A record 38.5 percent of all living alumni turned out to vote on the much-hyped and highly controversial proposed alumni constitution over the past six weeks, resulting in its eventual rejection by 51 percent of voters last Thursday.
Director of Communications for Alumni Relations Diana Lawrence said she could not speculate about the almost perfect split down the middle among alumni or whether people voted on "party lines," which means whether or not they rejected the amendments simply because they were pro-constitution and vice-versa. The results from each of the amendment votes, though, suggest a link between voting against the constitution and for the amendments, which would have required a two-thirds majority to pass; each of the amendments' approval rates hovers around 51 percent.
"We don't have any research to suggest why alumni voted the way they did," she said. "I think if you conducted a poll, you'd find the reasons for the defeat are varied."
Trends in the way classes voted on a whole are also difficult to gauge --- TrueBallot, the company that ran the election, will not release those results.
Given the fact that alumni split in half, as well as the level of noise surrounding the constitution, many have questioned whether the alumni body will become polarized or handicapped in the aftermath of last week's vote. Even the Board of Trustees split publicly; the three petition trustees, Todd Zywicki '88, T.J. Rodgers '70 and Peter Robinson '79, actively campaigned against the constitution while the remaining 14 members of the Board supported it.
AGTF member and constitution writer J.B. Daukas '84 expressed hesitation over moving on from the debacle.
"I know it's all water under the bridge but it's hard to let it go," he said. "The petition trustees are really the ones that did it in the end. It's a real disservice to the College and to the alumni because they should have just met with us last spring and we probably would have done what they wanted."
Daukas refers to reported attempts by the AGTF to recruit the petition trustees to help write the constitution. Neither side can agree on whether such attempts were made and how they were received.
College President James Wright even addressed the heated months leading up to the vote.
"Dartmouth alumni debate vigorously," he said. "I regret that it got personal at points but it was a vigorous debate."
Lawrence, however, expressed doubt in any rising polarity in the alumni body.
"I think they will move on," she said. "I think the Board has already moved on. They met this past weekend and the world didn't end. They're grown-ups."
Daukas noted that despite their frustration, the AGTF has no immediate plans to bring the constitution forward again.
"I think that anything that's going to come up right now would meet with the same fate regardless of what it is," he said. "No decision has been made about what should happen now, going forward. But personally I think that many of the great improvements of the proposed constitution, such as increasing democracy, can be made within the Alumni Council itself."
Regardless, Wright did not express any anxiety about the future of Dartmouth alumni and the Board of Trustees in the wake of such a passionate campaign.
"I think it was a political campaign," he said, "and if they decided not to pick the new constitution well then that's that."
