The Dartmouth Mirror 4/26/17

MIR R OR 4.26.2017

WIEN: AN EXERCISE IN FACT | 3

DEMOCRACY AND CONSPIRACY: Q&A WITH BRENDAN NYHAN | 4-5

THE TRUTH ABOUT UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS | 7 SAMANTHA BURACK AND TANYA SHAH/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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Editors’ Note

Facts Travel COLUMN

By Clara Guo

ELIZA MCDONOUGH/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

May is taking a senior seminar in the English department entitled “Decadence, Degeneration and the Fin de Siècle.” The word “positivist” is often thrown around in her scholarly reading, mostly because many fin-de-siècle writers are writing against the grain of Enlightenment rationalism. They are, through their textual evocations of sensations and “impressions,” upending notions of an empirical reality — of objectivity, of certainty, of Truth.

May is a self-proclaimed narcissist, so she likes the idea of a purely subjective reality. She likes to think that the world is as fickle as she is — that she can change reality by changing her mind. And she likes to believe, above all, that art is a screen for self-projection, a vehicle for self-actualization, a process, in the words of Walter Pater, of constant “weaving and unweaving” of the self.

But May hasn’t slept in four days, so even May isn’t sure if this is all a load of bullocks. She suspects it is.

There is little that The Mirror editors are certain of. For Lauren, it’s that going out four nights a week is not the best way to remedy a dry cough. For Annette (and the rest of The Dartmouth staff), it is that Ray’s “Country Bums: Prairie Party” playlist is trash, and not a miracle compilation of “bangers” as he so purports.

But The Dartmouth staff is not alone in this: Just this week, protesters across this country marched for science research, for singular and empirical truth in the face of “alternative facts.” This issue of The Mirror confronts the nature of fact — the ever-blurring border separating fact and fiction. Featuring stories on conspiracy in democracy, the status of divestment at Dartmouth and the reality of undocumented students, this issue reckons with and reframes the “truth.”

Enjoy the issue!

follow @thedmirror 4.26.17 VOL. CLXXIV NO. 68 MIRROR EDITORS LAUREN BUDD ANNETTE DENEKAS MAY MANSOUR

ASSOCIATE MIRROR CAROLYN ZHOU EDITOR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RAY LU

PUBLISHER PHILIP RASANSKY

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ERIN LEE

PHOTO EDITORS ELIZA MCDONOUGH HOLLYE SWINEHART TIFFANY ZHAI

MORGAN MOINAN/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Computers should easily be able to connect to Wi-Fi. Friday, 3:15 p.m.: Class ends. I walk to the IT Help Desk on First Floor Berry. My computer has spent the entirety of 2017 throwing a tantrum over Dartmouth Secure.

In other words, I cannot print my Dartmouth Coach ticket. I hope for an easy fix. I am wrong.

4:10 p.m.: After speaking to four different people, my laptop is returned to me, this time, connected to Eduroam.

I walk briskly to my dorm and throw clothes and textbooks into my suitcase.

4:52 p.m.: I arrive at the Hop for the Boston-bound Coach with eight minutes to spare.

Movies are best enjoyed with reclining seats.

7:35 p.m.: We pull into South Station.

Later tonight, I am treated to dinner at Alden & Harlow in Cambridge and a movie at the AMC Theater in Assembly Row. I’ve wanted to watch “Beauty and the Beast” for months now. It was a childhood favorite.

10:05 p.m.: At AMC, we buy a medium popcorn and two beers on tap, taking full advantage of the bar located conveniently at the entrance.

The theater reminds me of the opera.

On the side, aisles are mini-boxes separated from the center seats.

If you’ve seen “Friends,” imagine how Joey and Chandler felt about their reclining armchair. This is better.

The seats are wide, allowing me to easily cross my legs. The reclining motion is surprisingly quiet and smooth, so I adjust and readjust without fear of disturbing the other movie-goers. There are cup holders on the side and a small table near the aisle. My head is at the perfect angle for the entirety of Emma Watson’s performance.

Productivity rapidly declines on a weekend getaway.

1:30 p.m., the next day: This weekend was supposed to be ripe with productivity.

I was supposed to finish up a few chapters of my MCAT prep book and prepare for upcoming exams.

5:45 p.m.: When I do study, I am focused.

But in a few hours, I’m meant to catch up with Anisha over drinks. I should go — I haven’t seen her in months.

Anisha spent two years after graduation working in Boston. We met during my sophomore year and bonded during her senior week. This past summer, during my internship, she became my go-to. We ordered sushi after work and drank wine while watching episodes of the “Bachelorette” and “How I Met Your Mother.” She introduced me to bars and speakeasies and fishbowls.

