To the Editor:
Have you given up on even the pretension of being serious? You're distressed because a trustee candidate was "tapped to run by current petition trustees," but also refused to "disclose the sources of his funding" ("Verbum Ultimum: Pull Back the Curtain," May 18)? Oh, please. The bottom line is not that Stephen Smith '88 won. The bottom line is that the system worked. A very significant portion of the alumni were able, in spite of administration support of an "insider" candidate, to express their longstanding frustration with the state of affairs at their beloved College over the last 20 years.
There was one, and only one, issue in this election: Is Dartmouth on the right path or isn't it? (The subtext: Has the Wright administration -- and before it the reign of Freedman -- been a disaster or has it not?) Smith's candidacy -- whether or not it was "transparent" -- was nothing more (or less) than a referendum on that question. Where his funding came from or who encouraged him to run is largely irrelevant (as was your editorial). Did you bother to apply the same criteria to Sandy Alderson '69? Now that might have been interesting.
