A group calling itself "the Committee to Save Dartmouth College" placed an advertisement on the New York Times homepage today urging readers to "support democracy" and directing them to a website that criticizes potential changes to the makeup of the Board of Trustees.
The ad directing visitors to SaveDartmouth.org costs $39 per minute, according to the New York Times media website, which by the time of this web update would result in a total cost of more than $18,000.
The organization issued a press release Thursday announcing a national advertising campaign. The release stated that the ad will also run on the Times website all day Sunday, and that future ads will run in the print editions of The Times and The Wall Street Journal. The release estimated the cost of the campaign to be $300,000.
The ad represents the most high-profile move to date to rally support for an 1891 document that, some argue, requires half of the seats on the Board of Trustees not filled by the College president and the governor of New Hampshire to be selected by alumni. This arrangement has come into question since May, when then-Chairman of the Board Bill Neukom '64 announced that a committee would be examining the Board's make-up and the selection process.
The most recent trustee election saw the leading candidates spend over $75,000 on their campaigns and the election of Stephen Smith '88, the fourth consecutive petition candidate to gain a seat on the Board. The petition candidates are traditionally critical of the College administration.
SaveDartmouth.org asserts: "It pains us to see Dartmouth in turmoil, but the current controversy is of the Dartmouth Administration's own making."
"CSDC was formed in 2007 to educate Dartmouth graduates about a disturbing plan to discontinue the 116-year-old tradition of allowing them to elect one-half of the College's Trustees," the organization's website says. "We are young and old, male and female, liberal and conservative (and centrist). We are men and women of Dartmouth, and we care deeply about the future direction of the College."
The only name listed on the group's website is "Andres Morton Zimmerman" - the names of three residence halls in the East Wheelock residential cluster on campus. An e-mail request sent to the contact listed was not returned by press time.
In June, the Board's governance committee announced that its reexamination of the Board's composition had come at least partially in response to the current process of electing alumni trustees.
"The Alumni Trustee nomination process has recently taken on the characteristics of a partisan political campaign, becoming increasingly contentious, divisive, and costly for the participants," the governance committee, a sub-committee of the Board, said in a memorandum dated June 4. "Alumni have also raised questions about the fairness of the multiple-candidate, approval-voting, and plurality-winner features of the process. We believe these issues must be addressed, lest many highly qualified alumni be dissuaded from seeking nomination."
The CSDC is highly critical of the governance committee's efforts.
"An unelected "Governance Committee" (including Dartmouth President James Wright and four other Trustees) is thinking about re-writing the rules. For the first time in 116 years, Dartmouth alumni/ae could be disenfranchised completely," the organization's website says.
CSDC's press release quotes two of its members, Alex Mooney '93, a Maryland state senator who as a petition candidate won a seat on the Dartmouth Association of Alumni executive committee in June, and Connecticut lawyer Richard Roberts '83.
Calls to the group's press officer, Sarah Lindler, were not returned and the phone number's voicemail had not been set up by press time. The phone number has a Maryland area code. Lindler is not an alumna of the College.
The CSDC is the second organization to be formed in support of the current structure of alumni representation on the Board of Trustees. A group calling itself the 1891 Society placed an ad in The Dartmouth on July 6 that threatened the withholding of financial contributions to the College if the 1891 agreement is not upheld.
Like the CSDC, the 1891 Society has not been forthcoming with its ranks, although both organizations claim sizeable membership. Robert Reed '49, who currently lives in Texas, sent the 1891 Society advertisement and a money order to The Dartmouth in an envelope whose return address had been obscured by a pen.