Her apartment felt like home.

A fuf chair is an essential component of any apartment.

Next to Anisha’s couch is a fuf beanbag chair. It molds to your body and envelops you when you lie down. It’s big enough for two people to sit comfortably or three people to lie squished.

9:00 p.m.: We sit on Anisha’s fuf eating sushi, drinking screwdrivers and catching up on the past four months of our lives. She tells me about work and traveling and boys and apartment hunting for law school. I tell her about classes, skating and the current guy in my life. I promise to visit her in New York, and she promises we’ll attend spin classes together at B/Spoke when she visits me in Boston.

11:35 p.m.: We finally leave the comfort of the fuf for a Wegmans food run. We buy chips, salsa and microwavable bagel bites.

We watch another episode of “How I Met Your Mother” on her mounted TV before hugging goodbye. She’s officially moving out in June. I’ll move in in September.

One should not leave at 9:10 for a 9:30 Coach.

Sunday, 8:45 p.m.: I tell myself I will wake up early to finish some work before my 9:30 a.m. Coach back to campus.

Monday, 9:07 a.m.: I do not wake up. I finish no work. I leave Boston’s South End with no time for breakfast.

9:15 a.m.: My friend’s car is parked a few blocks away from the apartment. Right as we pull out of the parking spot, a Porsche parked directly in front of us swerves into the middle of the road with its emergency lights blinking, effectively blocking us in.

According to Google Maps, ETA to South Station is 9:28 a.m. I am silently panicking.

9:22 a.m.: We pull into South Station.

A few minutes later, I am seated on the bus with a water bottle and a small bag of pretzels in hand.

Stress is the most reliable travel companion.

An Exercise in Fact COLUMN

By Elise Wien

A book: We read “The Lifespan of a Fact” by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, in which D’Agata plows through with his writing in disdain of Fingal, the fact checker he’s been assigned. (The book is essentially one long argument between the two.)

D’Agata argues that an essay is not necessarily a nonfiction form. He bends the facts of a particular suicide — that of Levi Presley in 2002 — to make a larger point about suicide and stimulation in Las Vegas. Okay. So he bends some facts to make this point, but if making the point requires the bending of facts, can the point exist at all? In other words, is it still a Truth if it is built out of many little approximate-truths (or truth-adjacent statements)?

I think about this a fair amount in terms of my own writing.

A thought experiment: I am sitting with my friends Priya and Clara on the Collis porch. Priya is the kind of person who texts you, “Hey, do you think we have free will?” at 1:57 a.m. We discuss simulation theory, the idea that we’re living in a computer simulation developed by more intelligent creatures. The argument goes like this: Humans have made so much progress in developing sophisticated simulations, and we’ve done it in so short a time, it is likely that other creatures have been able to do the same. Given the number of potential creatures and their potential simulations, statistically speaking, our world is more likely to be simulated than real. Can the simulated realm reach Truth? Does Truth transcend the realms?

What about morality?

A thought: If we can conceive of ourselves as products of a simulation, we can conceive

of Sims or characters in Grand Theft Auto as products of simulation that also have their own consciousness. Would killing them be immoral, since we can recognize them as conscious products of simulation, capable of suffering just like us? If one accepted simulation theory, one would also have to accept that morality transcends virtual bounds.

Is it as immoral to kill a person in Grand Theft Auto as it is on earth? Does earning points make a difference? I feel like it can’t be good practice.

(Again, “I feel,” so I stray from fact. I look up studies about aggressive behavior in kids who play violent video games. There are many different factors that influence the actions of mass shooters; exactly what role gaming or violent media plays is inconclusive, though. According to a 2015 resolution published by the American Psychological Association, the relationship between “violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior is one of the most studied and best established.”)

Priya, who plays Roller Coaster Tycoon on her iPad: “Yeah, I stopped making faulty coasters that kill 40 customers in one go. They used to have names; the game doesn’t give them names anymore.”

But back to fact. I recently read a New Yorker article (a sort of compendium of three book reviews) called “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds,” by Elizabeth Kolbert. The article discusses a number of studies that show that once subjects firmly believe something, it becomes very hard to change their minds. It’s not only confirmation bias, but also something like emotional bias. In

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other words, when presented with information that negates the subject’s previous beliefs, and not presented with information that confirms them, the subject still sticks to their original beliefs. Some scholars believe it’s an adaptive trait.

I think of adaptive traits that trouble the modern body. Priya says that bipedalism presents the modern body with sinus and lumbar issues, that for people with chronic sinus issues, doctors sometimes recommend getting down on all fours for half-hour periods.

