As the debate heats up and voting, which opened last Friday, continues on the Association of Alumni's proposed constitutional changes, many alumni have been barraged by a stream of letters, e-mails and phone calls supporting or opposing the new constitution.
The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine recently ran a paid advertisement that extolled the new constitution's "better representation for classes, clubs, and affiliated groups -- and you," among other proposed benefits.
Thirteen trustees urged alumni to vote for the legislation in a full-page advertisement in Wednesday's edition of The Dartmouth. The bullet-point letter included in the advertisement has been distributed at various class officers' meetings to alumni throughout the country.
Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense, which supports the constitution, has employed more aggressive tactics to recruit votes with a mail campaign and telephone survey as well as a website, which lists supportive trustees and alumni and that they regularly update.
Critics of the proposed constitution have been vocal as well. Trustees T.J. Rodgers '70, Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 sent a privately-financed six-page letter via mail to all alumni imploring them to vote down the proposed constitution. The College's Alumni Relations office estimated that sending the letter to such a massive group ---- Dartmouth has about 66,000 estimated living alumni ---- cost the three trustees between $27,000 and $80,000.
Supporters of a Democratic Dartmouth, a group against the constitution, also published an advertisemnt in the September-October issue of the Alumni Magazine. The group's website includes various newspaper articles and letters with attributed authors who oppose the constitution but does not include a list of alumni against it.
National media has pounced on the issue and an editorial in The Wall Street Journal denounced the new constitution as it concluded that "despite Dartmouth's troubles in recent years, we trust its graduates are bright enough to see this power play for what it is."
Often national media outlets represent Dartmouth as a fairly conservative school deeply rooted in tradition with a loyal alumni network, which has undoubtedly -- fairly or not -- contributed both to the national interest and to the vocal alumni reactions to the constitution.
Although some alumni are passive about the debate, many have recently formed strong opinions they attribute to their deep connection to the College.
J.B. Daukas '84, who helped write the new constitution with the Alumni Governance Task Force, said that he is not surprised by the fact that many alumni who now support the constitution were originally suspicious.
"I think that in some quarters there has been a lot of alumni distrust of the College administration, and their initial reaction is that if the College is endorsing this, there has got to be something wrong with it," he said. "The people who are against this don't really understand what's being changed. Once they hear from people like me who really have many of the same views as them about Dartmouth they are becoming more supportive."
Daukas was quick to add that not everyone on the AGTF is conservative, though.
"There is a real mix," he said. "We all have been able to work together because we all love Dartmouth."
Blair Lewis '78, who is not on the task force or associated with any group related to the constitution, changed his opinion about the constitution after learning more about it.
"When the issue first came up before I was educated about it, my knee-jerk reaction was against the new constitution," Lewis said. "I think a lot of the alumni, especially me with a daughter there, feel that the old traditions are failing. The idea of these write-in candidates seems to represent the old guard values and so my initial response was emotional support for these people.
"After I received an e-mail detailing the new constitution from one of my classmates, I realized that it's better and the people that are involved from an alumni point of view are just as involved and caring as the rest of us. They are no more politically correct than we are," Lewis said.
Lewis, who said that he voted for the new constitution on Tuesday, went on to say that a major factor in his decision was the plurality issue of dividing the votes among slated candidates, but reiterated that his main concern was preserving the less-politicized Dartmouth as he remembers it.
"Even though I am anti-establishment when it comes to some of the changes at the College, I realized that we don't want the College to become too politically correct," he said. "We want it to be different. We want it to stay the way it was. But it wasn't until I got the detailed e-mail that I switched from an emotional response to a factual one."
Some alumni, however, see the stream of e-mails and letters as more of a hassle than anything else.
"I've disregarded the letters; it's not something that's critical to my wellbeing," Paul Mesches '74 said. "I'm kind of leaving it up to these guys. I have two options: either to get enormously involved or to let them do it. And I'm not going to get enormously involved."
Bill Sjogren '67, who noted that he has not had the time to look into the issue as much as he would like, also said that he thought the amount of attention the constitution is receiving is disproportionate to its actual relative importance.
"Is this constitutional band-aid going to change things I care about in the governance of Dartmouth? I doubt it," he said.
Alumni Relations said it would not be able to speak on whether alumni are generally apathetic to or hassled by the debate since they have not been polling them. The Dartmouth was unable to find truly apathetic or uninformed alumni, although the recent media coverage and advertisements has likely contributed to alumni concern over -- or at least awareness of -- the issue.
Meanwhile, other alumni have expressed disappointment and anger over what they perceive as the discouragement of democracy in the new filing rules for petition candidates.
"Just because the people on the Board are unhappy with the write-in trustees doesn't mean they can change the rules," Tracey Shechtman '05 said. "The ballot reminds you that the school endorses the new constitution and opposes certain amendments, which isn't very democratic."
Daukas insists that the new constitution is not a personal criticism and was in the works before the petition trustees were elected.
Roger Simon '64, though, also expressed fears that the constitution is exclusive and undemocratic.
He wrote on his weblog that the movement to change the constitution is "reactionary behavior by my alma mater Dartmouth College that is emblematic of a cancer spread across the American academy. Pretending to be 'progressive,' these institutions are turning into the most rigid insular communities threatening freedom of expression and even thought."
Simon then included The Wall Street Journal's editorial on his blog.
Mesches, on the other hand, stated that the media reaction is overly dramatic.
"I don't think the public really cares," he said.
Still other alumni feel that the proposed constitution is more of a trumped up reaction to previous elections than anything else.
"A lot of this is the backlash to those two guys sneaking in with e-mail campaigns," Mike Lynch '80 said.
Regardless of the stances they have taken, though, the alumni seem to still feel involved in where Dartmouth is heading.
"Everybody loves Dartmouth," Lewis said. "The [constant stream of e-mails about the issue] was great. It was really great. It made me feel connected again and I think that everybody is supportive as long as you vote."
