Dartmouth Refuses to Divest Holdings
Dartmouth College on Saturday rejected demands by students to cancel its investments in firms doing business in South Africa and threatened to suspend demonstrators who occupied the school’s library for nine hours.
The demonstrators accused administrators of bowing to conservative pressure in reducing the suspensions given 10 students for a sledgehammer attack on anti-apartheid shanties Jan. 21.
Twenty-two of the students took over the Baker Library bell tower Friday afternoon after college President David McLaughlin reduced the punishments.
At the University of Illinois, students protesting investments in South Africa tore down their campus shantytown Saturday rather than risk expulsion.
In Connecticut, a meeting between students and members of Yale University’s governing body over divestiture ended in an impasse, and students and alumni blockaded a building at Wesleyan University in an anti-apartheid protest.
On Friday, University of Connecticut’s trustees voted unanimously to divest, while the University of Pennsylvania’s board decided to keep an 18-month moratorium on such action.
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