At the end of the article, Kolbert writes: “There must be some way, [Jack and Sarah Gorman] maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous.

(Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief they’d like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.) But here they encounter the very problems they have enumerated. Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.”

Here again, I am reassured of my work in fiction. If getting audiences to feel things deeply is the key to establishing beliefs (and not presenting them with facts), then fiction becomes as much a truth-making exercise as nonfiction. It is unclear, though, if feeling deeply changes opinions the same way it establishes them.

Perhaps I should get into children’s literature.

The other day, Corinne found “Corduroy,” an illustrated children’s book about a bear who loses his button in a department store and goes exploring.

We flipped through it and the images resonated with us: the escalator, the flashlight, the guard. How many times had we read this before bed? In how many other instances do authors get their work read over and over and over? The emotional reaction is triggered and the book’s message make its way

into our brains. “Eloise,” “Angelina Ballerina,” “Chrysanthemum!” Remember her?

A fact: I would’ve absolutely taken a class on children’s literature if Dartmouth offered one.

Art-making aspects, market aspects, psychological aspects. We hold our books dear.

A thing I did last week: I went to “Learning Time,” an event my friend Victoria hosts at her house with some friends, some beer and a couple of presenters who talk about their passion projects and academic work. There are presentations and Q&As, and everyone leaves with the wowmy-friends-are-so-knowledgeable-critical-andhard-working-I-am-forever-impressed-withthem feeling that is equal parts love (for them) and impostor syndrome (for yourself). At this presentation, my friend Singer talked about the work she’d done for the Hood Museum, a research project on a winter count from a band of Dakota known as “Yanktonai.” A winter count is a piece of cloth with pictograms that record the history of the tribe from a certain period of time. The images act as visual storytelling devices; a winter count keeper could look at them and be able to tell the story of an event for every year that has a picture. For instance, one year there is a pictogram that shows “stars falling from the sky.” The winter count keeper could tell you that there was a spectacular meteor shower that year. The winter count that Singer did her research on records the Yantonai band’s history over a 90-year period.

Winter counts get passed on so that a collective history of the band can be recorded.

I think about the degradation and unreliability of memories, how susceptible they are to change.

Maybe the images evoke slightly different versions of the same story for keepers of different generations; maybe the facts are bent a little. But collective memory is not an exercise in fact, and neither is storytelling.

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Democracy and conspiracy: Q&A with STORY

By Cr

Could you elaborate a bit more on what solutions the research does suggest?

BN: There are no easy answers, as the While reading “The voter fraud myth, students learn. The the c o u r s e which is baseless, directly typical response to s y l l a b u s , I challenges the integrity of misinformation is to noticed that you give people more facts emphasized how our electoral system. Imagine or studies. So, people m a n y b e l i e f s if Trump had lost, and he don’t believe in climate don’t qualify as change — well, look misconceptions told his supporters that the at all these studies or conspiracy election has been stolen. showing that climate t h e o r i e s . change is real. That’s In contemporary American W hat are the the response you’ll definitions used politics, we’ve never had often see in practice. in the course?

But we’ve seen again a presidential candidate BN: I encourage and again that just students to make challenge the integrity of the giving people more u p t h e i r o w n vote.” facts and evidence is minds about where often not enough, and we should draw in some cases can even those lines, but -BRENDAN NYHAN, be counterproductive. t h e c o n c e p t u a l GOVERNMENT PROFESSOR That’s not always the definition that we case, of course; we tend to use is one also talk about the that I’ve proposed circumstances under in my research. which people are more We ’r e d e f i n i n g open-minded. That misperceptions infor mation might as beliefs that are contradict beliefs either false or they hold, values that unsupported by the best available evidence. they are a member of. But it certainly Conspiracy theories are a little trickier seems clear that, for the most politicized because the very nature of a conspiracy controversial issues, giving people facts is theory is that it’s not directly falsifiable. It’s often an ineffective strategy. We’ve seen a claim about an unobserved or secret action myths persist for years and decades when taken by some powerful elite. Similarly, we the evidence against them is overwhelming. try to focus on those conspiracy theories for Barack Obama was born in this country, but which there is no credible evidence. We try a non-trivial minority of Americans believe to be careful to distinguish misperceptions he wasn’t. Climate change is real, but a from cases where there really is substantial substantial percentage of people think it’s not disagreement about the underlying facts true. Giving people more and more evidence among experts. There are many cases where on these points is not necessarily going to be experts disagree or we simply don’t know the most effective strategy. It misunderstands the truth with a high degree of confidence, how people come to form these beliefs or why and those are really different from the kinds they are unwilling to change their minds. of cases we talk about, which are ones in It’s often not a question of people lacking which claims can be directly falsified or are access to accurate information, so we often contradicted by a strong expert consensus, talk about what approaches might be more as with climate change. effective. often reading the newest work that has just come out. They’re participating in the field as it’s evolving.

