compete at the Division I level, and that "he couldn't be prouder of the athletic experience."

"He also admitted that it was a mistake of how it happened," Zee said.

Many of the students who attended the sit-in felt that the issues at hand dealt much more with the implementation of the budget cuts, and that the administration did not give the students the opportunity to find viable solutions to the problem before a unilateral decision was made.

Students have been working for some time to have a seat on a budget committee, and will have ten members work directly with Scheerr beginning next semester to gather the opinions of students on campus about certain budget decisions.

"The whole situation goes far beyond the issue of should Dartmouth have a swimming team or not," freshman Class Council President Noah Riner said. Riner was one of the students who thought of the possibility of a sit-in.

"The deepest issue is does the administration seriously consider what its students want."

The sit-in was arranged to coincide with the swim team captains' lunch with Wright.

Zee said that the captains spoke with Wright at the meeting about the specifics of the implementation of the cuts -- that the team was notified at 8:08 to be at a meeting at 9:00.

On Thursday night a message was sent over the school's email service -- The Blitz -- to the entire student body to rally them for the cause.

It read: "TIME to show the nation what students of 'higher education' are really about. Fellow Dartmouth students -- 11:45 a.m. meet on the green. Let our presence be felt."

Led by members of the team wearing Dartmouth swimming regalia, the students marched from "the green" at the center of campus to Parkhurst Hall, where students stood shoulder to shoulder because of the lack of space in the stairwell.

The sit-in followed Thursday morning's 185th meeting of the Dartmouth Alumni Council, a board of alumni which, among other things designates trustees to the college.

At the meeting, the council issued a resolution "to immediately reinstate Varsity Swimming and Diving and thereafter to promote an ongoing dialogue to resolve the longer term obstacles that the administration has identified, as well as the broader challenges that are faced by the athletic department at Dartmouth."

On Wednesday night, a member of the swim team received an anonymous letter at his dorm room giving the time and location of the 150-person alumni council meeting. A majority of the swim team met the alumni on their way in to the meeting and handed out pamphlets stating their cause.

The decision to stage a sit-in came after a slew of media attention, much of which focused on Jon Linehan's -- sophomore swimmer Jennifer Kunkel's boyfriend -- attempt "to auction" the team on eBay.

Though the item was removed on Dec. 6, it garnered more than 25,300 hits, according to the newly established "Save Dartmouth Aquatics" Web site.

Though the administration has declared thus far that it will not accept an endowment for the team from outside sources, Zee said that "an alum has come forward and said that he can give $1.5 million in two months."

This article identifies Dartmouth's athletic director as JoAnn Brislin; her name is actually JoAnn Harper.

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