I sometimes feel I no longer recognize my college. I'm not speaking of the inevitable changes to the student body, faculty, curriculum and physical campus we all ought to anticipate with any prolonged passage of time. These days, I find myself reflecting on how the degree of alumni financial support for Dartmouth, renowned nationwide during my undergraduate tenure, has slipped so drastically. Nor am I confining my observation merely to the notable lapse in alumni giving percentage, which has receded from a leading greater than 60 percent during the mid-1970s to somewhere below one-half at this time. As a former member of the board for the Alumni Club of Greater San Francisco, I strove to attract greater participation among local members from my time at Dartmouth and those relatively close to it, to be met largely with disinterest and only occasional success.
I have developed my own theory on the root of this perceived alienation. I sense that Dartmouth graduates from my era, who ought naturally to be assuming the stewardship of the alumni bodies at this point in our lives, are notably more disaffected with the College than have been other generations at a similar stage in their alumni tenure. This relative antipathy stems directly from our peculiar place in Dartmouth history, which I affectionately label as the mezzo-Coeducation Era. I suspect few, if any, of the students who experienced Dartmouth's awkward and prolonged transition from an all-male institution to one which finally reflected the gender structure of society at large relish memories of such an unnatural imbalance in the ratio of men to women. The inordinate tensions this dichotomy created still resonate in the feelings many of us have towards our alma mater and are, I believe, directly reflected in the qualitative diminution of our support for the College. I reiterate sentiments I felt when I came to Hanover: that, once Dartmouth decided to admit women, it should have proceeded without quotas and implemented an admissions policy that sped this transition as rapidly as possible in order to create a harmonious undergraduate environment. Today, of course, there is no need to redress this situation, since a balanced gender ratio is now in place; however, as a contemporary concern, this anomaly remains relevant because of the dynamics that engendered it.
Back in the 1970s, out of a perceived fear that our much-heralded levels of alumni support might dwindle, the Board of Trustees, rather than implement an equitable admissions policy, by-and-large kowtowed to an alumni faction hellbent on preserving Dartmouth in the testosterone-laden atmosphere they remembered. In 1976, I sat in on the Alumni Council sessions that crafted a compromise to gradually level out the untenable 3:1 male/female ratio by augmenting quotas for female admissions at a snail-paced 50 per year until "de facto" equal access would ultimately have been achieved some nine years later, then witnessed the Board of Trustees accede and implement this atavism as policy. I'm not trying to impugn any of the 16 individuals who sat on the Board at that time, nor am I oblivious to the efforts of certain individual trustees to counter this absurdity; suffice it to say that the Board, in toto, yielded to the dictates of a vociferous alumni element rather than address the imperatives of a harmonious undergraduate experience, and that the adverse conditions brought about by such precarious decisions are now manifested in the relatively high degree of antipathy among the classes that today ought to be in the vanguard of alumni support for the College.
As I write this piece, my browser is uploading my Alumni Trustee ballot in the background. On the one hand, I find myself sympathetic personally, though not politically, to certain candidates I have known directly; on the other, I have a decided affinity for certain factions working behind the scene to affect the outcome of this vote. And yet, I object to any form of partisan effort to install a Board that is beholden to a particular agenda or restrictive vision for Dartmouth.
Let's set the matter straight: Dartmouth does not exist to abet the whims of its alumni (in various elements or as a whole); on the contrary, it is our role as alumni to unite to serve Dartmouth and its need for perpetual progress. The fundamental purpose of the College, so I would hope, is to furnish students with an academic training deemed second to none. Not surprisingly, such supremacy is vaunted by each of the candidates and their proponents, yet, despite the unanimity embraced in this oft-repeated boast, no one seems to address the fundamental question: are we really attaining this plateau (and, if not, how do we get there)?
According to the 2004 Booz Allen report the Alumni for a Strong Dartmouth cites, Dartmouth was known as having "the strongest undergraduate education in the country" in the late 19th century. But what about today? Close to it, but I suspect we're hardly the unequivocal choice for most people, especially outside the Dartmouth community (note the consistently paltry 4.4 Peer Evaluation that U.S. News annually confers upon the College). So instead of trying to engineer a Board of Trustees that implements a narrow vision of how one faction of alumni or another believes this lofty legacy should best be maintained, why not address the issue directly and "objectively?" Demand that the next seating of the Board, no matter who comprises it, commission a panel to explore what it would require to reaffirm Dartmouth as the unchallenged leader in undergraduate education.
To accomplish such a prodigious task, let me suggest that the majority on such a panel be comprised not from the Trustees or contingents within the alumni body but be entrusted to individuals directly involved in the education of Dartmouth students, as well as faculty and administrators from the ranks of graduate institutions to which Dartmouth students routinely aspire. This is not to preclude participation from other members of the Dartmouth family nor to obviate evaluations from the business community over the quality of preparation Dartmouth undergraduates receive. However, the relative strength of an undergraduate education is largely an academic assessment and should be ascertained, at the risk of sounding profoundly naive, without the rancor of political concerns or preferences.
Dartmouth is a school with incredible energy and vitality, and I am repeatedly impressed by the overall intellectual breadth I observe among alumni gatherings as compared with most situations I have encountered since graduating. Far better that we harness our collective intelligence in an effort to fortify the true stature of our college than to seek to manipulate its governance in order to promote a biased, if not polarizing, vision of how we might prefer it conform. Alumni efforts to advance any subjective criteria as the blueprint for Dartmouth's future direction can only diminish the quality of the overall academic experience for (and the post-graduate affinity of) the students who will soon be joining our ranks, as well as reduce the College's perception in the eyes of the rest of the world.