ISHAAN JAJODIA/THE DARTMOUTH

Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at the College, specializes in teaching and researching misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The distinction between fact and fiction should be very obvious — however, in this age of “fake news” and conspiracy theories, the line separating the two can become blurred. The Mirror sat down with government professor Brendan Nyhan, an expert on political misconceptions and conspiracy theories, to discuss his take on the sometimes-incorrect distribution of political information.

Could you give an overview of your class, Government 30, “Political Misinfor mation and Conspiracy Theories”?

BN: It’s a mid-level course that I’ve been teaching since I came here. It’s one that’s become increasingly topical as the world has changed — there’s so much we can talk about in terms of how the course material relates to what’s going on in the world.

For how long, exactly, have you taught

the course?

BN: I’ve been teaching it since I got here in the 2011-2012 academic year.

W hat inspired you to create a curriculum specifically focused on misinfor mation and conspiracy theories?

BN: It’s my research specialty. When I got here, my colleagues encouraged me to teach the course. I was worried that the topic might be too specialized, but they encouraged me to teach what I was most knowledgeable and most passionate about. I think it’s worked out very well. The topic is very specific, but that means we can go deep into the material and the students can really reach the cutting edge of what we know in terms of research, which isn’t always possible in a single quarter. This research literature has also grown dramatically even as I’m teaching the course. So the students are not just reading the most important work; they’re

Of course, it’s impossible to condense an entire term’s worth of material into a single interview. But if there were just a few key points from your course that you’d hope all students know, what would those be?

BN: What I try to do throughout the term is challenge students to think about why giving people factual information isn’t always the best response to misperceptions and to help them see why people could come to believe in misperceptions. We are all vulnerable, as human beings, to these mistaken beliefs. It’s not something that other people do or that dumb people do; it’s something that human beings do. I think we try to understand the psychology of why people might hold these beliefs, including ourselves, and also talk about what the best response to them might be, which the research suggests is often different from the approach that people tend to take and practice.

Also while reading the syllabus, I saw that many of the assigned readings are very recent, and several were published this year, while others discuss controversies from years ago.

Could you comment on how you believe these issues have changed, or stayed the same, over the years?

BN: Misperceptions aren’t new, but they’ve become more prominent in our national political debate. I think a couple of factors are important in understanding why that’s changed. The first one is that we’ve become more polarized, so partisan misconceptions have become more common. People have very negative views of the other party, and misconceptions often concern accusations against the opposition party that people would like to believe are true. Also, the elites who often promote misconceptions are themselves more polarized, so they may be more inclined to promote misinformation For both reasons,

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government professor Brendan Nyhan

ristian Cano

political conditions are especially favorable to partisan misperceptions and conspiracy theories right now. That’s made these issues very prominent.

The other factor that has changed is that social science has started to take misperceptions more seriously. When we studied what people know about politics in the past, we often emphasized civics knowledge, the kind of stuff you would have learned in high school — naming the branches of government, and other facts and trivia that aren’t especially relevant to how people experience politics. We’ve shown for decades that people don’t know very much about politics in the sense of being able to answer these pop quiz-style questions. I’m not sure how important that kind of knowledge is, though. I think we failed to consider that people could not only be uninformed, but also misinformed. That distinction was lost. When you’re simply asking someone who the chief justice of the Supreme Court is, it was rarely consequential whether they thought they knew the right answer and were really wrong.

Most people were uninformed: They didn’t know the right answer and they knew they didn’t know the right answer. For many other issues, by contrast, people are misinformed.

They think they know the correct answer and they don’t. But until maybe the last 15 years or so, we didn’t study misconceptions especially carefully. We kept documenting what people didn’t know about politics in terms of facts and failed to focus on these politically consequential misperceptions they might have held. That’s the other thing that’s changed, and that’s why the syllabus is full of new research. There simply wasn’t that much scholarship out there when I started studying this area.

had lost, and he told his supporters that the election had been stolen. In contemporary American politics, we’ve never had a presidential candidate challenge the integrity of the vote. There’s no evidence to suggest that millions of illegal votes were cast. That’s a really big deal.

