Dartmouth Alumni will soon be voting on a new member for the College's Board of Trustees. A web update by The Dartmouth on new trustee candidates ("Alumni Council names trustee candidates," Dec. 12) contained a telling statement by Dartmouth President James Wright. In a speech given to the Dartmouth Alumni Council, Wright said, "My fear is that we may soon find ourselves in a situation where 'electability' will also be a prime factor, perhaps the dominant factor, in alumni nominations -- and the College will be the loser as a result."
To Wright, the word "electable" appears to mean something very different than it does to me. My ideal candidate for trustee is someone who expresses a vision for what they see as the mission of the College, and perhaps most importantly, is not afraid to criticize Dartmouth or other members of the Board of Trustees when they believe the current path is incorrect. In that vein, I found this line of The Dartmouth's article striking: "[Board of Trustees candidate Sherri] Oberg, like [fellow candidate Richard]Alderson, was reluctant to criticize Dartmouth or the current Board of Trustees." While I am all for civility, any candidate running for any position should tell me why they differ from their opponents, and what views they may hold on the future of that institution, whether they sustain or diverge from the current path.
I do not want to disparage any of the Alumni Council's candidates in any way, shape or form. They are all eminently qualified for the position, all having attended Dartmouth, and achieved substantial success in their given professions. However, the process still leaves this writer with a bitter aftertaste. It is reminiscent of the type of back-room dealings that used to be commonplace in American politics, and the type of process we would not currently accept out of a major political party in the United States.
If we do not allow the voting on our political leaders to be filtered by a chosen few, why do we allow it for such an important part of our college? There are many reasons that petition candidates have succeeded in the past, but I imagine a great deal of their support came from a desire for transparency in the electoral process. If a process strikes any group of people as undemocratic and unresponsive to the will of the majority, then some of those people must "crash the gate." The petition candidates elected as trustees may have won in part by splitting the vote of the Alumni Council's candidates, but they just took advantage of a flawed system.
In the same article, a member of the Alumni Council's nominating committee, J.B. Daukas '84, stated, "It might be unfortunate if we lose people who otherwise would make excellent trustees but who do not want to go through the hassle of campaigning." Daukas certainly has a valid point, as it is difficult to project how the Board of Trustees would change if candidates had to campaign. However, I would hope that the potential candidates lost out of a desire to not campaign could be replaced by those who are so committed to the future of the College that they would be willing to go through the "hassle" of promoting and spreading their ideas on the future of the College.
The Board of Trustees must be a place of varying ideologies and opinions, and at this point, it is difficult to see if that is the case. Until the recent election of petition candidates, the Board was made up of members nominated by the Alumni Council, that generally expresses support for the current Board and the College, at least publicly. However, I find myself again returning to the example of our own government as an example of why that should not be the case.
Throughout our history, representatives and senators have battled over issues, pushing each other for a better and clearer expression of their views, and creating a real exploration of the issues at hand. The Supreme Court has long been a place where people of varying judicial ideologies and temperaments come to work out complex legal issues. Would either of these bodies been better off if there had not been this interplay of ideas and philosophies, with their members asking probing questions of each other ? I do not believe so. Yet only the members of the Board of Trustees know if that is the case.
As far as I can tell, the Board of Trustees is neither a poorly run organization nor do its members have anything but the best intentions for the College at heart. The problem is, it is difficult to determine the views of specific members of the Board of Trustees, or the Alumni Council's candidates. "Transparency" and "democracy" are two words I would not use to describe the current process, and those are the two aspects that I hope will be most improved in the future. The unhappiness and controversy of the Trustee elections of late are in large part due to the process, and it is that process that needs to be fixed first.
