I bleed Green. Like many of you reading this, I have been a Dartmouth College alum longer than I have been or done anything else. It’s not something I assess in terms of trips to Hanover, although there have been many – most recently for Lu’au, Pow Wow, Commencement, and Reunion Weekend. It’s not something that I quantify in terms of volunteer hours, although there have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 16,000 of those. It’s something I measure based on relationships. Dartmouth is responsible for the most important relationships I have in my life.

My son is a member of the Class of 2026, his mom and I are members of the Class of 1996. But those aren’t the only relationships I’m referring to. I am a member of Dartmouth’s Native American community. Every reader of the alumni magazine surely knows the words of the Charter, granted by King George III of Great Britain in 1769, to establish, “a college erected in our said province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College, for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes in this land.” But perhaps not every reader knows that the Native American community at Dartmouth is made up of Native Americans from the 48 contiguous states, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, like me, and First Nation and Indigenous Peoples from North and South American territories outside of the United States. We are a diverse and sizable part of the Dartmouth community. And we are very tight knit.

Other institutions have tried for years to catch up to Dartmouth’s Native infrastructure — Native American Program, Native American House, Native American and Indigenous Studies Department, Prospective Indigenous Students Fly-In Program, Native Americans at Dartmouth Student Association, Native American Alumni Association of Dartmouth, etc. Universities like Stanford, for instance, have expended millions of dollars to try to compete with what Native students, faculty, administrators and alumni have been able to create and sustain year after year, decade after decade, at Dartmouth. But they have always fallen short, because of the relationships we maintain with one another.

When a kid from a Kaiapuni or Kamehameha school in Hawaii excels academically and athletically, they develop a relationship with a Native Hawaiian “uncle” or “auntie” who went to Dartmouth, not a paid recruiter or admissions officer from X, Y, Z college who has their high school as part of their predetermined regional assignment. This relationship that begins with trust deepens, not just because of the passage of time, but because of the growing circle of connectivity between that prospective student and all of the uncles and aunties in the Native community who support them along the way. Soon they have a Diné (Navajo) uncle, and an Anishinaabe-Ojibwe (Chippewa) auntie giving them advice on what courses, foreign study programs, and internships they should consider, as well as a Hoocak (Ho-Chunk) auntie and Passamaquoddy (Wabanaki Confederacy) uncle to help them when they are feeling homesick or sorrowful.

Last fall, on Indigenous Peoples Day, a group of Native students in a drum circle were attacked on campus by a group of non-Native students. The Native students were physically and verbally assaulted by the non-Native students. This was reported to Dartmouth’s administration, but there were no police who showed up to arrest the transgressors, and no public proclamations from the college’s president or actions taken by the administration to ensure that Native students would be protected from future violent acts, shielded from ongoing harassment. Their physiological and psychological well-being were not a priority. They were not in any way made to feel safe.

Last spring, nine Native students were arrested. They were not inside any of the five tents erected on the Green on May 1. They did not say or do anything threatening. They were not given the opportunity to simply go home with a warning. They were arrested for supporting Dartmouth graduate students seeking union recognition, basketball players asking for the college to bargain their first contract, and undergraduates calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Their arrests happened quickly. (The livestream of the events of May 1 is still up and available for all to see). But what followed has not been quick. It has been arduous, and for the Native community, it has been devastating.

When news first broke that the college was dropping charges against the two reporters of The Dartmouth who had been arrested, Native alumni thought we would be able to achieve a similar, quick outcome for the nine Native students. But we were wrong. Despite sending a request that the charges be dropped to the president, provost, and chair of the board of trustees signed by leaders from NAAAD, BADA, DALA, DAPAAA, DGALA, and Women of Dartmouth, no such action was taken. When we met with the president’s chief of staff, the chair of the board of trustees, and the president, we were told that the college could do almost nothing to influence what happens in the courts and that funds would be made available to students to cover legal expenses and fees through the Dartmouth hardship fund.

But none of our students have had their expenses covered by that fund. Native alumni like me have spent our time and fundraising dollars to pay for attorneys and to prepare to cover associated costs to support the nine Native students. And we have had to make excruciating decisions like the one to move Pow Wow to Leede Arena so that the arrested students could attend. The president of the college told us that there would be no exceptions from the ban. Our students could not be on the Green, so for the first time in 29 years, Pow Wow did not take place there. And considering that the Native community had to fight every year from 1972 until 1995 to win the right to hold Pow Wow on the Green, this was absolutely heart-wrenching, but we did it because the president never agreed to drop the charges in her written apology in The D, and she never agreed to drop the charges in her meeting with us.

At one point in our meeting the president said that “as a woman,” she “did not feel comfortable pressuring any prosecutor who is also a woman.” (There are three prosecutors because so many people were arrested they couldn’t all be processed in the same jurisdiction). But then a female prosecutor, Mariana Pastore, decided not to prosecute the 28 arrested persons assigned to her because she determined it was a waste of government time and resources to do so. Just a few weeks later, a group of alumnae, women from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, ’10s, and ’20s, published an op-ed calling on the first woman president of the last Ivy League school to co-educate to drop the charges against all of the students she ordered arrested. But the president did not react to either of these. She has not dropped the remaining charges.

That same week the ACLU of New Hampshire dropped a bombshell. It turns out that the president colluded with the governor of New Hampshire and the heads of law enforcement departments from every nearby jurisdiction. For months we had been told a story about how police officers and state troopers were called after protestors didn’t follow the instructions they were given. It turns out that in fact the arrival of police officers and state troopers was premeditated. The arrest of over seven dozen peaceful protestors wasn’t accidental. It was premeditated. And the charges, bail conditions, and so forth that they would contend with were not decided independently, but were in fact, designed and modified by the president’s decrees.

Yet even these revelations have not yielded the dropping of charges. The nine Native students who were arrested were not impacted by Mariana Pastore’s actions because they were processed in a separate jurisdiction. And so I and my fellow Native community members are still devoting our time and money to supporting them, as opposed to devoting our time and money to anything else.

I have been a member of the Dartmouth community since President James O. Freedman regaled us with memories of reading the novel “Arrowsmith” by Sinclair Lewis, and of the impact it had on him. There have been many at the helm of our alma mater since that time. President James Wright served 11 years. President Phil Hanlon served for a decade. President Jim Yong Kim served for three years. I do not know how long President Sian Beilock’s term will be. But I do know that her first year has been marked by the tragic death of an only child, the release of a dean of the college, and the devastating impact of mass arrests that she orchestrated and then lied about.

I bleed Green. I am a three-decade volunteer, the dad of a double Dartmouth legacy, the president of the Dartmouth Club of Hawaii, and the co-president of the Native American Alumni Association of Dartmouth. I will be here after President Sian Beilock and whoever follows her are gone. To put it bluntly, there is no college without Dartmouth’s Native community. And to be clear, the Native community may one day forgive, but we will never forget that the same president who sat on her hands when a Native drum circle was attacked, sat on her hands again when nine Native students were arrested and sent to court for nonviolently exercising their First Amendment rights.

Keli’i Opulauoho is a member of the Dartmouth College Class of 1996 and the parent of a member of the Class of 2026.