The Trump-Russia conspiracy theories are important because we’re seeing Democrats move into a style of conspiracy thinking that we previously observed more commonly among Republicans during the Obama years. At that time, Democrats were quite critical of conspiracy theories about Benghazi and the birther myth and other issues like that. Now, some of them are starting to fall victim to the same kinds of conspiracy theories. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate questions to ask about Trump and Russia that could be investigated, but we’re seeing a classic form of conspiracy theorizing arising. If you go on Twitter and look around, you will see all sorts of people who think that they’re connecting the dots in ways that no credible investigator has been able to support.

Something you’ve brought up is that many of these misperceptions are baseless, but I know that the people who believe in them are trying to provide evidence that supposedly supports them. Could you comment on how you think that process is taking place?

BN: One thing we study in my course is what’s called directionally motivated reasoning. The idea is, when we’re processing information, we have an accuracy motive: a desire to hold a correct view about the world. But we also have a directional preference about the right answer, especially when it comes Of course, in today’s very politically to controversial political issues. We don’t polarized climate, we hear phrases always have a directional preference. There such as “fake news” being used all are plenty of issues where we just want to the time. Given how timely this is to get the right answer — we don’t care who’s your research and the course, what do right. But when it comes to politics, we you personally think are some of the do care who’s right. It may feel like we’re worst popular misconceptions today? dispassionately considering the evidence, BN: There’s a long list, and it changes by but our directional motives are influencing the day. I’d say the the information we myths that have find to be moral b e e n p ro m i n e n t “We are all vulnerable, as and convincing. To r e c e n t l y t h a t I human beings, to ... mistaken use a line from a think are potentially journalist I know, most damaging are beliefs. It’s not something that “We think we’re Donald Trump’s other people do or that dumb being scientists, but false claim of actually being people do; it’s something that we’re millions of illegally l aw ye r s. ” We ’re cast votes in the human beings do.” a rg u i n g a c a s e, election and the not dispassionately various conspiracy considering the theories that are -BRENDAN NYHAN, GOVERNMENT evidence, at least circulating which PROFESSOR when it comes claim a vast to politics. You’ll Tr u m p - Ru s s i a see huge swings conspiracy beyond in people’s what the evidence perceptions of the can support. world depending Both of those are on who’s in power. very politically When Trump took consequential. The voter fraud myth, which office, for instance, Republican views of the is baseless, directly challenges the integrity economy dramatically improved. Similarly, of our electoral system. Imagine if Trump Democrats were far more likely to say that

ISHAAN JAJODIA/THE DARTMOUTH

Government professor Brendan Nyhan teaches Government 30, “Political Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories,” a course that explores why people hold false beliefs about politics.

George Bush could have reduced gas prices if he really wanted to compared to Barack Obama. The powers of the presidency didn’t change between 2008 and 2009, but we saw partisans’ beliefs about the powers of the presidency to affect gas prices change.

Those shifts reflect the motivations people have as partisans.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

BN: One of the great things about Dartmouth is that we get to work with smart undergraduates like you closely. I also teach a seminar called [Government 83.21] “Experiments in Politics” in which the students get to work with me on research about misinformation and misperceptions. In addition to the mid-level course that we’ve discussed, the students in the seminar and I design and execute experimental studies of information together with funding from the Office of Undergraduate Research. Right now, we’re running two pilot studies online

that test different approaches to countering fake news and misinformation in social media feeds, which I think could help inform the debate over how companies such as Google and Facebook should respond to the false information that’s circulating on their platforms. That’s a great example of what’s possible to do at Dartmouth and a great way for students in my course to continue studying these issues. It allows them to go from being consumers of research to producers. Students from the 2014 seminar and I published an article based on our research, and the students from last year and I are about to submit our article based on that research as well. We’re hoping to keep doing that and contribute to knowledge further. Hopefully in the future, I’ll be teaching the work that my students and I did as well as producing new work.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

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Divestment faces diverging paths STORY

By Jaden Young

They have the facts. They have the support.

Institutional change, however, eludes them.

Members of Divest Dartmouth are increasingly frustrated with the lack of action by the College in response to their over four-year campaign for fossil fuel divestment.

The group has made their demands clear. They want the College to divest itself from all holdings in a specific list of 200 fossil fuel companies: the top 100 public coal companies and the top 100 gas and oil companies, ranked by how much carbon their reserves could emit into the atmosphere. In 2016, Dartmouth’s endowment holdings in those top 200 fossil fuel companies was about $2 million.

For Divest Dartmouth, divestment is less about hurting fossil fuel companies financially and more about the symbolic significance of divestment. Divestment, they say, would show that the College takes the threat of climate change very seriously and condemns the methods of fossil fuel companies.

