A fundamental disagreement over the Association of Alumni's decision to sue the College has prompted several alumni previously uninvolved with College politics to seek election to the Association's executive committee. Winners of the election, which begins on April 28, will determine whether the Association moves forward with the suit.
Candidates in the election are nominated either by petition or by an Association subcommittee. The petitioners, currently a majority of the executive committee, originally voted to bring the suit in October. The lawsuit stems from a September Board decision to add eight trustees not elected by alumni to its membership. This decision, if implemented, would end the parity between the number of Board-selected and alumni-elected trustees. The lawsuit could cost the College over $2 million, according to College President James Wright.
The Association-nominated candidates hope to end the suit if their slate wins a majority of the seats on the executive committee.
This election differs from those of past years because the candidates are running single-issue campaigns focused specifically on the lawsuit. Questions of class sizes, the student-to-faculty ratio and the priority given to undergraduate education are not as central to the campaigns as they have been in previous elections.
"I have never run for alumni office before," John Mathias '69, the Association-nominated candidate for president, said. "With the developments over the course of the last two years, though, the issues are distilled. This election is about the direction of the leadership of the Association of Alumni."
Like Mathias, presidential hopeful J. Michael Murphy '61, a petition candidate, sees the lawsuit as the only issue in the election.
"It dwarfs everything else," Murphy said. "The trustee action to eliminate parity and tear up the agreement from 1891 and basically disenfranchise alumni -- that to me is the issue. [The petition slate] is unified in that the action by the Board was terribly wrong."
After graduating from Dartmouth, Mathias served as a naval officer for three years before attending Harvard Law School. He is currently a partner specializing in business litigation at Jenner and Block, a Chicago law firm.
Murphy also served in the military after college, serving in the army for two years. He received an M.B.A from Harvard Business School and has spent many years in the industrial container industry.
Both presidential candidates have been active in College fundraising -- Mathias and his wife co-chair the Family Fellows Committee of the Dartmouth Parents Fund, among other endeavors, and Murphy has served as past president of the Dartmouth Club of Central Florida. Murphy, unlike Mathias, has been elected to alumni positions. He is currently vice-president of the Class of 1961 and has served on the Alumni Council, the second of the College's two alumni-representative bodies.
Neither of these candidates, however, has served on the executive committee of the Association.
Eight alumni are running to be officers, and 14 are running to be members of the executive committee, with one candidate from each of the two slates running for each position.
Six of the 22 candidates are running for re-election. These include Cheryl Bascomb '82, Bert Boles '80, David Spalding '76, Frank Gado '58, Alexander Mooney '93 and Marjory Grant Ross '81. Boles, Gado, Mooney and Ross voted for the suit, while the others voted against it.
Mathias said he understands that alumni may disagree over the Board of Trustees' recommended governance changes, but that a lawsuit is the wrong way to demonstrate dissent.
"I do not agree that suing each other is a way to resolve alumni differences of opinion about alumni governance," he said. "We would engage the trustees in the given system about the kinds of issues that are important to all alumni. We think the Dartmouth family is capable of solving its own problems without asking for judicial intervention."
The lawsuit will help maintain Dartmouth's well-being for future generations, Murphy said.
"The school will change if the suit is lost or if the other side is elected," he said. "Dartmouth has gotten where it is and eclipsed so many other schools because of this alumni support -- I think it is the 100 some years of alumni support that has caused it. If it is lost or greatly diminished I think future students will have less of Dartmouth to attend."
Voting in the executive committee elections will continue through June 5.
