A coalition of students, faculty, and administrators gathered for a panel discussion of religious differences on campus. This took place in response to the Secularist Students Union’s poster campaign and resulting sidewalk Christian chalk art, events which catapulted questions of religious tolerance on campus to the forefront.
Posters reading “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone” and “Are you good without God? Millions are” posted by members of SSU were removed. In response, a Christian group on campus chalked a sidewalk, which in turn, was vandalized. Tensions between religious groups on campus reached a flashpoint.
Two racist posters were found in the Holland-Union Building (the HUB) and the 25-27 apartments and removed. The contents of the posters were not disclosed by administrators.
Conversations between adminstrators and a group of Jewish students failed to secure a spot on campus for a chapter of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. The student group had hoped adminstrators would consider them an exception to the Greek life moratorium.
Addressing the Student Senate meeting, Senate President Lee Tankle apologized for allowing the February 9th resolution to pass without considering the full context of the situation. Art Haüs was unsuccessful in its appeal of suspension.
Student Senate passed a resolution advocating for Art Haüs’s reinstatement. The suspension, in early February 2010, came after the house had been on probation for a “large, unregistered party” in 2008. After a failure to clean the house at the end of the 2009 spring semester, the house was suspended. Arts Haüs rallied students and other organizations through a petition, Facebook group, and letter writing campaign.
Some time between Spring 1999 and Spring 2000, this student group formed for (what was then termed) GLBT students and their allies as a more activism-focused alternative to the ALLIES support group that also existed at the time.
A rally, sponsored by the Coalition Against Apartheid, attracted a crowd between 100 and 200 people during the two hour anti-apartheid sing-out and rally. The crowd was a mixture of faculty, students, observers, active participants, people wearing black armbands in protest of apartheid, and cameras and reporters from publications and television stations throughout the area. The main goal of the group was to get the trustees to vote for total divestment of all the College's holding in South Africa.
A group of Dickinson students headed by senior Mai Fernandez, took a Student Senate sponsored bus to Washington, D.C., in order to lobby Senators for the U.S. Institute of Peace. After lunch in the Vandenberg Room in the U.S. Capitol, students received a briefing on lobbying techniques. Following presentation by alumnus Eric Cox, the legislative director of the Campaign for U.N. Reform, and Senator Spark Matsunaga (D-Hawaii), students began lobbying, hitting targeted offices in teams of two. Students tried to convince senators to support the Institute of Peace.
The students of Dickinson College organized a "sit-in" on campus for September 20th, 1989. The sit-in was covered in a special edition of the Dickinsonian and was conducted in response to the College's committee (the Senior Management Group) decision to limit kegerator use on the weekends. The sit-in took place on Weiss Lawn and a whole array of students attended. Although the committee's decision tended to limit the freedoms of Greek life on the weekends, many students stated that the issue was more than a Greek one; it was one that addressed the entire campus.
On November 18, 1966, Dickinson College President Rubendall responded to the protest march of November 9, and addressed other campus concerns such as student representation and rush changes with a communication published in The Dickinsonian.
Among the issues addressed, President Rubendall discussed make-up work for students participating in the College's athletic program, and establishing representative voices within the faculty and administrations for fraternities and sororities.
A demonstration of almost 1000 students (the largest of its kind held at Dickinson) marched to "Old West" to protest against the proposed designs of two new dorms.
The march was the culmination of a dispute over architectural plans submitted by Howell Louis Shay and associates. The march began at 6.30 p.m. in front of the Arts Center. Here, students gathered to watch as boxes symbolizing the new dormitories were doused with kerosene and set ablaze. Following this, students Tom Fornwalt, Jeffrey Baron and John Exdell readvised participants of the reasons for the march.
The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a demonstration against the Reserve Officer's Training Corp (ROTC). It was estimated that 75 SDS members participated in the demonstration, which consisted of two parts. The first part was a rally in front of Bosler Hall and the second was to surround ROTC cadets when they had class on Biddle field.
Eddie Money performed at Dickinson College on Sunday, April 23rd. While some students attended the concert, others objected to the Concert Committee's selection and the cost. These students argued that the Committee's had selected an artist that yielded a low turn out and resulted in a loss of approximately $19,000.
Dickinson students participated in the Women's Rights Rally in Washington, D.C. on April 9th. The students joined various groups, both political and religious, who walked in the March on D.C. This march focused on promoting equality for women and emphasized pro-choice with regards to abortion.
An estimated 50 Dickinson students attended the National Mobilization Committee's Peace March in Washington on Saturday, October 21st, 1967. The rally, which filled all available space surrounding the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial, began at 12.30 p.m. Highlight speakers at the rally included John Wilson, Ella Collins and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
The Peace Action Network protested on October 21st and the 22nd against the College's decision to divest $6 million in South America. The group urged Dickinson to divest its money, stating that Dickinson was more interested in business interests than in the interests of people. The protest began with a candle-light vigil that was held on Morgan field on October 21st and continued with students picketing on Saturday in front of Old West. The subject was one debated on campus by many different members of clubs and other organizations.
Thirteen hundred students, faculty, and citizens from Carlisle and the surrounding area gathered at the college at 5 pm on Wednesday, October 15, 1969, and marched past the U.S. Army War College to the college recreation land as part of a peace rally in support of military pullout in Vietnam. The march was the highlight of the Vietnam Moratorium day at the college.
Dickinson students and faculty members protested before the United States Attorney General Edwin Meese III's "major policy address" in ATS on Tuesday, September 17, 1985. Meese's speech reinforced the Reagan Administration's commitment to the abolition of race and gender quotas in American society, drawing criticism from a number of college faculty members in a "teach-in" which followed the speech.
On April 10th, the Women's Center sponsored a "Take Back the Night" march for campus. Roughly 60 to 70 men and women attended the march. The purpose of the march was to raise awareness within the community about sexual violence and to educate students about the resources that were available. Once the march made it to the Quads, they met some resistance from some on-lookers: one man in particular made sexual gestures at the group and another threw a firecracker at the banner being carried.
The Latin American Studies' annual colloquium hosted their keynote speaker, Nicaraguan Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann, on March 23, 1988. The focus of the colloquium was Nicaragua: A Country in Turmoil. The colloquium, which lasted two days, focused on the impact of the Sandanista Revolution within Nicaragua and the United States' involvement within Central America.
Students marched in front of Denny Hall in a eight hour demonstration against President Jimmy Carter's proposed restart of the Selective Service System. The students chose Denny because it was the campus headquarters for the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and the military science department.
Fifteen Dickinson students and four professors joined a quarter of a million strong march in Washington on Saturday, September 19th, to protest President Ronald Reagan's budget cuts and general policies. The coalition, made up of numerous civil rights protesters, labor unions and women's groups, outlined the purpose of the march to protest budget cuts to social security, food stamps, education benefits and federal civilian employment.
Training of students began on campus. Students of the senior class started to prepare for officers examinations under the watchful eye of Lt. Rippey T. Shearer (Class of 1914) and Hays McLaughlin of Company G, the local National Guard unit.