By now, every member of the Dartmouth community should have received a letter from me regarding the upcoming town meetings with the presidential candidates on October 27 and 28, 1999. Some people have inquired about the possibility of changing the venue to a space that will accommodate more people or have raised questions about the procedures the Rockefeller Center will use to select the audience. In the interests of avoiding misunderstanding, let me address each of these concerns.
After two different visits to the Dartmouth campus, representatives of WMUR and CNN considered every possible venue and concluded that Moore Theater was most suitable for the town meetings. They were committed to an intimate space where the candidates and voters could interact and had made arrangements to hold the town meetings at another site in the state if Moore was not available. We had a choice, therefore, between a smaller event than we would have liked and nothing. We concluded that the educational benefits to Dartmouth and its students in hosting the town meetings far outweighed the drawback of limiting the audience.
In allocating the scarce seats, we have developed procedures that will insure fair representation from Dartmouth, as well as the surrounding communities. In addition to the letter to all students, faculty, administrators and staff at the College, we sent invitations to over 100 organizations in the Upper Valley region. We also will be placing ads in various community newspapers so that area residents can participate. We will then use a lottery system to select the participants.
The Moore Theatre has roughly 420 seats of which 120 are in the balcony with the remainder on the main floor. An additional 110 seats will be available on the stage behind the candidates.
The seats in the main theater are for New Hampshire residents because this is a town meeting and because we want the candidates to respond to the concerns of the state's voters. Naturally, students or members of the Dartmouth faculty or staff who are New Hampshire residents are eligible for inclusion in this audience.
The balcony will accommodate guests of the College, CNN and WMUR, including state elected officials, party officials, Dartmouth alumni and others. It is my expectation that some students and faculty will be seated in the balcony as well.
The seats on the stage will be exclusively for the Dartmouth community.
As I add up the figures for each category, I estimate that we will be able to accommodate approximately 180 to 200 students each evening for a total of 360 to 400. This is not as many as I would like to see, but is far more than the "select few," suggested in last week's opinion piece in The Dartmouth by Joshua McCurdy. With the added opportunity of student-sponsored receptions and rallies for the candidates after the event, many students will be able to take advantage of this unique happening at the College.
The discussions about the town meetings raise two larger issues that members of the Dartmouth community should consider. First, the College suffers from a lack of space for major events. When my staff and I plan programs, our choices typically are Spaulding, which is usually booked over a year in advance, or Cook Auditorium, which holds about 300 people. Too often, we have to turn people away from Cook or send them to alternative viewing sites -- not because we failed to anticipate the crowd, but because we had no other option. As the Trustees consider ways to improve the social space on this campus, I hope they will consider the construction of a mid-size hall, so that we do not find ourselves in the unhappy situation of denying students access to major lectures.
Second, the College has an obligation to the broader community to make its public programs available to the residents of the Upper Valley. We are a tax-exempt organization, the area's largest employer, and the cultural center for the entire area. We cannot and should not exclude area citizens from events that have implications beyond this campus. Sometimes this means that students and residents are in unhappy competition for seats at popular events, but exclusion is not the answer to this dilemma.
I appreciate the interest and enthusiasm that so many members of the Dartmouth community have expressed in the town meetings with the presidential candidates. I hope that people will continue to share their views with me, but I also hope that they will recognize the constraints that affect our ability to be responsive to every concern. Anyone who knows me understands that I will push very hard to have as many students in the audience as possible, but I cannot promise more than that. In the meantime, I continue to be delighted that the College is the site for the first major event of the 2000 election campaign and that many members of this community will have the opportunity to take part in it.
