To the Editor:
Please accept my thanks for your Verbum Ultimum regarding the outrageous conduct of presiding officer Al Collins '53 and his Executive Committee ("Alumni and democracy," Feb. 17). Those of us involved in the struggle to establish democratic alumni governance have met with such indefensible arrogance year after year. It is reassuring that at long last some sectors at Dartmouth are noticing.
Allow me to offer one clarification to your editorial, however. What the meeting passed was an amendment to permit off-site (or "all-media") voting only for amendments to the constitution -- that is, for an "amendment" substituting the Alumni Governance Task Force's constitution for the current one. Contrary to the way the meeting was advertised to alumni, the amendment does not provide off-site voting for the Executive Committee (or for any other "issue").
At the meeting, I stated that, despite the impression fostered for years, there is no constitutional bar to off-site voting for the Executive Committee. The bar exists only in the Executive Committee's own guidelines, which are themselves unconstitutional. I challenged Collins to remove the impediment on the spot, as the Executive Committee could do in three seconds. Collins replied that we would get complete all-media voting "in time," but it could not be instituted now because there were "complexities."
"Name two," I said. Collins was silent. "Name one, then." Collins ignored the challenge.
Quite obviously, Collins wants to control the next Executive Committee election, just as the election of this hand-picked Executive Committee was controlled by its predecessor. If ratification of the AGTF constitution fails (as it should), the Collins Gang wants to be in position to prevent a genuinely democratic process to chart the next step.
