Money will assume an unapologetically important role in the upcoming trustee election since the Alumni Council approved open campaigning in the Fall term. The decision follows the failure of the proposed alumni constitution this fall, when many complained that petition candidates could skirt the anti-campaigning rules in order to collect signatures.
Not all candidates, however, have embraced the new role money is playing in the race to fill the seat vacated by resigning trustee Nancy Jeton '76. While candidates Richard "Sandy" Alderson '69 and Stephen Smith '88 have both engaged in fundraising and major spending, candidates Sherri Oberg '82 Tu'86 and John S. Wolf '70 said they are opposed in principle to heavily financing their campaigns.
Smith, a petition candidate, sent out a mailing early in the campaign to nearly all living alumni -- around 60,000 -- stating his position and asking for signatures to validate his petition candidacy. But the Alumni Relations office said it does not give out its mailing list. In recent years, the only mailings sent to all alumni by anyone other than the College have been those sent by current petition trustees Peter Robinson '79, T.J. Rodgers '70 and Todd Zywicki '88, during their campaigns and again in the fall to criticize the constitution proposal. Estimates of the cost of such a vast mailing hover between $50,000 and $90,000.
This fall's constitution debate itself involved campaigning and high expenditures, as alumni responded in record numbers to a number of expensive and highly political campaigns. Pro-constitution group Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense financed a mass mailing in the months leading up to the debate in support of the proposal, while Rodgers, Robinson and Zywicki financed a mass mailing criticizing the document.
Smith's trustee campaign mailing employed a similarly rare mailing list, the origins of which are unclear, to send a letter which featured a return address from Virginia but a postal code from New York.
Smith said that he did not use the three petition trustees' mailing list in an e-mail response to The Dartmouth, which he subsequently posted on his website. The Dartmouth was unable to contact with Smith over the phone by press time.
"The decision to run and the positions I've taken are mine and mine alone, and I alone am responsible for my mailings and web site," he wrote.
Smith denied any funding or "bankrolling" by the petition trustees, and said that he is running of his own volition and for his own objectives.
"It is disturbing how quick some are to assume that a black man who comes forward to offer his vision for the College can't possibly be thinking or speaking for himself," he said.
He later noted that, "[a]lthough the three independent trustees signed my petition, none has given me money or, for that matter, anything at all other than their occasional advice and good wishes," he said.
The Hanover Institute -- a group of conservative alumni that supported the petition trustees -- also supports Smith, although the organization's president, John MacGovern '80, said it does not directly finance anyone.
"The Hanover Institute's purpose is to get information out about these independent candidates who are trying to make change," he said. "It supports the independents who will provide new leadership. It doesn't finance anything."
MacGovern said that the unfair advantage does not lie with the independents, but with the candidates the Alumni Council nominates.
"We will try to counteract the advantage that the establishment candidates have and try to get that information out," he said. "The Hanover Institute will do whatever it can to get a change of leadership at all levels of Dartmouth."
Alderson said that Smith's claims to be independent are misleading.
"I'd be very careful about using the term independent -- this is a well-disciplined, well-funded ideological group," Alderson said in reference to what he said he thinks Smith's ties are with the three current petition trustees and their supporters.
Smith, Alderson alleged, was specifically chosen by a "handful of agenda-driven and ideologically-motivated alumni" who "control a mailing list and have access to considerable funding."
But while Alderson explained that while he disagrees with what he called the "political motives" of Smith's backing, he has been fundraising himself. He noted that he paid someone $14,000 to design his website and also said he plans to obtain a mailing list from Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense, a group that lobbied in favor of the failed constitution proposal, "to offset the influence of the mailing list created by the group that funds the independents."
Alderson said that he has not yet made any far-reaching solicitations in his campaign.
"I will probably get support from other members of my class and others who at some point may make a donation," he said. "I haven't actually made a solicitation beyond a dozen or so of my classmates."
Alderson also revealed he had a personal interview with the petition trustees when they considered supporting him before adopting Smith as "their own petition candidate."
He recalled two meetings, one with former petition trustee John Steel '54, and one with Rodgers and Robinson. He said he also engaged in a phone conversation with Zywicki before being "dropped."
"Make no mistake about it, the petition candidate is their candidate," he said. "They dropped me after I didn't pass their litmus test of voting against the constitution -- that and my general but not universal support of Jim Wright."
Robinson, Rodgers and Zywicki did not return calls to The Dartmouth.
In contrast to Alderson and Smith, Oberg and Wolf maintained that using high expenditures to get out the vote is anything but fair, and both oppose the new emphasis on big campaign spending in a trustee election.
Oberg specifically pointed to Smith's campaign efforts as she criticized what she sees as a non-democratic trend in recent trustee elections, calling Smith's apparently high expenditures "regrettable."
"Money has already affected the election, and I think this is frankly disturbing," she said, citing Smith's use of what she called "an expensive direct mail campaign."
"Do we want to have an alumni electoral system that favors wealthy alumni becoming trustees?" Oberg asked. "Part of the whole appeal of the alumni trustee process was that it was so democratic -- any alumnus could become a trustee as long as they were nominated. How do you compete in this kind of environment?"
The Alumni Council's balloting committee decided to repeal restrictions on campaigning in trustee elections in response to concerns raised this fall during the constitution debate that the old system gave petitioners an unfair advantage. Under the old system, candidates on the ballot were forbidden from campaigning, but petitioners were allowed to spread their message to attain the 500 signatures necessary for a spot on the ballot.
"If I have incremental money of my own I want it to go toward scholarships, things that affect Dartmouth directly," Oberg said. "You have to sort of have a moral compass, and my moral compass is telling me I want my money to go to Dartmouth, not to a campaign."
Wolf, also nominated by the Alumni Council, echoed Oberg's sentiments.
"I am not using a lot of money, nor do I think it's really appropriate," he said. "I think when the campaign turns into something where you have to raise thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in order to win an election, then we have seriously distorted the nature of Dartmouth trustee elections."
Wolf noted that he has not paid anyone to help him with his campaign either, and does not plan to do so.
"I designed my blog myself using Google," he said. "It was free, so it's not very fancy, but neither am I."
Janos Marton '04, who tried to collect 500 signatures earlier this year as a petition candidate to earn a spot on the ballot, also objected to Smith's mailing list in the March/April issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, in which he said, "It's not a good message if you have to buy lists to reach 500 names."
"That group clearly has a list," Marton said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "When you get a small group of alumni bankrolling a candidate year after year, you've lost that grassroots aspect to petition candidacy and you can't claim that that person is any more independent than the College's candidates."
Alumni leaders who aren't actually running for a seat on the Board expressed mixed views about open campaigning and its monetary repercussions.
Nominating committee head Rick Routhier '73 Tu'76 lamented the political nature that alumni elections have been assuming.
"I think what it does is it puts barriers up to people who would normally want to run but can't find backing or are going to have to put up their own funding," he said. "People who typically now are funding these things have ideological screening requirements which are not necessarily in the best interests of a balanced board."
Diana Lawrence, director of communications for Alumni Relations, said she can understand the need for open campaigning among all candidates but that she is uneasy about its consequences.
"I personally don't think it's fair to have two sets of rules when it comes to campaigning," she said. "I don't know if open campaigning is the best thing for Dartmouth but certainly it's unavoidable given the utility of the internet."
She added that the College does not give out its mailing list and is confused as to how certain groups go about attaining one.
Wright himself voiced concern over the possibility that the need to campaign may scare away qualified candidates in a speech he gave to the Alumni Council on Dec. 1, 2006.
"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," he told the Alumni Council.
