For John Around Him, the idea of attending Dartmouth College seemed impossible. When Wick Sloane, his writing teacher at Bunker Hill Community College, suggested he apply to the Ivy League school, Around Him thought Sloan was joking. 

“It only took us 10 months to convince him he should apply to Dartmouth,” says Sloane.

Around Him, 26, is beginning his sophomore year this fall at Dartmouth. His road to the school was an extraordinary journey that took him from the Pine Ridge Reservation to Iraq to community college to Capitol Hill.

Around Him is a member of the Lakota tribe. He was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation where he graduated from Little Wound High School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs school on the reservation.   College was never discussed at Little Wound.

“No one ever pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to go to college,” he says.

The only route to college seemed to be through the military, so John enlisted in the Army and was scheduled to leave on Sept. 11, 2001.  Around Him was anxious about leaving the reservation. He had packed his bags the night before and said goodbye to friends and family. 

The next day his sister Clovia shouted to him using his childhood nickname.  “John John, you need to get up. We’re being attacked!”

John stumbled into the living room just in time to see the TV broadcast of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. “It was all coming at me pretty fast. Does this mean I’m going to war tomorrow?” he wondered.

The following spring, he was driving a tank in Iraq.

“It was the scariest time of my life. We were in the thick of things the entire time,” he say of his year overseas.

After the Army, John returned to Pine Ridge where he fell in love with Dina Wagner, a teacher at Little Wound School. When Dina left to attend Harvard, John followed her, took a full time job, and began attending classes at Bunker Hill. He was inspired by the other students' commitment to get an education.

At Bunker Hill, John took a writing class taught by Sloane, who emphasized writing for survival. The students found they had a common concern: how to pay for college. “It didn’t take them long to figure out that community college students get the short end of the stick in terms of financial aid,” Sloane says.

The students decided to focus on the final clause of the First Amendment, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances as a means to bring their situation to the attention of lawmakers. As part of the assignment, Around Him chose to write a letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. In it, he asked why he (Around Him), a veteran and low-income Native American, is excluded from much of the federal financial aid offered to others.

The day after e-mailing the letter, Around Him received a call from Sloane.

“Wick told me to get my classmates together. Sen. Kerry is visiting our class tomorrow,” Around Him recalls.

Around Him and his fellow students quickly arranged for a meeting space and security. They also authored a proposal calling for expanded financial aid for low-income and minority students.  They presented the proposal to Kerry’s staff.

Around Him was later offered an internship with Kerry. He worked in his Washington D.C. office for a semester. Empowered by this and his Bunker Hill experience, Around Him later applied Dartmouth College. But “John didn’t get the reception we had hoped for when he initially emailed Dartmouth on his own,” Sloane says. 

Sloane helped bring Around Him’s situation to the attention of Dartmouth President James Wright. Wright is dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for veterans and people of color. Eventually Around Him was accepted at Dartmouth.

John says the course work at Dartmouth is challenging. “I had to read only one book during my entire high school career at Little Wound. Here at Dartmouth, I had to read 10 books in one term alone,” he says.

His passion for education is leading him toward a major in education and a minor in English. “My short-term goal is to return to Pine Ridge to teach; my long-term goal is to become an administrator at Little Wound High School,” he says.

 Around Him says a "pity factor" mentality is a recipe for failure for young Native Americans on reservation schools.

 “The mentality seems be that since the students have such hard lives, we shouldn’t expect much from them in school,” he says. “I want to raise the bar for reservation students and increase the rigor of the course work,” he says.

His great hope is to change the state of affairs in Native American education for the better.