Dartmouth College says ``bullying tactics'' aimed at a black professor by staffers of a stridently conservative student publication led to suspensions that are now the subject of two lawsuits. The Dartmouth Review's lawsuits accuse the college of reverse discrimination against white students and of violating free speech rights for suspending three of its staffers. The Review staffers were suspended following a confrontation in a college classroom with a black music professor who earlier had been harshly criticized in the independent, off-campus newspaper. Review attorney Harvey D. Myerson said ``the facts clearly indicate that the students would not have been given such draconian penalties if they were black students criticizing a white professor.'' But officials at the private liberal arts college in Hanover, N.H., said Wednesday the disciplinary action against the students was taken to preserve the ``integrity'' of the classroom. Described by its critics as anti-minority, anti-women and anti-homosexual, the Review often has been the center of controversy since it was founded in 1980. In March of this year, Dartmouth President David Freedman blasted the paper, calling its staff ``ideological provocateurs posing as journalists.'' The faculty censured it in 1982 as racist and sexist after a critique of Dartmouth's affirmative action programs, written in what was intended to be black dialect and headlined: ``Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive, Bro.'' In 1984, a Review reporter secretly tape-recorded a Gay Students Association meeting and published excerpts and the names of group leaders. A Dartmouth disciplinary panel ruled in March that the three Review staffers were guilty of disorderly conduct for failing to leave Professor William Cole's classroom after being asked to do so. The paper earlier had described Cole's music class as ``one of Dartmouth's most academically deficient courses.'' The paper's attorneys, who filed suits in federal and state courts in New Hampshire, announced the action at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday with support from three conservative lawmakers. Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., called the disciplinary actions ``nothing less than a crude assault on freedom of expression and political diversity on campus.'' ``The elite Ivy League academics constantly proclaim themselves the champions of free speech and diversity of opinion. Yet here, when a small band of students express a viewpoint offensive to the prevailing orthodoxy, the college comes squarely down on the side of suppression and harsh persecution.'' Humphrey was joined at the news conference by Sen. William Armstrong, R-Colo., and Rep. Bob Smith, R-N.H. A state suit filed in New Hampshire Superior Court addresses the free speech issue, while a federal suit filed in U.S. District Court focuses on the reverse discrimination charge. Dartmouth spokesman Alex Huppe, who attended the news conference, said the disciplinary action had nothing to do with First Amendment rights. ``The sanctity of a classroom is what this is all about,'' Huppe said. ``Dartmouth College has got to protect the integrity of a classroom. They went in there to disrupt his classroom.'' Huppe accused the students of using ``bullying tactics'' in their confrontation with the professor and their refusal to leave. After the classroom incident, Freedman, the college president, said the paper had been ``irresponsible, mean-spirited, cruel and ugly'' and that it was trying to poison the ``intellectual environment'' of the campus.
