Last week, two vocal opponents of the proposed Alumni Association reforms accused senior College administrators -- who claim to be neutral in a contentious constitutional debate -- of using their positions to squelch criticisms of the document. These allegations spurred the most recent drama in a long-running feud about the Associations' proposed constitution.
Nick Stork '06 recounted a meeting with Vice President for Alumni Relations David Spalding '76 wherein Spalding alledgedly told Stork his "political views are wrong" and presented "the right ones." Presenting an e-mail message Stork penned in opposition to the constitution, Spalding reportedly demonstrated an intimidating familiarity with Stork's on-campus affiliations, personal life and philosophical leanings.
Spalding in turn said he did not intend to take sides on the constitution or intimidate Stork. He emphasized that the meeting was both cordial and mutual, and at first he did not recall a private e-mail. In an op-ed column today, Spalding says that the confusion over the e-mail arose because he did not consider the e-mail he possessed to be private. He further states that he "simply explained the rationale" of the Alumni Governance Task Force without promoting its views.
The explanations Spalding offers are largely irrelevant. If an undergraduate walks out of a high-ranking administrator's office with even the impression that he was bullied into changing his views, then that administrator committed a grave error. It should compound our alarm that administrators appear to be taking sides on alumni governance reform, an issue on which they are stewards rather than active voices.
The extremism on both sides of the constitutional debate is unproductive. The most dedicated graduates of the College should not be locking horns and trading lawsuits or allegations over petty matters of alumni politics at the expense of more pressing priorities. The vast majority of Dartmouth alumni do not care enough to add their voices to a debate dominated by a cacophony of uncompromising individuals. They care about the future of Dartmouth -- its academics, its athletics, its extracurricular pursuits and its students' lives.
The dueling coteries of Dartmouth community members now wasting their energies on pointless politicking and power games should care about these issues, too. Henry Kissinger once said, "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." Both camps should care enough about Dartmouth to come to some reasonable consensus so that the Association and the College can move on to address more substantive matters.
