Quayle Hired Student Suspended in Racial Case as Aide

A Dartmouth College student suspended from school along with other staff members of a conservative student newspaper on charges of harassing a black professor last winter was accepted as an intern on the staff of Sen. Dan Quayle, apparently with Quayle’s full knowledge of the case.

The student, John W. Quilhot of Ft. Wayne, Ind., said Friday that he told Quayle’s staff about the suspension in advance and offered to step aside “if there was any problem,” but was taken on anyway. The incident came before Quayle was tapped as the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.

“He (Quayle) was fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the suspension,” Quilhot said in a telephone interview.

Returned to School

Quilhot said he worked for Quayle throughout April and May--while his suspension was in effect--then returned to Dartmouth to become president of the Dartmouth Review, an independent, conservative newspaper published by students. He said he performed only routine jobs for Quayle, such as opening mail and answering telephones.

He declined to comment further on his stint, saying he had been asked to refer all inquiries “to the Bush campaign.”

Jeffrey A. Nesbitt, press secretary in Quayle’s Senate office, confirmed that Quilhot was on Quayle’s Washington staff during the period, but said he was working only “as an unpaid volunteer.”

Quayle Approved

Nevertheless, Nesbitt conceded that Quayle approved the assignment even after learning about the charges and Dartmouth’s decision to suspend Quilhot.

“He (Quayle) basically knew what he’d read in the newspaper, but after hearing John’s side of the story, he concluded he was right,” Nesbitt added. “It’s a First Amendment issue,” Nesbitt added--meaning a case involving constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Dartmouth officials said Friday that Quilhot and three other Review staffers were suspended March 10 on charges of violating the college’s code of conduct, by allegedly harassing a black professor, William S. Cole, and by tape-recording an argument with him without permission.

The argument reportedly took place when the four, including Quilhot, who was then the publication’s photo editor, went to Cole’s classroom to obtain a response from the professor about an article the Review had published earlier criticizing his performance.

The confrontation apparently turned into a shouting match, and both sides charged there was some pushing and shoving. Quilhot insisted Friday, however, that neither he nor others in the group ever shoved Cole. Instead, he said Cole broke a camera he had brought to photograph him.

Racial Tensions Rise

The incident fueled new racial tensions at Dartmouth. At one point, 250 students, many of them black, staged a rally in support of Cole. Review staffers later denied that their efforts were racially motivated.

The Times made several attempts to reach Cole at his office and home, but was unsuccessful.

Cole still is teaching music at Dartmouth. Quilhot is slated to begin this fall as a junior at the college, which is in Hanover, N.H. His suspension was for two months.

Quilhot said he told Quayle’s staff “what the situation here was like” and “said if there is any way you think I shouldn’t be here (on Quayle’s Senate staff), if there was any problem, I would have no objection to leaving.”

But he said Quayle’s office expressed no reluctance to take him on.

‘Family Friends’

Nesbitt said Quayle’s office agreed to consider Quilhot for the intern’s slot initially because his family and Quayle’s were “family friends,” and the Quilhots had “helped Dan get elected” to Congress in 1976.

Dartmouth officials have made no secret that they regard the Review as overzealous, and especially vicious in its criticisms of blacks, women and homosexuals.

In a speech to the Dartmouth faculty late last March that subsequently was made public, Dartmouth President James O. Freedman charged that the weekly was “dangerously affecting--in fact, poisoning--the intellectual environment of our campus.”

“What the Review has done on this campus has not been decent,” he said. “What it has done has been irresponsible, mean-spirited, cruel and ugly.”

One official, quoting from the article, said it described Cole as “looking like a used Brillo pad.” “There’s something about Prof. Cole that this paper has decided to make an issue of,” the official said. “They’ve gone after him three or four times.”