Around noontime Thursday, Dartmouth student activists set up two small camping tents in front of Parkhurst Hall, anchoring them with metal stakes pounded into the ground.

Throughout the afternoon and into the night, students held their principled ground. Meanwhile President Sian Leah Beilock’s administration held back — a vast improvement from a year ago when the college turned loose police in riot gear on many of these same nonviolent pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the Green.

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of Beilock’s crackdown on free speech that saw cops arrest 89 people — including two Dartmouth student-journalists just doing their jobs — before hauling them away, in handcuffs, in college vans to area police stations.

I showed up on campus Thursday, not knowing what to expect.

The mini encampment outside the college’s main administration building was a welcome sight to my eyes. In a peaceful manner, students were prodding leaders of their wealthy institution to show moral strength and a social conscience — qualities often lacking even before Beilock arrived in 2023.

Scores of students chanted pro-Palestinian slogans and clutched cardboard signs with “Divest. Don’t Arrest” scrawled in bold lettering.

Beilock stayed away, but was down the street at the Collis student center for a scheduled hourlong session with anyone who wanted to chat. About 25 students stopped by, a college spokeswoman said.

For many student activists, however, the invitation came across as an empty gesture. “We’ve gone to her office hours, we’ve given her petitions, and she’s had us arrested,” said sophomore Kevin Engel, who helped lead Thursday’s demonstration. “She’s showed that she doesn’t care.”

In October 2023, Engel was one of two student activists that Dartmouth asked Hanover police to arrest for sitting in a tent on the same lawn below the president’s office. Engel and Roan Wade were found guilty of criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, at trial.

The college’s daily student newspaper, The Dartmouth, recently conducted a survey that “set out to gauge whether Dartmouth students feel comfortable engaging in visible political action on campus.”

Two-thirds of student respondents said they “do not feel protected by the college from external prosecution for expressing their opinions,” the paper reported.

“Right now, the fear on campus is palpable,” Wade told me.

Many student protesters wore masks. “I’m afraid of doxing issues,” a student told me, referring to right-wing organizations that post names and photographs of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

Nearly 400 faculty members and more than 2,200 alums have signed petitions, calling out Beilock and the board of trustees for refusing to join other colleges in the fight against the Trump administration’s assault on academic freedom. Beilock was the only Ivy League president not to sign a letter initiated by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

On Thursday, student activists sought assurances that Dartmouth wouldn’t give federal agencies, such as Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE, free reign on campus. It’s particularly worrisome now that Beilock has brought in a Trump ally to head the general counsel office, which oversees the college’s visa and immigration services. Dartmouth officials acceded Thursday evening. In exchange, protesters removed one of their tents.

Student activists also repeated their demand for Dartmouth to divest its $8 billion endowment from companies that support the Israeli military. “Investing in a war machine is not neutral,” a sign read.

It was a jab at Beilock’s campaign for “institutional neutrality” that went into effect in December. According to a report issued by the Committee on Institutional Statements, the college’s senior leaders should only speak out “sparingly — typically when external events have a direct impact upon the relationship of the institution to its members.”

The report was approved in a 6-1 vote. Peter Golder, a marketing professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, was the committee’s sole dissenter.

This week I reached out to Golder for comment. He stressed, as the policy dictates, that he was speaking only for himself.

“I wrote my dissent because I felt the committee’s report leaned too far toward silence and neutrality by not highlighting sufficient examples where it would have been better for Dartmouth to speak,” he said via email.

In his dissenting statement, Golder listed times in history when under the new “general restraint” policy, Dartmouth leaders would have remained silent. His lengthy list included Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As for Beilock’s decision not to sign the letter opposing the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle higher education?

“I believe Dartmouth should join the hundreds of other colleges and universities that have signed this letter, as do hundreds of my Dartmouth colleagues,” Golder emailed. “This letter highlights ‘the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom.’ This freedom is fundamental to Dartmouth’s core mission.”

Abby Burgess was among the Dartmouth students who addressed the crowd of 150 or so outside Parkhurst on Thursday. Burgess was also among the 65 Dartmouth students arrested last May.

“Protests like this one are branded as pro-Hamas,” Burgess, who is Jewish, told me. “My ancestors would by ashamed by the way Judaism has been weaponized.”

A few minutes later, Burgess picked up her backpack and headed away from the protest. “I can’t get arrested again,” she said.

Nor should anyone else, if the Beilock administration has any hope of repairing the damage it did a year ago.

Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.