“If Dartmouth remains invested in these companies, Dartmouth is sending a message that we think that fossil fuels will be a profitable investment, meaning that we will profit off the world not acting on climate change,” said Leehi Yona ’16, a founder of Divest Dartmouth.

The College isn’t the only institution with holdings in these industries, and activists hope it could act as a leader in the movement.

“Hopefully, Dartmouth divesting, because we’re such a prominent institution, could help other colleges divest, set off a wave,” Catherine Rocchi ’19 said.

As divestment efforts at other top schools secure partial successes, Divest Dartmouth continues its push for the College’s Board of Trustees to take up the issue.

“Here you have this incredibly successful group of students who have done everything that the administration asked them to do and has demonstrated that this is something that is critically important and that there is support for this, and the administration does not really engage with us in conversation in anyway,” Yona said. “That is incredibly frustrating.”

Divest Dartmouth was founded in 2012. Yona is currently working on a master’s of environmental science at Yale University, but maintains what she calls “a far away mentorship role” for the group as they continue to advocate for divestment.

“For me, Divest Dartmouth was a way of shifting the conversation on campus around climate change away from the individual actions we were taking, which are important, but which, alone, will not really get at the root of this problem — to the role systems such as the fossil fuel industry has played in actually causing this problem,” Yona said.

In the years since its founding, Divest Dartmouth has seen its membership and community support continually grow, bolstered by public events like the Big Green Rally.

Held in April 2016, Divest Dartmouth’s Big Green Rally was the most co-sponsored event in the College’s history, attracting over 100 cosponsor groups.

Along with community engagement events, Divest Dartmouth has collected over 2,500 signatures on a petition in support of their cause.

Its associated alumni group, Dartmouth Alumni for Climate Action, also sent in a letter reaffirming their support of divestment that was signed by over 500 alumni spanning nearly 60 class years.

“Our strategy has been, so far, to follow all of the rules that the administration is giving us, but at the same time to demonstrate how much people care about this issue,” Yona said. “But I don’t think that the administration has responded to us in a way that acknowledges how much support we have.”

Beyond generating student, faculty, staff and alumni support, Divest Dartmouth’s efforts have been geared toward those who are ultimately able to make the decision on divestment: College President Phil Hanlon and the Board of Trustees.

“The Board of Trustees is the entity that has decision-making power over what we do with the endowment — with that said, every single historical decision to divest ourselves of anything has come from the president,” said Jay Raju ’18, citing both the College’s 1989 divestment from apartheid-complicit companies and its more recent [2012] divestment from tobacco companies.

According to Divest members, who have attended more than 30 of Hanlon’s office hours, Hanlon expressed to them that before Board action would even be considered, they would need a report on fossil fuel divestment from the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility. The ACIR is able to review socially-driven investment matters and make recommendations to the Board of Trustees if the president determines action is needed.

Divest Dartmouth was able to meet with the ACIR, and in August 2014 Hanlon commissioned a report from the committee analyzing the pros and cons of fossil fuel divestment.

The resulting report, released in April 2016 and written by Thayer School of Engineering professor Mark Borsuk, Katie Zhang ’16 Th’16 and Kasidet Trerayapiwat Th’16, detailed a decision-making framework for considering divestment. The reports evaluated the ethical, financial, academic and symbolic impact of divestment. Under that framework, the report concluded that the option to partially divest from only the 15 dirtiest fossil fuel companies was more viable than the option to take no action but advised that the most desirable degree of divestment was difficult to determine without more information about potential donor and alumni reactions.

“That [Borsuk’s] report did not result in immediate institutional action is disheartening, but it is telling in many ways,” Raju said.

After the success of the Big Green Rally, students from Divest were finally granted a meeting with trustees Bill Helman ’80 and Rick Kimball ’78 and Hanlon in September 2016.

In a recording of that meeting, Helman reads from a prepared statement, “It is important to remember that our endowment exists to support the current and future educational missions of the college. It is not a mechanism for addressing social and political goals, no matter how worthy.

Limiting investment flexibility can compromise our ability to fund both our current and future operations, including our own scholarly work to find the solution to the problem of climate change.”

Speaking to The Mirror this week, Raju refuted that claim, which he identified as a common argument against divestment.

“Just open up the history books,” he said. “We divested from apartheid-complicit companies, and that mattered. We divested from tobacco companies. As a college, Dartmouth is an institution that makes statements no matter what it does, political or otherwise. It doesn’t have a

SEAMORE ZHU/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF Divest Dartmouth’s Big Green Rally was the most co-sponsored event in the College’s history.

choice of saying this is a political action and this isn’t a political action. Choosing not to divest from fossil fuel companies makes the statement that we agree with the values and missions and methods of those companies.”

