Call me cynical, but I have watched in amazement the unfolding campaign of Stephen Smith's '88 as a petition candidate in the upcoming trustee election.
As an alumnus, I have enormous respect for the petition system. It is a vital component of our alumni constitution and promotes the competition of ideas in a way that is truly distinctive and healthy for Dartmouth.
I also imagine that Smith is a decent person.
But I am struck by the slickness of Smith's campaign. His website is full of verbatim lifts from past petition campaigns -- random quotes designed to paint ominous, dark clouds on Dartmouth's horizon. Superimpose any face or name and the effect would be the same: "The College I knew is in trouble and I will protect the old traditions." Never mind that Smith only recently toured the campus for the first time in years, or that he has never returned for a reunion or shown any interest in the College before surfacing as a candidate. No. He professes to have heard the distant beat of "problems" through students enrolling at Virginia Law School and now offers himself as a solution.
One wonders how he came to afford the $75,000 or so I estimate that his campaign has cost thus far. Or who hired the web designer or PR firm that has written and orchestrated his material.
I have three major issues with Smith's candidacy.
I believe Dartmouth is best served by a diverse board that will represent different points of view. The board is not augmented by another Class of 1988 law professor from Virginia. (Smith's friend, Trustee Todd Zywicki '88, who appears to have run the exact same campaign as Smith as a petition candidate in 2005, is also a law professor in Virginia).
I believe that our trustees should be independent, and not beholden to special interest groups or to benefactors that have screened them and then underwritten and orchestrated their campaigns. Candidates who come "with strings attached" are the surest way to lead to a balkanized, ineffective board. Trustees are charged with representing all of Dartmouth, not the narrow interests of a specific constituency.
Finally, I am tired of campaigns that retread the rhetoric of doom that is the signature of recent petition campaigns. What Dartmouth needs is a forward-looking board, one that is focused on what it will take to compete tomorrow for the best undergraduate students and the best faculty in an increasingly global and competitive educational world. Today's Dartmouth is a great college that enjoys record numbers of application numbers and a superb reputation for outstanding undergraduate teaching. We need a board that has a big vision and will work together to tackle the problems of the future, not one subsumed by petty rhetoric or hobbled by narrow points of view.
Dartmouth is unique in the Ivy League, in that eight of the 18 members of the board are nominated by the alumni at large. On such a small and active board, this presents a special opportunity for us to influence the stewardship of the College. I hope that alumni will consider all of these issues carefully when they vote for the trustee candidates in the upcoming election.
