This year's campaign for election to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees is surpassing the past few in its intensity and impact on the Dartmouth community. Columns have appeared both here and in national media outlets supporting some candidates and decrying others for their allegedly creationist, anti-academic views. William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote for National Review that the most recent slates of trustee petition candidates represent a renewed focus on monitoring the College, its students and the administration rather than standing on the outside as the ceremonial trustee who merely donates large amounts of money and attends quarterly meetings. Given the visibility of the last three races and how much attention trustees have given to student issues, I agree with Buckley's assessment. More must be done to involve students in the trustee races, especially when their competing depictions of student life become more integral to campaigns.
The occasional campus meeting with trustees on a weekend campaign junket does not cut it for me; neither does the lip service paid to student needs on eye-catching websites. Writers for "Ask Dartmouth" and various blogs have vied for alumni readership throughout the election, competing to paint the most attractive picture of Dartmouth for their particular demographics. College President James Wright has even voiced his own concerns over the mischaracterization of student issues in the alumni elections. Take into consideration coverage in The Dartmouth Review, The Wall Street Journal and other sources of information about Dartmouth, and trustee candidates might not need to trek to campus to know our experience here.
If the trustees and the newest batch of candidates are truly committed to campus life, they should extend the ability to vote for new trustees at least to seniors, if not the entire campus. Only then will alumni governance become real for students as opposed to existing in the ether of post-graduate life. Only then will trustee candidates understand Dartmouth beyond generalizations about free speech, Greek life and class sizes. After granting students a vote, candidates who dare to present alumni with inaccurate portrayals of student life would be held accountable for their platforms by students newly accorded electoral significance.
This is not to say that Dartmouth as a whole has been lax in allowing students a prominent voice in the governance of the College and its alumni relations. Groups like the Hill Winds Society, Palaeopitus and Green Corps connect students with alumni daily. The Student Assembly has several members that serve as class representatives to the Alumni Council, Dartmouth's alumni legislature. Other schools, however, have gone farther to integrate students into their board. Cornell's Board of Trustees, for example, includes two students, two faculty-elected professors and one employee in its 64-member board. The University of Indiana allocates one of the nine spots on its board to a student, who, like Cornell's student representatives, is responsible for communicating student interests to the trustees. In the absence of student trustees, I believe granting students a vote in the trustee race would better the board and our future Dartmouth careers.
Providing students with voting privileges would vest in them a very significant incentive to follow alumni issues and fact check more than any well-attended forum, panel or campaign event ever could. Once students can make their voices heard by casting votes rather than writing the occasional opinion piece in The Dartmouth, trustee candidates will stand to materially gain from soliciting the insight of students and using said insight to develop a realistic, non-sensationalist take on campus affairs. Perhaps the emphasis will then pass from making national news with election campaigns to soliciting genuine dialogue from students. Even if just half of the current student body turned out to vote, they would represent 18.5 percent of the total participation in the 2005 trustee elections and create an incredible voting block. Involving students in the process early on in their lifelong Dartmouth careers would furthermore increase their enthusiasm regarding future participation as alumni.
Thousands of words of ink have been shed characterizing and even campaigning on our experience here. We as current students deserve to have more of a place in our alumni family, especially to judge the trustee candidates who may be serving Dartmouth for eight years.
