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Dartmouth College Protest: After Black Lives Matter Protesters Reportedly Assault White Students, School Administrators Apologize To The Protesters

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 10:56 PST, Nov 20, 2015

Dartmouth College students supporting the Black Lives Matter movement stormed the school’s library last week, shouting at students and allegedly even assaulting some who did not support the cause.

Now the school’s administrators are apologizing — to the protesters.

In a move that has drawn criticism, leaders at Dartmouth College held a meeting with the Black Lives Matter protesters, one where vice provost Inge-Lise Ameer praised the protest and called it a “wonderful, beautiful thing.” Ameer apologized to students at how their actions were being portrayed, saying, “there’s a whole conservative world out there that’s not being very nice.”

The school’s alternative newspaper, the Dartmouth Review, was the first media outlet to report on the allegations, reviewing in detail what students allegedly went through during the protest.

“Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong. Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. Not content to merely demonstrate there for the night, the band descended from their high-water mark to march into Baker-Berry Library.” “F*** you, you filthy white f***s! F*** you and your comfort! F*** you, you racist s***!”

The protesters seemed to single out students who were unwilling to support the cause, the outlet noted.

“Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down. ‘Stand the f*** up! You filthy racist white piece of s***!’ Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. ‘If we can’t have it, shut it down!’ they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting ‘filthy white b****!’ in her face.

Ameer appeared to support the students in these actions, the Daily Caller noted. The outlet quoted her advice to the protesters, saying they should file reports if students slammed doors on them.

“I’m gonna really put it out there now,” she says. “I don’t have any Safety and Security reports from last Thursday. If somebody hurts you, or slams a door in your face, or calls you a terrible name, I need you to file a report so that I can act on it.”

The protest took place last week at the school’s library, where a video showed a group of students storming in and chanting in support of Black Lives Matter.

Dartmouth College’s protest took place amid growing unrest among American college campuses, spawned by the protests at the University of Missouri that led to the ousting of President Tim Wolfe. Students there had complained about racist incidents stretching back a number of years, and Wolfe even admitted that the atmosphere had gotten out of control.

After the Missouri protests, a number of other college protest groups made similar demands of their college administrators, asking for greater diversity among faculty and for dedicated spaces for minority students.

But many were not as clear cut as Missouri, where racist incidents were on the public record, and these movements came under criticism for their heavy-handed ways.

That was the case at Dartmouth College, where many spoke out against the protesters and the tactics they used.

Amid the controversy, it is not entirely clear what happened at the Dartmouth College protest. While the Dartmouth Review cited witnesses who claimed they say demonstrators resort to violence, local police said there were not reports of assaults and no staff members witnessed the alleged assaults.

[Picture by Darren McCollester/Getty Images]

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