In the meeting, Helman and Kimball stressed that Dartmouth’s investment office does not purposefully purchase stock in fossil fuel companies for the endowment. According to them, all of Dartmouth’s holdings in fossil fuel companies are either gifts given to the College that they have not yet sold off or are holdings in separate accounts with outside managers.

They conceded that there was no policy explicitly prohibiting them from purchasing fossil fuel stocks.

For Rocchi, the meeting was unsatisfying.

“There weren’t any questions we couldn’t answer, no arguments they put forth that we didn’t have a rebuttal to, but, essentially, what they told us was that divestment just wasn’t a priority for them right now,” she said. “In my view, that’s just incredibly short-sighted. Climate change should obviously be a priority for us.”

Rocchi cautioned against conflating the results of that meeting with the sentiments of the Board as a whole.

“I don’t want to give the impression that all trustees are anti-divestment. We definitely have a few passive supporters in there,” she said, though she remained mum on exactly which trustees she was referring to.

Since that meeting, Rocchi said, “There’s been a little bit more back and forth, but we’re at a stalemate where they’re just refusing to make a decision on divestment.”

The group’s recent event on April 13, in which members strung empty Keystone Light cans together in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline, engaged students but failed to generate a response from the administration.

“Divest is in a position where we have positive momentum, but we are not a threatening existence on campus,” Raju said. “We had a Keystone Pipeline event in front of Parkhurst, and if anything, that served to boost the College’s public relations — like there’s a cool, activist event happening on campus that all the prospies got to see ... we are not an organization whose purpose is just to show the outside world that Dartmouth students can be activists.”

As the College continues to avoid making a decision on fossil fuel divestment, Divest Dartmouth members’ frustration increases.

“Our ask has always been the same: requesting more access to trustees in order to compel the Board to divest, or requesting that this decision be at least put on the agenda so Board members can vote and talk about it,” Raju said. “At every turn, we’ve been met not with a hard no, but with an, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ which is exceedingly frustrating when the person in question doesn’t actually get back to you.”

To advance their position, the group is considering a change of tactics.

“In the event that nothing changes, we’re definitely looking to escalate as a group in the next few terms,” Rocchi said. “They’re afraid that if they take the divestment decision to the Board and the Board says no, that would also be a reason for us to escalate, so they’re trying to just string us along asking for little things — a little back and forth — so we feel like something is happening, but it’s really just stalling.”

According to Rocchi, the group is considering a number of options for escalation, including sit-ins, similar to actions taken by other divestment activists at other colleges.

“The risk with something like a sit-in is that people look from the outside and think, ‘Oh, look at these kids just whining when they don’t get their way,’ so you just have to be really clear about articulating how we have the information we need, we have the student support we need, and they’re just choosing to ignore it,” she said.

Raju later confirmed the group’s impending commitment to escalation.

“You can expect that you’ll be seeing more from Divest Dartmouth in the future, and that not everything you’ll be seeing is nice, cookie-cutter, ‘Look how great the College is,’” he said.

Yona, Rocchi and Raju all expressed respect for the Board of Trustees and Hanlon but emphasized their frustration and continued hope for action.

“I have the utmost respect for the Board members of the College and recognize that making a decision to divest or being the person who suggests it in that room can be one that carries some risk in terms of losing face,” Raju said. “At the same time, we sincerely hope that we can tap into the best parts of our Board members; the courage to be the voice that inspires change, to be the push for good rather than institutional tradition and inertia.”

The College did not respond to requests for comment.

MIRR OR //7

’18: “The younger classes will never understand the sick thrill of being called out for something on Yik Yak.”

60-ish year old local woman: “I’m more of a squats, weights type. I’m a full blown gym rat.”

’18 #1: “I have to send my phone to Lone Pine Repairs.” ’18 #2: “I’m pretty sure they can’t fix a phone that was dropped in the Chi Gam hot tub.”

’18: “My next blackout day is next Saturday. I already have it planned.”

’18: “I’m shopping for my Woodstock outfit, and it’s really stressing me out because I know it’ll be the most photographed day of my life, and yes I’m including my wedding day.”

Undocumented at Dartmouth STORY

By Annette Denekas & Mara Stewart

Anti-immigration speeches and immigration policy discussions flood the media, but the struggles of Dartmouth s tu den ts are les s publicized. T heir experiences often occur behind closed doors and are not readily shared. Many undocumented students here choose to remain secretive about their status, since they often don’t know who to trust, are afraid of the stigma of being an undocumented student or want to avoid liability issues.

