Trustee Todd Zywicki '88 was offered the opportunity to step down from his position before the Board of Trustees voted not to reelect him in what was the first secret vote in at least the past five years, Trustee T.J. Rodgers '70 wrote in an opinion piece printed in The Dartmouth on Wednesday. Alumni have had mixed reactions to the Board's decision not to reelect Zywicki, which is unprecedented in recent years.
Rodgers' column, "Hang One, Warn a Thousand," states that the Board's decision is "warning the petition trustees -- and any others tempted to express independent views -- not to cross the party line."
THE FREE SPEECH DEBATE
Zywicki, in an April 20 post on the law blog The Volokh Conspiracy, which was updated on Wednesday, suggested it is unfair that Trustee Brad Evans '64 was reelected despite allegedly controversial comments Evans made in a meeting of the Dartmouth Advanced Leadership Summit in August 2007. Evans, according to alumni leaders, said that Board seats are "too valuable" financially to give to students or young alumni, and that they should be reserved for significant donors.
Attempts to reach Evans through the College's Office of Public Affairs were not successful. College spokesman Roland Adams said Board Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 is the only person who can speak on this matter. Haldeman was traveling, Adams said, and could not be reached for comment by press time.
Zywicki argued in the post that Evans' comments were no different than Zywicki's own October 2007 address at the John William Pope Center, a higher education think tank, in which he called former College President James Freedman "truly evil."
Zywicki said in an April 14 open letter to the Dartmouth community that his comments at the Pope Center "might have been" one of the reasons behind the Board's decision not to reelect him.
"Evans was among those reelected at the same meeting that bounced me," Zywicki wrote in the blog post. "Let me make clear that I believe that Evans has every right to express his views of what he considers good for Dartmouth: for him, apparently it's denigrating the input of ordinary graduates and selling board seats to the highest bidder."
In the open letter, Zywicki also apologized publicly for his comments and charged that the Board was "unwilling to stand up for the right of free speech in an academic forum."
"The Board acts to limit freedom of speech all the time," Frank Gado '58, a former member of the Association executive committee who supported its 2007 lawsuit, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Haldeman, in an April 17 statement responding to Zywicki's letter, said that the Board supports each trustee's right to free speech, but that they also "have fundamental responsibilities and obligations -- including fiduciary duties."
"As an alumnus, he is certainly entitled to free speech, but as a trustee, he needs to be responsible for what he says to honor his duties as a trustee," Alumni Council President John Daukas '84 said.
The comments by Zywicki and Evans are not comparable, Daukas argued.
"It's on a very different plane to give an opinion that older alumni would make better trustees, than to say people shouldn't donate to Dartmouth," he said, referencing Zywicki's suggestion in his Pope Center speech that people should contribute more to George Mason University.
Gado emphasized that the infamous quote Zywicki made calling Freedman "truly evil" was actually a quote from The Dartmouth Review, but has since been misunderstood by most people. While many members of the Dartmouth community thought the comments referred only to Dartmouth, Zywicki was criticizing all institutions of higher education, using Dartmouth as an example, Gado argued.
"Those comments were made at what [Zywicki] thought was an informal discussion," Gado said, adding that the transcript that the College published "gave a very skewed impression" of the speech because, given the nature of the address, it was not written in "sentences and paragraphs."
THE BOARD'S DECISION
Haldeman refused to release specific details about why Board members decided not to reelect Zywicki in an interview with the Dartmouth last week, citing the confidential nature of trustee discussions. The reelection process for trustees is "transparent," Haldeman said in the interview, adding that he had meet with Zywicki prior to the vote to discuss all concerns that other trustees had raised in their evaluations of him.
Gado disagreed.
"Of course it wasn't transparent," Gado said. "If the man is going to be punished for something, then he should at least know what the charges against him are and be able to defend himself."
Zywicki was asked to make a statement before the Board before the trustee voted on his reelection, Haldeman said in the interview. Zywicki, however, was prohibited from being present during the Board's discussion, according to Rodgers' opinion piece.
"He apologized again for his Pope Center speech and exited," Rodgers wrote. "I can say from personal knowledge that many of the statements made in that meeting about [Zywicki] were factually incorrect, but [he] was not there to respond."
Daukas said the possibility that false allegations would incorrectly sway Board members does not "ring true," because Rodgers attended the meeting and could correct any misinformed allegations.
James Adler '60, who wrote a letter to the editor of The Dartmouth in December 2007 criticizing Zywicki for the Pope Center remarks, questioned in an interview with The Dartmouth how it is that Zywicki is still unaware of why he was not reelected, given that Zywicki appears to be close with the other former petition candidates on the Board.
Along with Rodgers, those trustees include Peter Robinson '79 and Stephen Smith '88, who "are clearly his allies," Adler said.
Both Rodgers and Robinson were reelected at the Board's April meeting, a point that both Daukas and Association President John Mathias '69 pointed to as proof that the Board is not attempting to target former petition candidates.
"It's very telling that the Board reelected two of the three trustees who are publicly very critical of the College," Daukas said.
BOARD STRUCTURE
Zywicki's removal from the Board has sparked discussion about the role of academics on the Board of Trustees.
Zywicki is a law professor at George Mason University. Smith, the only other trustee besides College President James Wright who has a career in academia, is a law professor at the University of Virginia.
"The alumni elected three more petition trustees with views similar to mine," Rodgers wrote in his opinion piece, referencing the elections of Robinson, Zywicki and Smith. "It was no accident that each of them was a university professor or scholar."
That the Board reelects alumni-elected trustees, instead of having an alumni-wide vote, has caused some controversy as well. This power was shifted from the alumni to the Board in 1990 via an alumni-approved amendment to the Association's constitution. The amendment sparked a lawsuit by alumni who claimed the Association did not give enough notice about the vote. That lawsuit was later dismissed.
If a trustee is elected by the alumni, the trustee should be reelected by the alumni, Gado said, adding that the decision to change the governance structure was made "behind closed doors."
"All Board policies should be open unless there is an expressed reason for confidentiality," Gado said.
Adler, however, argued that trustees are better able to assess the performance of fellow Board members,
"After four years, the alumni body knows very little about how any trustee is performing because quite properly, [the Board has] closed meetings," he said. "On the other hand, the trustees, after four years, know quite well who has been living up to their codes and obligations."
Gado said that if he had been given the chance to vote, he would have reelected Zywicki.
Daukas said that he did not have enough information about Zywicki's service as a trustee to make an informed decision.
"The Board could have held its nose just to avoid a public relations problem," Daukas said, adding later, "But that may not be what the Board is supposed to do."
