Thousands of alumni flocked back to Hanover this weekend for Homecoming, but many don't have to leave their home to feel connected -- for better or for worse -- to what's happening at Dartmouth. Since voting on the proposed alumni constitution began over a month ago, the various groups for and against the proposed constitution have stepped up their campaigning efforts, hitting alumni with numerous phone calls and e-mails.
The most visible and frequent of the many mass-e-mails and phone calls have come from the pro-constitutional Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense. The three petition candidate trustees, who do not support the constitution, also sent a controversial, privately-financed letter to all of the alumni. Other groups, both for and against the amended legislation, have resorted to various, less widespread telephone surveys and call campaigns as well.
Vice President of Alumni Relations David Spalding '76 said that the administration does not hand over individual alumni information and said he cannot speculate as to how the leaders of such groups have obtained the addresses and phone numbers of fellow alumni.
"I really don't know how any of their groups -- there are four or five of them -- have gotten these addresses," he said. "We've had some, but very few, complaints."
Many alumni, however, see this use of their private addresses as offensive, given the fact that DACS has employed the commercial service, Constant Contact, in its campaigning efforts. On its website, Constant Contact describes itself as "the leading web-based e-mail marketing service used by more than 75,000 small businesses and associations [that] can create e-mail newsletters and announcements that get immediate and measurable results."
The company can track individual responses to e-mails based on who clicks on the links included, a feature which Patrick Martin '73 considers particularly invasive.
"I have been inundated with e-mails and phone calls from DACS," he said. "I have received three e-mails through Constant Contact and they have links which show you how to vote on each amendment. They have links to track whether you read the links, and you don't realize they are doing it unless you read the privacy policies, which you have to click on more links for. You just don't realize they are going to track you."
Martin added that he received these e-mails from Yahoo e-mail addresses "that anyone can purchase" to an e-mail account unaffiliated with the College.
"It's a non-Dartmouth e-mail account that I have given to alumni affairs, but it's not one that I publish on my business website or business cards," he said. "I don't know if the administration gave it [to the senders], but I suppose there are other ways people can extract e-mails."
Martha Hennessey '76, secretary of DACS, said she didn't know of any calling or mailing systems the group may employ.
"Honestly, I have absolutely no idea about [contact methods]," she said. "DACS is basically run by a few people who are making the big decisions and I have absolutely no idea how they are getting the e-mail addresses. It's kept pretty confidential."
These few people, including Dick Page '54, could not be reached for comment.
Martin also received several commercial phone calls urging him to vote for the constitution in recent weeks.
"When I asked [the woman I was speaking with] whether she could tell me about amendments other than amendment one, she couldn't tell me," he said. "She told me she didn't go to Dartmouth but that this was her job. I asked her who she worked for and she said Dartmouth College, but she couldn't reveal the call center she was calling from."
David Gale '00, who has received two calls encouraging a pro-constitution vote, also said the company that called him would not reveal its name as he speculated about which company was behind the calls.
"The guy that I talked to told me they couldn't give their company name for security purposes," he said.
Gale continued that when he took his concerns to Spalding, Spalding insisted that the office of Alumni Relations was not responsible for releasing the phone numbers and addresses of the alumni.
"He said that there hadn't been any requests for large bodies of information from their alumni database," he said. "My best guess is that they are getting the alumni directory and looking up each address to get the phone number but that would be a massive task. Either they have direct support from the office of Alumni Relations or else they are spending a lot of money."
Regardless of how these groups attained their information, many alumni are not happy with the repeated phone calls they have received.
"You can have an intellectual argument on both sides of the constitutional issue," Martin said. "But I think that all this heavy-handed push-polling telemarketing and e-mails with spyware attached is truly offensive and just too much. If a cause has to resort to such methods, it's really not deserving of my vote."
