Two Dartmouth Students Must Be Reinstated

CONCORD, N.H. —  Opponents in a legal battle between Dartmouth College and two suspended student journalists drew opposite messages Wednesday from a judge’s ruling that the two must be reinstated.

In a decision released late Tuesday, Grafton County Superior Court Judge Bruce Mohl ordered the Ivy League school to reinstate Christopher Baldwin and John Sutter, former editors of the conservative, off-campus magazine Dartmouth Review. The two were suspended after a classroom confrontation with a black professor.

Mohl found the school’s disciplinary panel and the 18-month suspensions it imposed in March tainted by the participation of a professor who four months earlier signed a letter criticizing the Dartmouth Review as racist and sexist.

Expect Uneventful Year

“I’m happy as a pig in mud,” said Baldwin, 21, of Hinsdale, Ill. “I just want to go back and have a smooth and uneventful senior year at Dartmouth.” He and Sutter, 22, of St. Louis, were expected to return to campus today.

A spokesman for the college claimed that Mohl’s ruling was a victory for the school because the judge found “no persuasive evidence” to support the students’ claim that they were brought up before the Committee on Standards because of their association with the Review.

Baldwin, Sutter and two other Review staffers clashed with music Prof. William Cole after their magazine called one of Cole’s courses “one of Dartmouth’s most academically deficient” and denounced him for “racist rantings.” One of the other students also was suspended, but is back on campus, and the fourth served probation.