If the elections produce a majority that supports the suit, the case will go to trial in November. If not, the committee will most likely instruct its lawyers to file for a voluntary dismissal, immediately ending the legal effort.
It is possible, however, that the Association's counsel at Williams and Connolly, the Washington, D.C., law firm, would choose not to comply with the new committee's request, arguing it must honor the instructions of the previous committee. In this case, the Association leadership would be forced to dismiss Williams and Connolly as its counsel, obtain a new law firm and instruct that firm to file a voluntary dismissal of the suit.
Some alumni leaders have speculated that even if the Association's suit is dismissed, individual alumni might have the legal standing to sue the College. These alumni could argue that they were personally disenfranchised by the Board of Trustees's September decision to add new members not elected by alumni, which ended the century-old practice of parity between the number of alumni-elected and Board-selected trustees.
"We will be prepared for that possibility," Bob Donin, the College's general counsel, said.
With the future of the lawsuit in question, large numbers of students are now engaged in the governance debate for the first time since the Association filed suit more than six months ago. Petitions and articles have circulated via e-mail, and the student body president, Molly Bode '09, has publicly taken a stand against the suit.
The history of the Association debate dates back to 1891, when the Board passed a resolution that created five alumni-elected positions on the Board, ostensibly in order to increase alumni contributions to the College, which was struggling financially at the time.
"Resolved, that the graduates of the College, the Thayer School ... of at least five years standing may nominate a suitable person for election to each of the five trusteeships next becoming vacant on the Board of Trustees of the College," the resolution states.
It does not mention parity with respect to the number of alumni-elected and Board-selected trustees, although the addition of five alumni-elected trustees at the time of the agreement gave the Board an equal number of alumni-elected and charter trustees.
The Board, following a review by its governance committee this summer, voted in September to add eight new charter trustee seats. In addition, it changed the process by which the Alumni Council nominates candidates for the alumni-elected seats, allowing the nomination of one or two candidates, instead of three. The nominated candidates were often supportive of the Wright administration. Candidates have always been allowed to be nominated by petition, however, and petition candidates have traditionally been more critical of College policy. Following the governance change, the nominated candidates would no longer split the vote in favor of the petitioners.
The trend in alumni politics that led to this change began in 2004, when T.J. Rodgers '70, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corp., won election to the Board as a petition candidate. The next three alumni-elected seats on the Board also went to petition candidates -- Peter Robinson '79, Todd Zywicki '88 and Stephen Smith '88, in 2007.
These elections often included intense lobbying efforts by mail and online. In Smith's election, the top candidates were alleged to have spent more than $75,000 on their campaigns.
These four candidates ran on platforms that were critical of the College, specifically concerning class size, the hiring of new faculty and the extent to which there is an emphasis on research at Dartmouth.
"T.J. Rodgers figured out the math and took advantage of, fair enough, the rules of engagement and got himself elected as a petition candidate," former Board Chairman Bill Neukom '64 said in a recent interview with The Dartmouth. "That raised enough concern in some circles where people were considering whether that process was a fair assessment of the opinion of most alumni."
Some alumni began commenting privately that the College administration and those supportive of it were placed in an untenable position -- staying with the current trustee election process would continue to put pro-College policy candidates at a disadvantage, while it was assumed that any effort to change the system would lead to widespread criticism.
The Board's opinion on this matter became apparent in May 2007. When speaking before the Alumni Council on May 19, Neukom said that the Board's newly created governance committee would examine questions of the "size and composition of the Board."
"The question going forward is will we be able to generate a capable list of alumni who will be interested in running under the current rules," Rick Routhier '73 Tu'76, chairman of the Alumni Council's nominating committee, said to The Dartmouth at the time. The committee is responsible for nominating alumni to run for the Board of Trustees.
Just over one month later, Ed Haldeman '70, CEO of Putnam Investments, was named chairman of the Board, and the Board announced that the governance committee would undertake an extensive study of Board structure and the method of trustee election over the summer.
"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 said in a statement on June 7. "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."
Less than a month after the Board's governance decision, a six-member majority of the executive committee of the Association of Alumni voted to bring suit against the College. Association President Bill Hutchinson '76 voted against legal action. The Association alleges, in part, that the 1891 Board resolution legally binds the College to parity between the two groups of trustees.
The Grafton County Superior Court rejected the College's attempt to dismiss the case in February, and the case is currently scheduled for trial in November.
