All of these governance changes just to save one president's job...
Rather than retiring gracefully after six votes of no confidence in his administration (the balloting for four trustees, the referendum on the constitution and the election of the Association of Alumni), College President James Wright is once again putting himself before the welfare of the College in dictating changes to Dartmouth's 116-year-old governance structure.
Wright has been able to do this because he has built a fortress around himself by appointing unquestioning supporters to important positions.
The current Board is as pliable as they come. At the May Alumni Council meeting, before the end of his 11-year term as a Trustee, ex-Chairman Bill Neukom '64 was asked what effect the petition trustees had had on the Board. He responded that he had learned more about Dartmouth in the three years since T.J. Rodgers '70 had been elected than in the eight previous years.
Since that event, it seems, Board meetings have been about substance.
Trustees' knowledge of the College seems to be limited to the president's self-congratulatory briefing books. When asked this summer by sophomore students about trustee contact with students and faculty, Trustee Brad Evans Th'69 said that he believed that the Board had a program for interaction, but he did not know what it was. He himself has no independent contact with the College community.
Beyond the trustees, look at the profiles of all of the College's senior administrators. They were picked by Wright because after their many decades at Dartmouth, Wright knew that he could count on unwavering loyalty.
Provost Barry Scherr (33 years), Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt (24 years), Athletic Director Josie Harper (26 years), Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia (33 years), and Acting Dean of the College Dan Nelson (20 years) have never seen the inner workings of other educational institutions. But they do have the ability to sit in meetings without revealing what they think, mainly because they won't voice a position until they have been given their instructions by the man in Parkhurst.
In the Wright presidency's nine uninspired years, try to find a single instance of leadership and creativity. What academic programs have been revamped? What new ideas have been put into place?
Building dorms and athletic facilities is the easy way out for any college administrator. But beyond bricks and mortar, what initiatives can anyone point to in the core academic life of the College?
This spin-obsessed administration says that it has improved the student/faculty ratio from 12:1 to 8:1 over the last decade. But is this figure believable?
Given that the size of the undergraduate student body has increased from 3,906 to 4,085 between 1996 and 2006 according to the Dartmouth Fact Book, achieving such an improvement would require an increase in the size of the faculty by 57 percent. Yet according to the Fact Book and the Ask Dartmouth site, faculty growth was only 13 percent during this period: from 380.6 to 429.6 full-time-equivalent faculty members.
By my count, the real ratio has only changed from 10.3:1 to 9.5:1 since 1997, almost double Princeton's 5:1 ratio, and the poorest student/faculty ratio in all of the Ivy League, except for Cornell.
Have we regained our historical leadership in academic computing?
No, Dartmouth is no longer included in the top rankings in this area after decades at the top.
Do we have new academic centers to further competition between scholars and increase options for students?
Government professor James Murphy has worked hard to gain support for his innovative Center for the Study of the Ancients and Moderns, but the administration has left this bold idea dangling without support.
Wright seems to divide his time between bloviating about how great things are and fighting back the challenge from alumni who can see that the emperor has no clothes.
Meanwhile, a Dartmouth education drifts aimlessly because the man at the helm is more concerned about expensive public relations campaigns than the day-to-day education of students.
It is still not too late for the trustees to pull back from their save-Jim's-job remake of the College's century-old governance structure. They should accept that to protect one man's feelings, it is not worth insulting tens of thousands of devoted alums.
Dartmouth remains distinctive among all institutions of higher learning for the passionate devotion of its graduates. However, today's trustees will harm the College forever if they actually move to a like-everywhere-else governance structure solely to protect Wright from legitimate, democratic protest.
C'mon, trustees. Wright has been an ineffective president and you all know it. Don't alienate your alumni; retire Wright instead and bring in a new president, someone who can admit that the College has weaknesses and who will work honestly and effectively to correct them.
Your decisive action would unify the Dartmouth family, and lo and behold, it would guarantee you a higher flow of alumni contributions, too.
