To the Editors:
I wish I had the time and energy to write more expansively in response to Mr. Bronner's letter (The Dartmouth, Jan. 20) -- and, for that matter, on the entire question of alumni participation in governance. Unfortunately, I have just returned home from a taxing stay at the hospital, so a more detailed discussion will have to wait, but I couldn't let his remarks go by without objection.
Reuniting the Association and the Council is not in itself a bad thing, but a merger that further discourages -- in practice, chokes off -- open discussion of the issues would be.
Mr. Bronner writes that there is no evidence for the fears voiced by the opposition, yet his own letter indicates that very evidence when he writes that something as important as the governance question "should have been a cover story in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and the subject of a dozen articles in Dartmouth Life (just for starters)." Indeed! And why wasn't this the case? Because a putative small band of rich alumni thwarted the College's efforts for a democratic debate? I have been reading Dartmouth publications for decades, and at an alarming pace they are serving more and more as the instruments of fund raising -- not for the dissemination of information, but to foster, at all costs, an impression of fuzzy comity.
I would be delighted to take this issue "'on the road to every club, mini-reunion and alumni event possible," but the aim must be to encourage participation in a real debate. The Alumni Relations Office has in no way ever sought to promote such discussion.
Mr Bronner finds "deeply troubling" that "a small group of alumni who have a long history of expensive litigation with the College have been able to derail the process." I, on the other hand, find it deeply troubling that the College should expend much greater resources in order to suffocate views other than its own. Can it really be, Mr. Bronner, that you would stamp out dissent as costly and inefficient? Or that you would deny recourse to the courts to those who object to the trampling of their rights?
Take a few minutes to look at your latest ballot for the Board of Trustees. It provides brief biographies of current board members and of candidates for the upcoming election. Again and again, we see MBA's. Is that reflective of the intellectual activity at the core of Dartmouth's reason for being? Peer a little more closely at the board and its record: is there any evidence at all that these people have the foggiest notion of the risky course Dartmouth and other institutions have drifted into, without debate?
Perhaps, Mr Bronner, instead of lamenting the efforts of those who have taken from their treasure in order to open the process of alumni participation in governance, you should praise them. In my opinion, these wonderfully dedicated people contribute much more to the potential health of Dartmouth than those alumni who blindly send their checks, without ever seeking to discern the effects those funds will have.
