To the Editor:
T.J. Rodgers '70 and Todd Zywicki '88 wish to join me in noting that your story on Sept. 20, "Trustees turn down requests for participation," proved extravagantly misleading.
The central assertion: "J. B. Daukas, an architect of the proposed constitution, twice sought the input of the three [petition] trustees in the months between the final draft of the proposed constitution and the deadline after which the proposal could not be changed. None of the three...took Daukas up on his offer."
The facts:
1) Last autumn, the three petition trustees -- Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Zywicki, and I -- sent a letter to the Alumni Governance Task Force, the group charged with drafting the proposed constitution, making clear our views. To prove as unobtrusive as possible, we presented two simple, negative tests: If the proposed constitution neither undermined the petition trustee process nor made alumni governance less democratic, we explained, then we would be inclined to support it.
2) What happened next? As the emails in my inbox demonstrate, Joe Stevenson, chairman of the AGTF, complained that we had improperly attempted to influence that body, while William Neukom '64, chairman of the Board of Trustees, expressed profound displeasure. And then someone who received our letter leaked it to The Dartmouth, creating a public controversy.
3) This past spring, J. B. Daukas privately got in touch with Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Zywicki and me, as if attempting to open back-channel negotiations. We chose not to reply. We had two reasons.
First, we had already had our say. As dozens of commentaries on the proposed constitution have now made clear, the final document would indeed both undermine the petition trustee process and make alumni governance less democratic. The AGTF hardly needed the three of us to point this out.
Second, our good faith effort to participate in the process with a letter to the AGTF had produced a paroxysm. Mr. Daukas may have claimed to your reporter that "we bent over backwards to get those guys on board," but the AGTF instead treated us like pirates, desperately fending us off.
What matters now, of course, is not Mr. Daukas's misleading account. What matters is the document on which alumni are being asked to vote. The proposed constitution, Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Zywicki, and I continue to believe, would prove profoundly undemocratic. For the good of the college we all love, we urge Dartmouth women and men to reject it.
