There is really very little that students should have to do in this election. The trend of collecting signatures from prominent students in support of the pro-board packing and the anti-board packing schemes, which was started rather ignobly by agents in Dartmouth Undying, is frankly silly. The Association of Alumni's mission is to serve alumni, which students inherently are not. While we will join the AoA's constituency one day, there are pressing student issues that do not concern alumni that should occupy our time. If we don't want alumni to butt into our business, we should stay out of theirs.
--Nathan Bruschi '10
The upcoming AoA election is of utmost importance to all students. This election will determine our role in Dartmouth's governance for the rest of our lives. Once the right to elect half of the Board of Trustees has been taken away from alumni, it will never be given back. Students should be raising their voices in opposition to the board-packing plan and subsequent attempts to push a slate of candidates who will stop the current lawsuit. The current lawsuit should not be seen as a suit against the College but rather as one that is for alumni, because truly the lawsuit is only against the current misguided administration, not our College as a whole.
--Phil Aubart '10
The undergraduates should be the ones asking the questions in the AoA debates. We're the people closest to the Dartmouth of today and we live the problems affecting this campus, so we're in the best position to focus the discussion on these problems.
--Chris Talamo '11
Undergraduates should expect to play, as they do in most every administrative decision regarding our College, a very limited role in the AoA election. Alumni, who have been removed from their Dartmouth days for decades and are driven by an ultra-conservative political agenda, will most likely continue their electoral success as a result of simply being the most vocal. The fact remains that a group of alumni who have found their greatest support among undergraduates through the Dartmouth Review and societies like Phrygian are very much unrepresentative of today's Dartmouth student. These overinvolved alumni have made this election about control, power-grabbing and insatiable egos. Their election (as should be expected) will be yet another sad day for Dartmouth's future.
--Evan Meyerson '08
In these pages over the past year, I have clamored for current undergraduates to add their voice to the festering governance dispute. However, with all the pro- and anti-Association of Alumni lawsuit petitions circulating across campus, students are involving themselves in the wrong way. To be blunt, the complexities of the virtues of alumni democracy and the ensuing AoA lawsuit are off the radar screens of most undergraduates. On the other hand, by simply living and learning at the Dartmouth of 2008, all current students are bona fide experts on the current state of the College. It is with this firsthand knowledge that undergrads should work to educate and sway the alumni electorate.
--Daniel Belkin '08
We need to make clear to the alumni that this is our Dartmouth, not theirs. As undergraduates, we should familiarize ourselves with the current candidates and encourage alumni to support a forward-thinking slate that doesn't try to revive a Dartmouth mired in conservative thinking and practice.
--Jordan Osserman '11
Undergraduates should stay out of the AoA election. Circulating petitions that just increase hostility does not help anyone, least of all students. We should be much more interested and concerned with the process underway to pick the next president of the College. That decision will impact students much more than any alumni vote.
--Brian Solomon '11
