College President James Wright's
administration witnessed the growth
of organized dissent within the
alumni body, as graduates both supportive
and critical of the College's
direction took a stand online. The
debates between these two groups
have continued to play out in Collegeorganized
town hall meetings, New
York Times advertisements and the
courts of New Hampshire.
Although the recent controversies
grew in scope with the advent
of blogs and online networking,
alumni criticism is not a new phenomenon.
In 1980, John Steel '54 became
the first alumnus to win election to
the Board of Trustees as a petition
candidate. Petition candidates, who
have to collect signatures to be nominated,
have traditionally been more
critical of College decisions than the
candidates who are nominated by the
Alumni Council, one of the College's
two alumni-representative bodies.
In the past, divisive lines have
formed within the alumni body on
the question of the unofficial Indian
mascot and coeducation. During the
Wright administration, alumni criticism
is still common, but has taken
place within a much more organized
and politicized atmosphere. Alumni
have formed third-party groups to
advocate for their causes and have
looked for legal remedies to determine
the direction of the College.
Alumni critical of the College have
also began to seek election to the Association
of Alumni executive committee
and the Board of Trustees.
The Wright administration coincided
with the first period of truly
organized alumni dissent by a small
minority of the College's graduates,
which began in 2004, when T.J.
Rodgers '70, the CEO of the 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, including Peter Robinson
'79, Todd Zywicki '88 and, most
recently, Stephen Smith '88 in 2007.
The campaigns of these four candidates
were defined by statements
critical of College policies, specifically
those regarding class size, the
hiring of new faculty and the extent
to which there is an emphasis on
research.
"What happened with [Rodgers]
was not organized activity," Zywicki
said. "What happened was the internet
and new communications made
possible the option of petition candidates,
who would have the ability
to contact alumni and be heard in a
direct manner."
The internet allowed the candidates
to "go around the controls on
information that had kept that down
for so long," Zywicki explained, refer-ring to past elections in which the
College was the sole body involved in
facilitating communicating between
the candidates and alumni.
Many of these recent elections
included intense lobbying efforts by
mail and online, as well as extensive
spending on election campaigns. In
Smith's election, the top candidates
were alleged to have spent over
$75,000 in their campaigns.
Following Zywicki's election,
alumni, in some cases allegedly
suppor ted by members of the
administration, made two attempts
to change the system of alumni
governance at the College and the
nature of trustee elections through
the ratification of new alumni constitutions.
Graduates of the College
formed Dartmouth Alumni for Open
Governance, among other interest
groups, to lobby during these legislative
efforts.
"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 past 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."
The more recent attempt to pass
a new constitution, in 2006, would
have merged the Association of
Alumni and the Alumni Council. In
addition, petition candidates would
have been required to announce their
candidacies prior to the announcement
of the candidates nominated
by the Council, which some argued
would have put petition candidates
at a disadvantage.
The constitution was defeated,
failing to garner the two-thirds necessary
for passage.
With the failure of the constitution
and the success of four petition candidates
critical of many of the Wright's
policies, alumni commented privately
that the College and those supportive
of its administration were placed in
an untenable position -- the trustee
election process put pro-College
policy candidates at a disadvantage
and more petition candidates would
likely win. Still, any effort to change
the system, it was assumed, would
lead to widespread criticism.
The Board's sentiment on this
matter became apparent at a meeting
of the Alumni Council in May 2007,
when Neukom announced that the
jurisdiction of the Board's newly created
governance committee would
include 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, then CEO of Putnam
Investments, became Board chairman
and announced that the trustees'
governance committee would
undertake an extensive study of its
structure and the method of trustee
election.
"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, 2007. "Alumni have also
raised questions about the fairness
of the multiple-candidate, approvalvoting
and plurality-winner features
of the process. We believe these issues
must be addressed, lest many
highly qualified alumni be dissuaded
from seeking nomination."
A small group of alumni, opposing
any change to the structure of
the Board, formed "The Committee
to Save Dartmouth," which placed
advertisements in The New York
Times and elsewhere. The Wall
Street Journal editorial board took
a public stand on the matter in September
2007, saying: "But rather
than accept that rebuke and seek
some common ground, the school's
president, James Wright, and his
trustee allies now seem prepared
to overhaul the school's governance
more or less by fiat."
On Sept. 8, the Board announced
it would increase its size to 26, adding
eight trustees not elected by alumni.
In addition, it mandated that the
Alumni Council should nominate one
or two, rather than the three trustee
candidates previously required. The
petition process remained intact.
"I think the Board made a very
measured decision," Wright said
in a recent interview with The
Dartmouth. "Certainly there had
been people who urged far more
dramatic and drastic move, but [the
Board] didn't go in that direction. It
was measured, it was respectful of
the alumni."
In response to the Board's
planned expansion, a majority of
the executive committee of the Association
of Alumni voted in October
2007 to sue the College to legally bar
Dartmouth from ending parity on
the Board between the number of
alumni-elected and Board-selected
trustees.
The central debate of the lawsuit
concerned an 1891 Board resolution
that some believe requires the
College to have an equal number of
charter and alumni-elected trustees.
Though the resolution does not
mention parity with respect to the
number of alumni-elected trustees
and charter trustees, the addition
of five alumni-elected trustees at
the time of the agreement gave the
Board as many alumni trustees as
charter trustees. The 1891 creation
of this balance, and its century-long
perpetuation, has prompted some
current alumni to contend that the
College is bound to that balance.
From a legal standpoint, at issue
is whether the resolution calls for
parity and whether the resolution
is, in fact, a contractual agreement
that the College must respect.
The four petition candidates filed
an amicus brief in support of the
Association's suit. While the Board
has traditionally done little to stymie
internal dissent, it did vote in January
2007 to reprimand Zywicki after
he called former College President
James Freedman "truly evil" in an
address before a higher-education
think tank.
Many College observers saw
the lawsuit as an attempt by outside
organizations, many with conservative
roots, to influence the direction
of the College.
In a March 2007 inquiry, The
Dartmouth found that The Center
for Excellence in Higher Education,
a conservative Indiana-based
think tank, collected contributions
from alumni, which were then
given to The Hanover Institute, a
non-profit organization founded by
John MacGovern '80. The Institute,
which has often supported causes
critical of the College, then provided
the funds to the Association's legal
team in Washington, D.C.
Another organization with conservative
ties, DonorsTrust in Washington,
D.C., was also involved.
While the suit had been scheduled
for trial this November, the
Association withdrew it in June after
candidates opposing the legal action
won election to all 11 of the organization's
leadership positions.
On Sept. 5, the Board went ahead
with its planned expansion, adding
five of the eight new trustees.