Alejandro Cuan-Martinez ’20, an immigrant from Mexico, did not tell anyone he was undocumented until he came to college. Here, he only told a few trusted friends. He discussed the stigma surrounding undocumented immigrants at Dartmouth.

“If you’re undocumented, you’re considered a bad person,” Cuan-Martinez said. “I have so much more to offer.”

He explained that when others discover your undocumented identity, they often overlook your values, your personality and your work ethic and solely focus on your undocumented status.

“I become ‘undocumented,’ and people don’t look past that [label] to see the whole person,” he said. “I am no longer Alejandro.”

Despite this stigma, Dartmouth students are typically thoroughly assimilated into American culture and have overcome difficulties associated with their undocumented identity just to apply to and attend college.

Their struggles in the application process can include the inability to apply to many universities, inflated tuition costs and the threat of moving away from their families in danger. They are forced to prove that undocumented immigrants can work just as hard — and sometimes even harder — than documented Americans.

Valentina Garcia Gonzalez ’19, who is originally from Uruguay, also discussed the misconceptions surrounding undocumented students, especially with regard to the rumor that these students are supposedly only at Dartmouth due to affirmative action.

“We are in the same classes as [everyone else], we are working just as hard as they are,” Garcia Gonzalez said.

Cuan-Martinez echoed this sentiment.

“I wish people wouldn’t see undocumented immigrants as some feeble group that is dependent on others,” he said. “We are resilient, we are passionate, we are intellectuals. Some people think lowly of us because they see us as un-American. But we are very much American kids. We have thoroughly assimilated here.”

Barbara Olachea Lopez Portillo ’19 said

she personally has not had any negative interactions with others related to her undocumented identity, but she does know many others who have.

“It’s already difficult adjusting to college when you are low-income and firstgeneration, and being undocumented adds another layer of complexity,” she said. “It’s hard to figure out who you can trust. I am very open, but not everybody has the same perspective.”

Garcia Gonzalez recalled the first incident of discrimination she experienced at Dartmouth.

“I put in the Facebook group before school started that I wanted to run for Student Council, and I got a message from a student threatening my deportation,” she said. “After that, I didn’t post in the Facebook group again because I was too scared.”

The Facebook comment wasn’t the only threat that Garcia Gonzalez has received.

She described incidents in which people yelled anti-immigrant slurs from their cars, and she experienced a more direct affront in the form of a deportation threat from a fellow classmate.

Although the degree of comfortability in their undocumented identity varies, fear is often commonplace for undocumented students. Garcia Gonzalez explained that she lives in fear every day, especially with regard to her family at home.

“I can lose my family at every given moment,” Garcia Gonzalez said. “I call home seven to 10 times a day to make sure they are okay. I’m constantly worried.”

Cuan-Martinez said he did not realize he was undocumented until he was in high school. His family’s status caused stress and concern.

“I always heard my mom crying when I was growing up, but I never knew what was happening,” he said.

Often, undocumented students’ families have less protection than they do. Unlike most students, their parents are not protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy for minors. DACA gives many undocumented students at Dartmouth temporary relief in the form of a work permit, as well as the opportunity to travel or acquire a driver’s license. Undocumented students’ families are unable to obtain these benefits if they came to America as adults.

Garcia Gonzalez and her brother are protected by the DACA policy.

“During winter term, I went home and drove my family around because I have a driver’s license,” Garcia Gonzalez said.

“When I’m not there, they risk getting deported by driving every single day. They try to get groceries twice a month rather than every other day to reduce the risk.”

If her family got deported, Garcia Gonzalez and her brother would be in the U.S. alone.

Olachea Lopez Portillo discussed the limitations she’s experienced as an undocumented student.

“I wish others would understand that there is so much that people take for granted,” she said. “I have limited rights, especially in the current political climate. I can’t study abroad in college because it’s not worth the risk.”

Garcia Gonzalez said that coming to Dartmouth and being able to speak candidly about her identity is revolutionary for her.

Despite hardships, she stands proud in her undocumented identity. She refuses to assimilate to typical expectations of what’s “normal.”

“Now, I am pushing back against assimilating, and I am reclaiming my roots,” she said. “Immigration is not a bad thing. It is natural.”

Olachea Lopez Portillo ref le c t e d positively on Dartmouth’s attitude toward undocumented students.

“Here, people have been very welcoming,” she said.

8// MIRROR

Verity Photo

B y ISHAAN JAJODIA