Candidates nominated by petition won a majority of the seats on the executive committee of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni in the organization's first election that allowed "all-media" voting. Alumni selected William Hutchinson '76, a former petition candidate who was nominated in this election by a sub-group of the executive committee, as president.
"I think what is democratic is that all alumni had an opportunity to vote," Merle Adelman '80, the current first vice-president of the Association, said. "It expands the involvement and participation of alumni."
The Association of Alumni is one of the two principle representative bodies for alumni, connecting them to the College and students. The executive committee, as the leadership within the Association, is responsible for fund-raising and nominating alumni for election to the Board of Trustees, along with having the ultimate authority on decisions within the Association.
Traditionally, the executive committee presented a series of possible slates of candidates to alumni at the Association's annual meeting. Alumni were then given the opportunity to vote for the slate they most preferred. Voting was only allowed, however, by those alumni who voted in-person in Hanover.
This rule led John MacGovern '80, founder of the non-profit Hanover Institute, to file suit in 2005 against the association as it would not count the 420 proxy votes he had collected. Proxies, in most contexts, allow individuals to vote in an election without going to the polls; a second individual is selected as a proxy for the first. The association argued that by requiring alumni to be in Hanover to vote, proxies were deemed irrelevant.
The case was heard before the New Hampshire Supreme Court in March.
"The petitioner's [MacGovern's] allegations fail to 'meet the threshold necessary to intrude upon the association's internal affairs,'" the Court said, according to a statement released by the Association of Alumni. "He has failed to state 'any logical reason for the interference here by the courts in the internal affairs of the [Association] and we can conceive of none.' Accordingly, as the petitioner has failed to demonstrate injustice or illegal action resulting in damage to him, we . . . affirm the trial court's dismissal of the petitioner's action."
The proxy debate did not continue in this election as a result of the advent of all-media voting, wherein alumni could vote through mail, electronically or in person.
"It was the most participation we have seen on an association vote," Adelman said.
Six of the winners were so-called "outsider" candidates nominated by petition. They include Martin Boles '80, Timothy Dreisbach '71, David Gale '00, Alexander Mooney '93 and Marjory Grant Ross '81. Frank Gado '58, also a petition candidate, was elected as second vice-president of the committee.
Aside from Hutchinson, four seats were taken by candidates selected by the nominating sub-group of the executive committee. Kate Aiken '92 was elected as first vice-president, David Spalding '76 as secretary-treasurer and Cheryl Bascomb '82 as an at-large member of the committee. Kathryn Flitner Wallop '80 will be the lone member of the executive committee to have been nominated both by petition and the committee's nominating sub-group.
The winning candidates affirmed that the mixed representation of the petition and non-petition slates should not affect the ability of the committee to reach consensus.
"I know that there are going to be a lot of different voices at the table, but I think that will benefit Dartmouth and make our conversations pretty rich," Aiken said.
Gado, while agreeing that the committee members will work hard to build consensus, pledged to address the campaign promises made by the petition slate first.
"We [the petition slate] do have a majority -- I hope we will be able to win over some people on the other side," he said. "The first thing we are going to try to do is to enact the things we campaigned on. It is not that one side is going to impose its philosophy on the other -- we want to ensure that alumni have the means to speak through the association."
Similarity among the candidates' goals, regardless of slate, is the definitive unifying factor, Hutchinson said.
"The positions that I ran on and that the nominated candidates believed in were positions that the petitioners also believed in," Hutchinson said. "I don't see it as agreeing to the petitioners -- there were issues that were universally agreed on."
Many of the candidates have expressed a desire to reform the balloting process for the election of trustees and officers of the association, codify all-media voting and solidify the relationship between the association and the administration, among other goals.
Hutchinson occupies a unique position in this race as a former petition candidate who was tapped in this election to run as a part of the slate selected the executive committee's nominating sub-group. He also ran as part of the slate in the last election and was a member of Dartmouth Alumni for Open Governance, an organization critical of the first draft of the association constitution. He has served in other posts throughout the alumni governance system.
"The terrain has changed in alumni organizations," he said. "It is no longer a situation where dissenting voices are not actively sought out, which is a major shift in a how things are intentionally organized and run. The fact that someone who was a member of [Dartmouth Alumni for Open Governance] and actively sought to defeat past constitutions is now president is proof positive that everyone is welcome."
